THE EXPERTS WEIGH IN

Leon Raubenheimer, chief executive officer, Zed Financial Partners, Toronto

When you have a new product, you don’t want to boil the whole ocean with it. You want to be strategic and develop key partnerships.

If I were POET, I would look to a company like BlackBerry Ltd. to validate the microchip. Perhaps BlackBerry’s engineers can create a smartphone using the POET microchip side by side with a product using silicon chips. That would show the results and the performance attributes.

In exchange, POET could offer BlackBerry exclusivity for two years to produce smartphones with the POET chips. That way both companies win. Once an independent third-party technology company can prove POET’s claims, then money will flood in from all of Silicon Valley.

Kal Suurkask, founder and managing director, Elevation PR, Victoria

POET Technologies should leverage Geoff Taylor’s story and make him the face of this astounding and potentially game-changing technology.

Dr. Taylor has spent his entire career devoted to creating a device that he feels will drive the human race to a whole new level of performance. Whenever humanity has taken a dramatic leap forward in speed, the world has shifted and society has altered. Dr. Taylor should be front and centre of any such evolution.

Having him in the spotlight as interest in POET grows will only drive the value of the semiconductor chips and awareness of the invention in the technology sector – and beyond.

Anthony Giovinazzo, CEO, Cynapsus Therapeutics Inc., a specialty pharmaceutical company, Toronto

At Cynapsus, we had to prove our product to the pharmaceutical industry. Our product delivers an oral treatment for Parkinson’s freezing episodes that is less painful and more effective than what is currently available. Once we discovered how to treat these episodes through a Listerine-type, sublingual strip – rather than injections – we then had to persuade the pharmaceutical industry that it worked and that it was scalable.

The most important focus for POET should be to come prepared with answers to all of the questions Silicon Valley will ask. Big changes often come about very slowly, and it can be gruelling. So they should also be prepared for a long wait.

Fortunately for us, we have had the endorsement of the Michael J. Fox Foundation, which has helped us both in terms of public awareness for Cynapsus and in providing a funding source for our drug development program. If there is an equivalent name in the chip-making sector, POET should consider reaching out to him or her for a testimonial on their device.

THREE THINGS THE COMPANY COULD DO NOW

Get validation

POET, formerly Opel, should approach a company such as BlackBerry to provide proof that its technology works the way it says it does.

Make Geoff Taylor the face of the company

Linking the POET microchip invention to the man who built it will help attract media attention.