Waterloo Region aims to be the second-best place on earth to start a tech business. We believe in this goal because we know something special is going on here.
Kayleigh Platz, storyteller and researcher, Communitech
We have over 30,000 passionate people working in close to 1,000 technology enterprises, with more than 450 of those being active startups. I’m eager to share with you the events and experiences that make this place tick, as well as news about the tech companies of all sizes that call the region home. Working for , an organization that helps technology companies start, grow and succeed in Waterloo Region and promotes the area as one of North America’s top technology clusters, I get to see all the work, up close and personal. Through this series I’ll be sharing the pulse of what’s happening here, introduce you to some awesome companies, and share advice from our expert community of mentors and entrepreneurs that aim to help companies be successful.
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Waterloo Region believes in hard work – we are, after all, a community founded on a barn-raising mentality and still believe that co-operation is key to a tight and supportive group. Today, we’re a sparkling hub of innovation, excitement and knowledge, and our rock stars and celebrities are world-renowned thinkers, , and . Eating lunch beside a who altered the way the world accesses the internet isn’t a big deal; it’s just part of the accessible charm of Waterloo Region.
There is magic happening in this area, which boasts technology revenue of more than $25 billion with interests ranging from software development, digital media, mobile and wireless, advanced manufacturing, robotics, aerospace and defense, clean and biotech, health, IT services and telecom. While we aren’t going to give away all our secrets, we do want to share a few ingredients that make up our secret sauce:
Big City Flavour
Waterloo Region’s is located in South Western Ontario, commuting distance from Toronto. Waterloo Region, however is not a bedroom community, in fact, as of 2011, 31,000 people commute to Waterloo Region daily. We have a growing amount of amazing local events that keep people in town after work hours: , a social learning event that combines mobile development content and Ontario craft beers;  Perimeter Institute’s continually sold-out ; , an artist-run organization that brings world-class art to public spaces, packed-capacity music festivals like the and the , and the , led by the brilliant and outrageous .
Secret sauce ingredient: active and engaged community
Smart People are Everywhere
We have some of the brightest thinkers in the nation calling Waterloo home. In fact, the Communitech registers two new startups daily. Many of these startups boast young and enthusiastic inventors. Communitech isn’t the only supporter and encourager in the region’s startup scene. We work alongside dynamite teams at the , University of Waterloo’s , Wilfrid Laurier’s program and Conestoga College’s program.
Add in the 40,000-plus students who join us every year thanks to the universities and college, and you’ve got a youthful, inquisitive, and energetic population looking to make a difference. While we may see more parties than the average town, ours is a vibrant community whose members keep us at the cutting edge and a step ahead of others.
Secret Sauce ingredient: Non-stop learning and constant questioning.
We Drink a Lot
No, Waterloo Region doesn’t have a drinking problem, but we have a ridiculous number of coffee shops and pubs. With so many startups and small businesses in town, this translates into many portable offices, with business deals completed over a cup of java or on a patio. And we are talking a lot of deals. In fact, Communitech saw over $500 million in acquisitions and $84.4 million raised in risk capital in 2011.
We’re not the only place with cafes and pubs, but their abundance hints at the laid-back nature of our cities. We dress casually and prefer to meet outside of cubicles. Taking the business meeting out of a work environment allows for relationships, and not just transactions, to flourish, which helps build a stronger community.
Secret sauce ingredient:Â A cup of coffee or a cold beverage does more than keep you hydrated in Waterloo Region.
It’s been said there’s something in the water here. While we do have a lot of water in the region, thanks to the Grand River, I think our tenacious success comes from the people and ideas here. I encourage you to stop by the Communitech Hub anytime. There is always something happening here, from startup launches to networking breakfasts.
And yes, the coffee is always hot.
Putting Ottawa’s puzzle together
By Leo Valiquette
Leo Valiquette, business journalist
In early May, I blogged about the need for everyone in the National Capital Region involved with getting technology to market to .
It was a post sparked by my recent discussions with various entrepreneurs and other economic stakeholders at a time when the newly minted  was getting its house in order and engaging in a long-overdue dialogue with the business community.
One of these discussions was with Walt Hutchings, Invest Ottawa’s new managing director of investment and trade, who is tasked with building a team that will have the domain expertise and contacts to help Ottawa companies expand overseas and attract foreign interests to consider Ottawa their foothold in the Canadian and North American markets.
As you may be aware, I also serve as managing editor of The Voice, the quarterly magazine of the . In the latest issue, . I agree with Purple Forge’s , who says .
Of course, to develop a relevant and effective strategy to help more Ottawa companies do that requires a firm understanding of how many are in fact exporting versus how many could be, the challenges they face and what kind of assistance they need. The problem, however, is that little concrete data of this sort exists at the local level anywhere in Canada. All we have are reports from the likes of Statistics Canada and Industry Canada that paint Big Pictures with broad brush strokes.
