Two Sherbrooke innovators get support from Sherbrooke Innopole
Sherbrooke Innopole has announced the first winning projects from its new VITE program, designed to help commercialize Sherbrooke's technological innovations. The VITE - Validation of Technological Innovation under Testing - Program offers Sherbrooke companies with technology projects in development the opportunity to demonstrate their innovation in the field by pairing them with a local sponsor organization.
The pilot edition of the program was open to all companies that had a technological innovation to be tested and validated that are working in one of the five key sectors; Clean Technologies, Information Technologies, Manufacturing and Advanced Manufacturing, Life Sciences, and Micro-nanotechnologies. The selection of the winners was based on several criteria, namely the fact that the projects were to be carried out within the City of Sherbrooke, were at nearready stage of development, represented a significant innovation, and respected the basic principles of sustainable development.
Two winners were selected at the end of the initial call for projects, held last fall. Each selected company was then put in touch with a public, para-public, or institutional sponsor in Sherbrooke in order to initiate and complete the technological validation process, an important step towards commercialization.
SPI Bio Inc. operates in the clean technologies sector and its project consists of testing a new device for analyzing legionella contamination, also known as legionnaire’s disease, in industrial cooling systems. The company has been paired with Sherbrooke’s Leopold-drolet Sports Complex.
SPI Bio’s Bioalert device offers a unique solution for the control of legionella bacteria in industrial cooling systems. This on-site detection device is innovative in its reliability and the speed with which it keeps the pathogen at safe levels. The device also has a sophisticated control system capable of communicating physicochemical parameters and controlling water treatment to provide an integrated management tool.
The second winner, Wizbusiness.net, is an information technologies firm being mentored for its Gamefeed ‘smart’ multisport billboards and working with the Complexe sportif Thibault GM. The target market consists of arenas, sports centers, schools, municipal parks, and deck-hockey surfaces. The panels are connected to cloud infrastructures and are managed by a web application and include multisport consoles, an advertising network, and connections to external data services. Among the external services are interfaces connected to sports leagues management systems that retrieve and post the results of games in real time. The boards are designed for indoor and outdoor use and are compatible with more than 12 sports.
"Field tests are a very effective way of accelerating the journey towards commercialization; a crucial step for any young company," explained Josée Fortin, General Manager of Sherbrooke Innopole. “The VITE program allows entrepreneurs to work with mentoring organizations to identify what works and what doesn’t with their product, then improve it and optimize subsequent marketing.
"It's a golden opportunity to do our field tests at a lower cost,” said SPI Bio co-founder and President Étienne Lemieux. “The feedback from our sponsors saves us time in improving our product to meet the needs of our future customers."
"A project like this one allows us to remain in the forefront by using the new innovations, and to benefit users," added Stephen Cabana, Director General Sports Complex Thibault GM. “The Wizbusiness.net team listened to our needs and took up the challenges that we faced.”
A second round of the VITE program is accepting applications now.