"Clickstart a revolution," reads the homepage of Marblar, a new technology transfer-focused online community that aims to connect scientists' discoveries to investors and funds. At Wired's Social Dimenson blog, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation's Samuel Arbesman, who advises Marblar, says that "while there are many startups that catalyze science… Marblar aims to catalyze the process of finding commercial uses for innovation." Arbesman adds that "Marblar acts like a reverse Innocentive [a crowdsourcing-based, problem-solving online community]. Where Innocentive sets scientific and technical challenges and rewards the best of the crowd-sourced solutions, Marblar starts with solutions — the technologies — and rewards those who can find the problems these technologies can solve."
Marblar is soliciting early-access participants at its website. "You might be a current scientist, a recovering scientist, or just a creative mind. Science is great, but the path to move scientific discoveries forward isn't always obvious, and it's harder still when only a couple of people are involved in that conversation," the company says. "That's why we built Marblar — to connect dormant ideas with brilliant people."