For example, Industry Canada released a year ago the results of a . What was particularly pertinent to Ottawa was that only 17 per cent of SMEs in knowledge-based industries were exporting. That is somewhat surprising, considering that the majority of knowledge-based companies are likely to have a product or service with export potential. Nor should we overlook the overall economic impact that SMEs can have; the nine per cent of SMEs that did export accounted for 25 per cent of Canada’s total exports.
As I wrote in The Voice, being an export business is likely to be a matter of necessity rather than choice in Ottawa, where the economic development drive is focused around green energy, aerospace and defence, photonics, life sciences, digital media, and film and television. In most of these industries, the potential market within Canada is too small to build a company with the mass and momentum to escape the minor leagues.
While Hutchings said he wants to build a database to track the region’s export activity, as well as outside investments into the region, this surely is not, and should not, be the responsibility of Invest Ottawa alone. I don’t believe there is a need to go out and create this data, only aggregate it from various sources – the pieces of the puzzle are already out there, they just need to be pulled together. But again, this takes cooperation and collaboration between various groups, associations and agencies in the public and private sectors that are part of the NCR’s commercialization ecosystem.
My inspiration for this post came from the Ottawa Chamber’s announcement that Erin Kelly, who has served as its executive director for the past four years, will be moving on to a new opportunity in August. Any regular reader of the  will know there was some friction between the Chamber and the old OCRI under its former chief, Claude Haw, arising from an ideological debate over which organization should be doing what to support the local economy.
But today is a new day and I must tip my hat to Erin for going out on a high note. In her column in the latest issue of The Voice she puts the challenge to the local business community to pull together:
“Staying the course, focusing on capital and channels to export markets, is the only way forward for Ottawa, especially in light of what promises to be not one but several years of government cutbacks both here and abroad. This is why all businesses in Ottawa should get behind Invest Ottawa, partner with this new entity and do what we can to ensure its success. Exporting companies need more support services than companies which run city-wide only. That means more business for everyone.â€
Amen to that.
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June 15, 2012
Ryerson’s Digital Media Zone – a different kind of incubator
Ryerson’s Digital Media Zone – a different kind of incubator
Ryerson University stands for encouraging great ideas and entrepreneurial spirit. So, it was no surprise that when students approached Ryerson President Sheldon Levy in 2009 asking for support for their innovative business concepts, he rose to the challenge. In April of the following year the Digital Media Zone (DMZ) opened its doors with 6,400 square feet of space overseeing Dundas Square—an incubator for budding digital entrepreneurs where they receive access to space, mentoring, consulting, and fund
Lauren Schneider, Media Relations Officer, Ryerson DMZ
ing to help their ventures thrive.
The first companies in the DMZ were founded by Ryerson students and alumni. As interest grew, applications were received from many young entrepreneurs including students from other universities and colleges as well as others in business and education. The DMZ expanded its mandate to include not only the Ryerson community, but also digital media entrepreneurs from a variety of backgrounds. Today, the DMZ stands apart as a multi-disciplinary workspace for young entrepreneurs infused with the energy and resources of downtown Toronto. This , collaboration and commercialization is home to both entrepreneurial startups and industry solution-providers.
In order to be accepted into the must satisfy and number of criteria, and present their business plan to the Digital Media Zone’s steering committee. Once accepted, teams have access to open flexible workspace, equipment, utilities, business plan counselling, mentoring, workshops, networks, and industry showcases at no cost (or equity) to the user. The entrepreneurs access the resources and the mentoring according to their needs as they move their ideas from prototypes or research to a digital business product or service.
In two short years, the DMZ has achieved significant success. Since its official opening in April 2010, the DMZ has seen:
- 45 companies incubated and accelerated
- More than 88 projects initiated
- 438 jobs fostered and created through newly formed startups and market-driven research, plus 60 new jobs at Ryerson, and
- 12 alumni companies
Presently the DMZ houses approximately 184 innovators in 45 teams. Â These teams represent a real variety of sectors and industries, with everyone helping and learning from one another.
The DMZ continues to expand and grow. To meet the demand to accommodate more entrepreneurs and start-ups, the DMZ recently expanded to three levels within its downtown hub. Currently encompassing a total of 16,400 square feet, it has almost tripled in size since it opened in 2010.
So, what is the secret to the DMZ’s success? What sets us apart from other incubator programs? Location, for one. The Digital Media Zone is situated at the corner of Yonge and Dundas streets, and is infused with the energy and resources of downtown Toronto, facilitating access to networking opportunities and industry partnerships. Also, most incubators have set terms for everything from admissions and team size to length of stay and equity asks.
The DMZ is flexible and inclusive. Companies can enter at different stages and through a variety of supported pathways. They can remain and grow here until they feel ready to move on. And equity exchanges for eligible companies are optional. The DMZ’s model is also constantly evolving with the needs to its entrepreneurs. Finally, the DMZ is a unique multi-disciplinary environment where companies in different stages of development and with different backgrounds are encouraged to work together and learn from one another. The DMZ facilitates cross-pollination as the companies meet and share and even use each others’ products or create new companies.
