On a Thursday afternoon in August, researchers, clinicians and engineers scattered into rooms across The Clinic at McMaster University’s the DeGroote Heersink Hub with a challenge: convince the people sitting across from them that their idea mattered.
Some arrived with years of research behind them. Others knew a clinical problem intimately. All had spent the past several weeks learning to look at their work through a different lens.
Now they had a few minutes to make their case.
Inside breakout rooms, teams took turns pitching ideas they aspire to move to market. Around the tables, peers and facilitators listened, questioned assumptions and offered feedback.
It was the final exercise in Masterclass: Foundations of Commercialization, a novel entrepreneurship training program at McMaster that gives participants a chance to put a new way of thinking into practice.
Seeing a clinical solution differently
For Jennifer Fabe, a clinical specialist registered dietitian at Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS), that meant stepping outside the clinical world she knows well. As part of HHS’s DRIVE SPARK competition, which is designed to support and promote innovation and commercialization efforts within the hospital community, Fabe and her team came to Masterclass with their company, KetoSuite. KetoSuite is an initiative to expand access to specialized ketogenic diet care for brain based diseases as demand grows, without placing additional pressure on an already limited specialist workforce.
Fabe knew the clinical problem. The Masterclass challenged her team to think differently about the solution: Who is the customer? How do you communicate its value to the health-system and commercial decision-makers? What is the market opportunity? And what would it take to move KetoSuite from a clinically informed solution to a scalable one?
“The Masterclass challenged us to look at KetoSuite through a different lens,” says Fabe. “We revised not only our presentation, but also our perspective on the business, commercialization pathway and market opportunity.”
Taking technology beyond the lab
Across the Masterclass, Fereshteh Bayat was asking some of the same questions from a very different starting point.
A research associate and postdoctoral candidate in chemical engineering at McMaster, Bayat and her team have developed a rapid point-of-care screening platform for urinary tract infections (UTI) designed to provide more accurate results than conventional dipstick testing. By improving how urine samples are initially screened, the technology could help reduce unnecessary laboratory cultures, saving time and resources while supporting more efficient UTI management and reducing unnecessary antibiotic use. The team is also building on the platform to develop rapid antibiotic susceptibility testing, which could eventually help determine which antibiotics will be effective against an infection.
For Bayat, science and engineering were familiar territory. Commercialization was not.
“I really enjoyed the Masterclass and greatly appreciated the opportunity to learn from experts in business and commercialization,” says Bayat. “It was truly a valuable experience, particularly for someone with an engineering background like mine.”
Different disciplines. Different ideas. Different starting points.
But Fabe and Bayat were confronting the same fundamental challenge: how do you take deep expertise and translate it into something that can be adopted, scaled and ultimately make an impact beyond the clinic or lab?
Those questions were at the heart of Masterclass.
Bringing together innovators from McMaster and HHS is central to the DeGroote Heersink Hub’s goal of accelerating commercialization across Hamilton. Through training, mentorship and access to business and industry expertise, programs like Masterclass are building a pathway for prospective innovators to develop the skills and networks to move promising ideas towards commercialization.
What comes next
The final exercise may have marked the end of the Masterclass, but for many participants, the next stage is already taking shape. Completion of the program provides a pathway for eligible teams to compete for seed funding and further support to advance their innovations.
This fall, McMaster participants can apply to the Heersink ACE50 Pitch Competition, where $150,000 in commercialization funding is available through the DeGroote Heersink Hub, with additional funding support from the Faculties of Engineering, Health Sciences, Science, and DeGroote School of Business. Selected teams will be invited to pitch their ventures, competing for a $50,000 top prize and additional $25,000 awards.
Similarly, at HHS, eligible participants can advance to the HHS DRIVE SPARK in-person pitch competition, where finalists present their innovation to the DRIVE Board for a chance to receive up to $50,000 to help them develop and scale their commercialization strategy, along with a range of support services.
For all the aspiring innovators, it’s another opportunity to put what they’ve learned into practice and move promising ideas another step closer to real-world impact.
For Fabe, the next stage of KetoSuite’s journey will begin with a better understanding of both the opportunity and what it will take to pursue it.
“We’re leaving the Masterclass with a stronger pitch, a clearer commercialization narrative, and a renewed outlook on the opportunity ahead,” she says.