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Serendipity is the brother of invention.

A Montreal startup is counting on technology sparked by a casual conversation between two brothers pursuing PhDs at McGill University.

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They were chatting about their disparate research areas — one, in engineering, was working on using graphene, a form of carbon, in batteries; the other, in music, was looking at the impact of electronics on the perception of audio quality.

At first glance, the invention that ensued sounds humdrum.

It’s a replacement for an item you use every day. It’s paper thin, you probably don’t realize it’s there and its design has not changed much in more than a century. Called a membrane or diaphragm, it’s the part of a loudspeaker that vibrates to create the sound from the headphones over your ears, the wireless speaker on your desk, the cellphone in your hand.

Ora — the company that eventually emerged from the conversation between Robert-Eric Gaskell and Peter Gaskell — says it has developed a lighter and more rigid membrane that can improve sound and extend battery life of portable speakers and cellphones.