The results of Ryerson’s experiment speak for themselves.  DMZ alumnus company 500 px is a photographic community powered by creative people from around the world that lets users share, rate and discover inspiring photographs. Currently 500px is one of the hottest and fastest growing photography websites globally. Its iPad app is one of the top free photography apps in iTunes, and the company was voted the number one start-up in Toronto in January 2012 by Techvibes.
TeamSave, another DMZ alumnus, is a social buying website and platform. Teamsave has partnered with classifieds giant Kijiji, and both the Kijiji deal site and Kijiji Daily Deals run on the TeamSave platform. The company now operates in 20 cities in North America and has 48 staff.
The DMZ began as an experiment by Ryerson University to help students and alumni not only learn the skills to get great jobs, but also to work with them to create great jobs. Two years on, the DMZ is creating a digital media hub for our city, province and country, stimulating Canada’s emerging digital economy and helping to ensure budding entrepreneurs commercialize their products and services right here. For further information on the Digital Media Zone, visit: .
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Dealing with the devilish details of bringing IP to market
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June 14, 2012
Are startups just for young, single guys?
Are startups just for young, single guys?
When I met Aliza Pulver a few weeks ago, I felt like I’d just met an alien. A woman. Over 30. With two young kids. Who founded a startup!?
Christine Wong, staff writer, ITBusiness.ca
Yet there she was, in the flesh, sharing her story and insights
on a panel of startup founders and funders at the excellent here in Toronto.
To say that Pulver, founder of Toronto-based home décor e-tailer
, is a rarity in the tech startup world is a massive understatement.
Are startups just a young, single guy’s game?
It looks that way. I usually see few women (of any age) in the crowd at startup events who are founders or other key players within fledgling tech firms. But young dudes in their twenties and thirties? Plenty of those.
How come? Well, I put it down to three possible culprits: confidence, cash and kids.
Confidence: As two female founders (Heather Payne of Ladies Learning Code and Alyssa Richard of RateHub) , selling your ideas in the startup world takes a lot of confidence. For whatever reason, many women still don’t feel confident putting their ideas forward, especially
if it’s in the technology realm or a competitive ring like a pitch contest.
Cash: According to a study done last November by the National Venture Capital Association and
Dow Jones VentureSource, 89 per cent of U.S. investors are men. If there are already few women founders pitching startup ideas, and hardly any women investors on the receiving end of those pitches, is it rocket science to figure out why there are hardly any female-run tech startups?
Kids: The tech startup scene is ‘crazy’ demanding. It’s not a 9 to 5 world where anything is
structured, predictable, easy or quick. That’s why bootstrapping is tough. The hours are long. And you don’t make any money at the beginning.
Long hours, exhaustion and little or no pay? Hey, it’s exactly like being a mother! It’s easy to see why few women with kids (or planning to have kids) would opt for a startup situation where they must spend long hours away from their children and place their families in a financially precarious position as well.
Can women with kids really do the startup thing successfully?
“The short answer is yes, but only if you work out the proper support system around you. That’s the key to being able to do it,†says Pulver, mother of two girls aged four years and seven months, respectively.
“Without the support I have around me from parents and grandparents …I think I’d have major challenges doing what I’m doing,†she adds.
Still, she says today’s aspiring female entrepreneurs have way more tools available to help them juggle kids and commerce than earlier generations of women did, such as daycare, nannies, business support groups (she’s a fan of Women In Tech) andthat make working from home a breeze.
“Women are very accomplished at figuring out how to achieve certain goals,†Pulver says. “You somehow get an extra two arms when you don’t actually have them!â€
Why do we need more women (and people old enough to have lived through the Mulroney era – as in Brian, not Ben) in startups?
Because it works. As a found, female-run tech startups in the U.S. are more likely to survive the leap from startup to established company, use capital more efficiently, and are growing five times faster than average tech startups.
There’s a case to be made for older experience in the startup realm too. As noted, although Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg became a billionaire by 30, launched the Huffington Post at 54 and Marc Pincus created Zynga at 41.
A study by non-profit Singularity University of 500 U.S. tech and engineering firms with over $1 million in sales found that the average age of founders was 39. And get this: there were twice as many successful founders over 50 as under 25, and twice as many over 60 as under 20.
We may not see members of Generation X flocking to apply to Y Combinator but I hope they aren’t discouraged from pursuing their startup dreams.
June 13, 2012
Choosing the right analytics software for your business
Choosing the right analytics software for your business
As mountains of customer data and increasing competition continue to overwhelm small and medium businesses, many will find themselves making key decisions on little more than gut reactions – potentially putting their business at risk, and failing to harness the golden nuggets this data hides.
Pat Finerty, Vice President of Alliances and Business Development, SAS Canada
To survive and thrive SMBs must be highly responsive to rapid changes in customer behavior and larger market dynamics. Competitive forces insist SMBs develop effective and timely responses to these customers along with better visibility into both the current and future state of the business and market.
Often thought of as only being only accessible by large companies, increasingly business intelligence (BI) tools are being leveraged by SMBs to deliver this insight, without compromising their agility or their budget. When making the transition to a data driven business model, SMBs need a platform that can be deployed quickly with a low total cost of ownership. Selecting the right business analytics options to fit your company’s needs is critical to attain these goals.
