Innovation celebrated

By James Foster – Times & Transcript Staff

Luc Jalbert used to bemoan the stack of empty laundry detergent jugs in his basement, a burden to landfills and a waste of unnecessary packaging, to his mind.

If only there was a better way to wash clothing, both for the sake of convenience and for the sake of the environment.

There wasn’t. So he invented one.

“It was always something in the back of my mind,” says Jalbert, cofounder of Moncton-based Dizolve laundry detergent sheets along with partner Don Goguen.

Rather than big jugs or boxes, Dizolve comes in little packets. You toss a sheet — not unlike an anti-static dryer sheet — into the wash and you’re done.

The duo used an old machine that could turn liquids into solid strips, developed the product, test marketed it, refined it through an arduous and expensive course of research-and-development investments, and are now in marketplaces around the world.

“Everybody likes it,” Jalbert says.

“Everybody had the same reaction: ‘What a cool idea!’”

Now the innovative duo are expanding on that idea, using the expertise they gained in the development and marketing of the laundry detergent sheets to develop another product to add to its line: a dissolving dish-washing detergent sheet for use in automatic dishwashers.

“It just makes sense,” Jalbert says.

“Things are getting very interesting for us.”

It’s that kind of innovative thinking that has landed Dizolve Group Corporation one of the five finalist berths in the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation’s R3 Innovation Challenge competition, in which the two companies judged to have the most innovative and commercially-viable ideas will each receive $50,000 in R&D funding and $5,000 worth of services from top law firm Cox & Palmer as well as from Deloitte, a leading financial services firm.

The two winners will be announced at NBIF’s R3 Gala, set for March 21 at the Fredericton Convention Centre, where, as well, three of New Brunswick’s top applied researchers will be honoured with the R3 Innovation Award for Excellence in Applied Research.

Author Hal Gregersen will give the keynote address based on his book, The Innovator’s DNA — Mastering the Five Skills of the Disruptive Innovators.

“It’s the first time we’ve done the R3 Innovation Challenge and we’ve been overwhelmed by everyone’s encouraging response to it, across all sectors, telling us that there is a need for companies to better integrate with the province’s research talent,” says NBIF president and CEO Calvin Milbury.

“We were very impressed with the quality of the 25 submissions we received. We had to pick five, but there were other submissions that, over time, could develop into something really valuable if the companies dedicate some resources towards R&D.”

Soricimed Biopharma is the second Moncton-based firm in the competition.

While in the process of developing its current cancer-fighting drugs, Soricimed, based on Botsford Street, discovered that chemicals found in shrew venom attach to specific receptor cells in the prostate, ovaries and breasts. As a result, the company proposes to develop a new drug that can be used to deliver other cancer-detecting or -fighting drugs to those specific areas, making for more targeted cancer therapies.

Tickets for the R3 Gala are available online, at www.nbif.ca