Yesterday I had the pleasure of participating in an Overlap session put on by my friends Michael Dila, and Robin Uchida, which was held at the MaRS Centre, largely focusing on MaRS itself, although there was also presentations on the One Laptop Per Child project as well as a company called Symtext.

This was my first Overlap event, and I was particularly excited about the range of perspectives that assembled in the circle.

Similarly the MaRS people had a great energy, and as I came to fully understand their mission and mandate, I was not only impressed, but outright inspired. Living in Toronto you always get the sense that this city has considerable greatness, MaRS is the type of institution that fosters this, cultivating greatness when it comes to innovation.

The effect for me however, in bringing together the MaRS team and the Overlap group, was the immediate identification of what I felt was a blind spot in the current approach that MaRS was taking.

I was reminded of a recent blog post by Robert Cringley in which he states that "the best start-ups are composed of symbiotic combinations of hippies and nerds. Hippies have the grand vision while nerds mind the details."

What MaRS needs is more hippies. And I suspect they know this and agree. The question is how do you cultivate the cultural side of innovation, foster a garden of visionaries in addition to buildings filled with laboratories and scientists.

One way would be to continue to host open events and allow for grassroots gatherings and initiatives. They have a great building, and I'm sure that if it was easier and cheaper to use it, there could be ample opportunities for the types of connections and networking that happen at community events. FacebookCamp Toronto happened at MaRS, and so too should other comparable events.

Another idea I had, was to look at how Nuit Blanche made the art world and cultural communities more accessible and public, towards organizing a similar event that could be used to make research and innovation equally accessible and public.

I also thought a bit about the role that fear plays in framing most people's experiences with technology, and couldn't help but extend this analysis of fear towards technology innovation in general. I suggested to the MaRS team that they engage in some market research to perhaps create a Technology Fear Index that measures the public's general anxiety about technology and the rate of technological change.

In general the MaRS folk were very open to my and other Overlap participants suggestions and feedback. This demonstrated to me in part the real power of the Overlap group in that such a multi/trans-disciplinary group is able to offer a perspective that is entirely unique and without equal.

I suspect the MaRS people understood this clearly as well. While their membership or community is currently biased towards things like advanced medical and pharmaceutical research, they expressed the desire to further diversify and have members from all sorts of industries and areas that are involved in innovation.

Eco-systems require diversity to survive and thrive, and MaRS has tried to foster this by attracting and seeking out Scientists, Engineers, Investors, Mangers, Bankers, Consultants, Business Experts, and other professionals able to help build and support a successful enterprise.

What they're still missing however are the hippies, or to be more accurate, the philosophers, the visionaries, the cultural artists who give body and meaning to the technology and science that make up the mission at MaRS.

Sometimes we take for granted the impact that Marshall McLuhan made on our city and the culture of innovation that thrives here. One lesson we cannot forgot is the intrinsic role of culture in technological innovation, and an easy way to apply this lesson would be to expand the cultural programming and pursuit of philosophy within the MaRS discovery district.

Update: I've since left the Overlap group concluding that they're a bunch of tossers. What a waste.