Â
When selecting a business analytics solution, look for a provider that offers the following capabilities:
- Robust visualization: Strong visualization capabilities will empower users with even limited technical skills to: interactively explore large amounts of data to spot anomalies and hidden trends; build analytical models in a point-and-click environment to eliminate the need for manual coding as well as share and present these results using easy-to-understand graphics.
- Support for advanced analytics: Seek to go beyond simple query and reporting and OLAP drill-down capabilities. The solution should support a comprehensive set of advanced analytical techniques, including data mining, forecasting, scenario modeling and optimization – all the solutions many larger companies are now using to their benefit.
- Prebuilt analytical models and associated task support: Choose a solution that offers prebuilt analytical models that address common business issues. One that offers model assessment tools will enable users to evaluate various models and select the best for the task at hand, then to deploy and monitor the models.
- Suited to a range of users: Find a solution that recognizes the talent constraints facing SMBs and supports both basic and intermediate-level modelers and business users. But, also look for features designed for more advanced users. Since skills sets change rapidly, you will want to choose the product with the most flexibility.
- Ease of Use: Look for a solution that includes data management, analytics and reporting capabilities through familiar interfaces such as Microsoft Office. This helps ensure that users won’t be intimidated by complex, technical-looking interfaces therefore preventing them from fully using the solution’s capabilities.
- Balanced user autonomy and IT control: Select a solution that allows business users to work on their own, but within a well-defined IT environment. This helps ensure that your already limited IT resources are not pressured to manage metadata, security and data integrity requirements at multiple locations. Â
- Modular solutions: As the needs of SMBs can quickly change when business grows, choose a solution that allows your organization to purchase the functionality or capability you need the most right now, while making it easy to add more as you go – without incurring expensive integration costs.
- Training and technical support: Since even the best solution is useless if no one knows how to use it, select a solution that includes appropriate training and technical support. Look for resources to ensure your business users get quickly up to speed on functionality and can access additional support when needed.
- The ability to scale: Many of today’s large enterprises were SMBs in the not too distant past. As you grow your own business and accompanying data, you need a solution that can grow with you.
- Low total cost of ownership: Don’t choose solution just because it has the lowest per-user costs – it is important to consider additional costs that you may have to pay that are associated with implementation, integration, training and technical support.
How should an SMB go about adopting analytics?
First, define the specific challenge your company is facing. Step back and ask yourself what insights will make you more competitive. Once you have a clear picture of what you want to achieve and why, you’ll be in the position to better determine the solution that’s best for your company.
The next step would be to start small with your immediate business issues. By focusing on your most pressing business issues and achieving quick wins you and your team will be able to start seeing how analytics can drastically improve your business.
Finally, extend your use of analytics over time to achieve continuous performance improvements. By exploring the capabilities of analytics, you will undoubtedly see how the solutions can improve business across all lines of business from operations to supply chain to marketing and customer support and much more.
With these tips in mind, SMBs should be better prepared to adopt game-changing business analytics tools and move from being overwhelmed by data to using it to gain a competitive edge.
Pat Finerty is the Vice President of Alliances and Business Development for SAS Canada
June 12, 2012
Top five gadgets for a hi-tech Dad
Top five gadgets for a hi-tech Dad
I really look forward to Father’s Day every year. My son Mitchell is 19 and he has given me some of my most treasured gadgets over the years. You see, Father’s Day to a Gadget Guy is that one day out of the year that they can go out and buy themselves a great gadget and
blame it on the occasion.
For example, what kind of gadget could my son really afford to get me? BUT – If I buy it FOR him to give to me…..then it’s a whole new ballgame! It’s like buying your sister a new CD because you like the artist and will copy them to your iPod as soon as she looks the other way. And it’s relatively guilt free, depending on the circumstances – who can argue that Dad, on this one glorious day, doesn’t deserve something really cool? And of course the bigger the family, the better the gadget.
Here’s my top 5 list of cool gadgets for Dad:
1) Hewlett Packard Envy Spectre UltraBook – HP has come out with a new line of laptops that are simply quite stunning and would really make dad look cool. I used the HP ENVY Spectre for about a week and was really impressed with its speed and looks. This is HP’s first multi-surface glass Ultrabook featuring amazingly light, scratch-resistant glass and has a 9 hour battery life.
2) WD TV Live – This is a streaming Media Player that your dad can hook up to the TV and the home computer and it will let him play virtually anything his computer can dish out. It has a very easy setup and doesn’t need a PC to work as it comes crammed with all the social media and movie sites already inside. I got mine at Costco.
3) Samsung Galaxy S III – This is the phone of the year! If dad wants the best and fastest Android-based smartphone on the market today, this is it! The Samsung Galaxy S III is the most anticipated phone of the year and features a beautiful 4.8 inch Super AMOLED screen. Some of the features like Pop up Play which lets you watch HD videos on your phone at the same time you are texting to a friend are just plain crazy.
4) Panasonic PT-AE7000 – WOW this is a full HD 3D home cinema projector meant for your dads man cave. If you can swing it, this projector will make your dad stand out from the crowd. Panasonic has always had amazing projectors, but this 1080P 3-Chip LCD projector that includes 3D is the one to beat. NOTE – It’s a bit pricey so maybe say it’s for your birthday too.
5) The Motorized Monocycle – Our friends at Hammacher Schlemmer have brought us another doozie! Who wants an e-Bike when you can WheelSurf? It has a small electric motor that can zoom your Dad around the city with ease and style. He can turn by simply leaning one way or the other. Might be a bit tough to park downtown.
There are lots of cool things that you can find for your dad on this magical day, that coupled with an “I love you Dad!†card spells sweet success for Gadget Dads of all ages.
Rob Whent () is the Entrepreneur in Residence at WEtech Alliance, Windsor-Essex’s Regional Innovation Centre and is a pioneer in the digital media space. He has over 20 years’ experience, founding McGill Digital Solutions in 1987 and OTEP Inc. in 2009 (). OTEP uses videogames to identify and improve cognition in school age children under the Think-2-Learn brand (). Follow him on Twitter @swento
A new twist on shortened URLs as spam carriers
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June 09, 2012
Market Windows 8 to your customers before final release
It helps that Microsoft issued the final release preview of the new operating system on May 31, 2012. The date is scheduled for some time in late July with the final release to market scheduled to happen in time for the holidays. Â
Side note: Yours truly has been running Windows 8 for about a month. So far it is awesome. Dell provided me with a to run Windows 8 on. What a great combination. Dell continues to wow me with great systems.
Give your clients a gift right now. Plan webinars, in-person events, technical demos and client experience events to introduce not only clients but also prospects to all that Windows 8 has to offer.
You are the IT experts, and your clients come to you for advice. Well, don’t wait for them to come to you with questions about Windows 8.
Be proactive. Get them acquainted with the new operating system by demonstrating how to use it in a ways that are relevant to them. You can hold a special event that’s tailored to each client’s industry. If you serve clients in a wide variety of industries, then focus on the most common uses across all industries.
Those who specialize in supporting Microsoft solutions have a unique opportunity to wow their clients and prospects with their expertise. Remember, a lot of companies have only , so introducing them to Windows 8 and helping them get familiar with how it differs from Windows 7 is a good idea.
Why? Because a lot of companies are planning to buy tablets for their employees in the near future, and by October or November of this year, Windows 8 will be the standard operating system offered on new computers, particularly tablets. Windows 8 was designed with tablets in mind.
Don’t wait until it’s time to upgrade your clients’ systems to tell them about Windows 8, Windows Server (whatever the next version is) and Internet Explorer 10.
Start getting them familiar with all these new technologies now, so when it comes time for them to actually start using them, your clients won’t feel like they’ve just fallen down the rabbit hole withAlice.
Avoid these mistakes when upgrading your cell phone contract
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June 08, 2012
June 07, 2012
Why RIM could and should bounce back: Mobile needs to innovate
Why RIM could and should bounce back: Mobile needs to innovate
By Jesse RodgersÂ
RIM has had a hard time since Apple’s iPhone came out.
Apple did more than bring the world a touch screen and the app store. It took apart the carrier/phone model on which RIM was an absolute genius at building a strong company. Most people focus on feature for feature device comparison but in reality it is what happened behind the scenes that I think hurt RIM the most.
As important as the iPhone has been to the fortunes of Apple and AT&T, its real impact is on the structure of the $11 billion-a-year US mobile phone industry.
For decades, wireless carriers have treated manufacturers like serfs, using access to their networks as leverage to dictate what phones will get made, how much they will cost, and what features will be available on them. Handsets were viewed largely as cheap, disposable lures, massively subsidized to snare subscribers and lock them into using the carriers’ proprietary services. But the iPhone upsets that balance of power. Carriers are learning that the right phone — even a pricey one — can win customers and bring in revenue. Now, in the pursuit of an Apple-like contract, every manufacturer is racing to create a phone that consumers will love, instead of one that the carriers approve of. “The iPhone is already changing the way carriers and manufacturers behave,†says Michael Olson, a securities analyst at Piper Jaffray. -Â
RIM was slow to adapt to this shift (not as tragically slow as Nokia was) but if it can hold on, it could learn from what has happened so far in mobile. Instead of playing catch up it can lead the next phase.
I am bored with the iPhone and not impressed at all with Android — carriers have used its OS to try and claw back control of the device OS version which has resulted in a . I do like Windows 8 because  and have at least tried a new way of using apps. Windows might gain some life on Nokia devices, but the user experience might not be how people want to use the device.
Where is mobile going? Here is my “top things that will drive evolution of mobile†list:
- Mobile needs to integrate better with how humans function. Nokia is right in that mobile devices demand too much of our attention. The Toronto Police are concerned about this and are. The user experience needs to change so it demands less attention.
- Your device is your mobile computing platform  for both personal and professional use. The demand for  demonstrates that people really want other things to work with their phone. BYOD is an IT office coup in terms of keeping costs down but it opens up a big can of worms when it comes to managing the devices. And who the heck wants to carry a wallet with swipe cards around anymore? This also includes home entertainment as it has to work easily with anything that would share your data.
- Cameras are an essential tool on mobile — if you don’t have a great sensor and lens that doesn’t scratch then people simply won’t buy the phone. Cameras are essential because  and people with kids like to take pictures all the time.
Enter RIM’s opportunity. It is a company that got “cloud†on mobile before people called it “cloud.†It also built the best email/msg/input device, period, which is also light on data. As much as we like the real web on mobile, when there are a lot people in one place or you are in a concrete building or underground or some place in between towers or without decent 3G, it would be nice to at least be able to message people. RIM can do that better than anyone. An iPhone 4S on Edge is painful and I would imagine so is Android and maybe Windows.
If RIM can build a high-quality device that can reduce the attention it takes to use it, have a clear divide between business and personal, and have some kick-ass integration while not losing the things it does well, I would be excited to use the device.
I realize that isn’t all that easy to figure out because features alone won’t cut it. The device has to be experimental in how it works and will take some big crazy vision to discover it on both the device level and the how-to-deliver-it-to-customers level.
I am hopeful that RIM can deliver me from my Apple dependency – Android certainly can’t.
Griffin gb01763 elan form iphone 4 black leather iPhone 4 VS iPhone 3G S
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June 06, 2012
What’s really not working, Facebook or advertising in general?
What’s really not working, Facebook or advertising in general?
It was Graham Phillips, the former CEO of Ogilvy and Mather who said “Too much of today’s advertising is irrelevant and a waste of money.â€
He wasn’t talking about Facebook’s lack of success with advertising, but the sentiment is quite fitting. After the world’s most popular social network went public with a near-$100 billion valuation, then saw its stocks promptly slide downwards, questions are coming to bear about its ability to turn a profit.
New developments are bringing attention to Facebook’s advertising platform and its effectiveness, or rather, ineffectiveness. A new shows 80 per cent of Facebook users have never bought a product or service as a result of Facebook ads. An independent analysis in January estimates Facebook’s average click-through rate at a paltry 0.051 per cent for the year 2010.
Big brands are openly doubting the social network’s ability to influence purchasing decisions, with announcing that it will no longer be advertising on Facebook. So maybe advertising isn’t being proven to work on Facebook. But when has advertising ever been proven to work?
The first obvious point of comparison is Google’s AdWords. Rather than targeting Web surfers by their likes and demographic information, Google simply delivers text-based ads based on what you typed into its search box. According to WordStream, which sells services for use with Google AdWords, Google’s 2010 click-through rate averaged 0.4 per cent in the first half of 2011. While eight times
Brian Jackson, Editor, ITBusiness.ca
higher than Facebook’s rate, it’s still hardly a resounding endorsement of the effectiveness of advertising.
Before online tracking, marketers had little to go on to know just how effective their advertisements were. The purchase of a bill board above a highway or a full-page ad in a daily newspaper has no feedback mechanism. You can track sales and correlate it with when and where an ad was run, but that’s not the same as showing the ad caused those sales.
Even an advertisement on TV or radio is pretty much a shot in the dark. Benchmarks like Nielson ratings provide an estimate at the audience reach based on a statistical sample, but the effectiveness of the ad after that is all guess work.
It used to be that advertising was just accepted as something that a business had to do to compete. If the consumer wasn’t aware of your company’s existence, and what your product or service did, then what hope did you have to make sales?
We live in a world over-saturated with advertising. It’s plastered to the buses we ride, it interrupts the TV programs we watch, its delivered to our smartphones, it clutters the borders of the Web sites we visit, it’s on the clothing we wear and adorns the packaging of products we buy, it blares at us from TV screens in mall food courts, and it beckons to us . When people are overwhelmed by information, they just tune it out and that’s exactly what we do with advertising. We’ve all become experts at ignoring ad content and looking only at what we want to see.
Now that advertisers can plainly see the effectiveness of their calls to action on Facebook and elsewhere, they are now learning what Graham Phillips already knew.
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The weired and wonderful world of gathering customer insights
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Best practices to maintain workstation comfort
b) Neck stretch
Keeping your back straight, move your head to look down slowly and back to neutral position. Repeat several times. Look slowly from side-to-side. Never rotate from one side to the other while looking up. Slowly bring the right ear to the right shoulder, hold, and then back to centre. Repeat on the left side.
Zagg InvisibleShield Screen Film iPhone 3GS Modified Macs make great iPad stands. Who knew.
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June 05, 2012
Canadian university ‘innovation gap’ more illusory than real: Kurman
Canadian university ‘innovation gap’ more illusory than real: Kurman
By Francis Moran
I was invited a couple of weeks ago to facilitate a group discussion on the marketing of university technology transfer offices at a forum organised by the Technology Transfer Partnerships. The forum was held in conjunction with the Ontario Centres of Excellence Discovery 2012 conference in Toronto. It was my first time at the OCE Discovery conference, and I was hugely impressed by the calibre of the presentations, the far-larger-than-expected scope of the exhibition and the superb opportunity for networking. It was a very busy two days.
The keynote speaker at the TTF forum, though, gave one of the more interesting and provocative sessions.  is a consultant, author and speaker who spends most of her time thinking about how universities can better commercialise their technology. I loved her presentation because it challenged and ultimately rejected the notion that Canadian universities are doing a much poorer job at commercialisation than their counterparts in the United States. As I have written before, I am utterly tired of the hackneyed tropes that Canadians don’t innovate as well as Americans, don’t take risks like Americans, and aren’t as successful as Americans. Kurman had me hooked at the very outset of her presentation when she suggested that an American lens is the wrong perspective through which to view what’s happening on Canadian campuses. Canada is doing its own thing, Kurman said, and doing it rather well.
“There are so many different approaches in Canada that I think are really interesting and valuable examples of different (technology transfer) models in action,†Kurman told me in a follow-on interview this week. American universities “would love to experiment with†some of these approaches but can’t because of a more hidebound model that puts undue emphasis on the number of patents a university technology transfer office produces and the revenue they derive from the licensing of their patent portfolios. “Canadian universities are free of this U.S. tendency,†Kurman said.
“Patents have never been equated to (innovation),†Kurman said. “They’re a rough gauge. You can get a patent if you have the money (to pursue the application process). The real value of university research is making it easy to get to, letting it flow between the university and people out in the world who want to build stuff off of it.â€
So, how well are Canadian universities doing? Well, since the traditional lens wasn’t working well for her, Kurman had to develop a few new ones, something she calls measuring applied university innovation. She looked at numbers of publications, numbers of disclosed inventions and the share of university research funding that came from industry, all good indicators of how well the lab work inside a university was getting out. Her numbers correct for the relative size of universities and by these yardsticks, Canadian universities perform very well indeed.
Take, for example, the number of disclosed inventions per dollar of research funding. Six Canadian universities rank among the top 20 in North America with three — the University of Guelph in first place, Queen’s University in third and the University of Manitoba in fourth — accounting for three of the top four.
Canadian universities dominate when ranked according to the number of publications per total dollars of funding, accounting for 13 of the top 20 and all but one of the top 10.
And finally, in one of the metrics I found most interesting, Canadian universities are more than holding their own when it comes to attracting industry research funding, with 12 Canadian schools among the top 20 in terms of industry funding as a share of total research dollars.
“These numbers suggest that Canadian universities … are not necessarily disconnected from industry in the way that seems to be a popular assumption,†Kurman said. “Industry funding is a strong vote and a strong predictor of a university that companies like to work with … like to tap into and partner with. It flies in the face of this simplistic notion that we have an innovation gap (in Canada).â€
This success at attracting industry funding could, admittedly, be a double-edged sword. It could represent a shift from basic research, something Kurman and I both agree is a critical role of universities, to more applied or even contract research that sees industry turn to academia for little more than low-cost access to sophisticated lab and measurement tools. “I see that as a core question,†Kurman said, but she has not yet dug deeply enough into the data to answer it. “The deeper question is, ‘Is it the attraction of the basic research or is it the attraction that maybe Canadian universities are easier to work with?’â€
Bottom line: Those who read here regularly will know that I am not terribly interested in comparing Canada to the U.S. on almost any yardstick. When it comes to innovation, I am far more interested in asking what do we really need to do as a nation in terms of research, innovation and commercialisation? What will work best for us? And how do we measure how well we are doing against that set of objectives?
What do you think is critical for Canadian innovators? What yardsticks would you use?
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Is Vic Toews against freedom?
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June 03, 2012
Why Toronto region shouldn’t be celebrating Pebble’s Kickstarter success
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June 02, 2012
The ‘born global’ disruption
By Tony BailettiÂ
Most new technology firms first focus on the domestic market and then internationalize slowly, one stage at a time. They become global by emergence, not by design. Recent evidence suggests that the conventional phased approach to internationalization that is widely used to grow new firms is not working as well as it used to. Stage models of internationalization take too long, cost too much, and increase risks for both investors and customers.
Technology entrepreneurs, as well as the academics, educators, service providers, and policy makers who serve them, need to search for better approaches to launch and grow technology firms.
Today, a few scholars and practitioners are making compelling arguments for the implementation of a concept referred to as “born global.†The key argument for “born globals†is that new technology firms must compete globally from inception. They must be global by design, not by emergence. Proponents of stage models of internationalization see born globals as deviations and variations, and inconsistent to their models.
The purpose of this article is to clarify the salient and distinguishing aspects of the born-global concept as it applies to new technology firms and call for key organizations in Canada’s capital region to lead the launch and growth of a large number of born globals in various diverse sectors.
While the born-global concept applies equally well to new firms as well as to ventures undertaken by established firms operating in non-technology sectors, for the purpose of this article I will focus on the born-global concept as it applies to new technology firms. Subsequent articles will focus on the implementation of the born-global concept to new technology ventures in established firms and to firms that operate in non-technology sectors.
Technology entrepreneurship
Technology entrepreneurship is very important for growth, differentiation and competitive advantage at the company, regional and national levels.
Technology entrepreneurship is not about the general management practices used to operate small businesses owned by engineers or scientists. Moreover, technology entrepreneurship is not just about small-company formation.
AÂ Â champions the investment in the assembly and deployment of specialized individuals and assets that are intricately related to advances in scientific and technological knowledge for the purpose of creating and capturing value for a firm.
The relationship between the entrepreneur and the firm must be clearly understood. Answers to two questions must be clear, theoretically sound, and possible to operationalize: Why do firms need technology entrepreneurs? Why do technology entrepreneurs need firms?
Technology entrepreneurs create and capture value for the firm through multi-year projects that combine specialists and assets to produce and adopt technology. Investments in projects are the mechanisms mobilized to create and capture value for the firm. The individuals involved in these projects influence, and are influenced by, advances in relevant scientific and technology knowledge. The project exploits or explores scientific and technology knowledge. External and internal individuals and organizations co-produce the project’s outputs.
Born global
Born globals are firms designed to compete globally from their inception. These ventures harness advances in science, technology, engineering and mathematics to exploit global market niches from inception.
A born-global technology firm can be readily distinguished from new domestic-based small firms and conventionally internationalizing firms by examining the projects in which it invests. A born-global firm from inception invests in projects to assemble and deploy specialized individuals and assets to derive significant competitive advantage from the use of resources and sales of outputs in multiple countries.
Investment in projects, not the aspirational intentions of top management teams, is what differentiates born globals from other firms. While many founders talk about their aspirations for their new technology firms to become global, only a few invest in projects designed to use resources and sell products and services in multiple countries within the first three years of their firms’ life cycles.
Two outcomes differentiate the performance of born globals from the performance of new domestic-based small firms and conventionally internationalizing firms: Time-to-cash from exports, and percentage of sales in multiple countries. At age three, exports to multiple countries of born global firms account for more than 25 percent of revenue. Born globals grow much faster than other firms.
The born-global concept offers to be as disruptive as open-source licenses were. The disruption that open-source projects caused had more to do with the business models they enabled than the code they produced. Similarly, the born-global concept is disruptive because it enables business models that are much stronger than those enabled by the conventional phased approach to internationalization. Born global is more about profiting from innovative business models than just selling to foreign customers.
Types
Based on the number of activities they coordinate and the number of geographies they serve, born-global firms can be categorized into four groups:
- Export-import startups: Coordinate a few activities, and operate in a few international markets.
- Multinational traders: Trade few products in a large number of international markets.
- Geographically focused startups: Coordinate many initiatives, sell in small number of international markets.
- Global startups: Coordinate may initiatives, sell in a large number of international markets.
In the context of new technology firms, the firms that benefit the most from the born-global concept are those that can be categorized as geographically focused and global startups.
Characteristics
Environmental, organizational and managerial factors affect a new technology firm’s ability to be a born-global firm. While academics have referred to born globals as deviations from their conventional staged-internationalization models for the last 20 years, we know relatively little about the antecedents and consequences of born globals and how to best manage them.
This is a short summary of the little we know about born-global technology firms:
- Born-global firms seem to perform better than domestic firms and firms that follow the conventional approach to internationalization.
- Born-global firms link their project investments to global business from inception.
- Born-global firms target homogeneous customers that are concentrated globally.
- Born-global firms offer very innovative products and services.
- Entrepreneurs championing born-global firms have international experience and their mental models about business are not negatively affected by long distance.
- Born-global firms are linked to state of the art advances in science and technology.
- Concentration of born-global firms is strongest in regions with small domestic markets.
- Born-global firms are very effective at levering networks and business ecosystems.
- Born-global firms exhibit a greater entrepreneurial orientation than other firms.
- Born global firms engage in collaborative experimentation and production of new products, assets, and their attributes much more than other firms.
Tony Bailetti is director of the Institute of Technology Entrepreneurship and Commercialization at Carleton University. His research, teaching and community contributions support innovation for the purpose of generating revenue for young technology companies and developing the regional economy. He has published in Research Policy, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Journal of Product Innovation Management, and R&D Management.
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Sony ericsson isp 90 stylus pack for xperia retail packaging iPad introduces computing to toddlers and great-grandmothers
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Montreal startup scene continues to rock
Montreal startup scene continues to rock
By Francis Moran
My day in Montreal? Twelve straight hours of startups, speakers, schmoozing and social media as I took in both  second demo day and  AccelerateMTL. With what I am sure was more than a wee bit of coordination, one event followed the other in the beautiful and historic Monument-National theatre building at the very heart of this bustling city. The juxtaposition of a 120-year-old building with the youth and energy of the startup entrepreneurs was not the least bit jarring, although the canned pre-eventPA announcement asking us all to turn off our pagers and cell phones was clearly meant far more for a theatre-going audience than for this crowd bent on tweeting every great line to the outside world.
And there were lots of great lines.
The day kicked off with the spring cohort from FounderFuel, an accelerator program that takes in about 10 young companies twice a year (There were 11 in this cohort.) and puts them through an intense three-month program of mentorship, tough love, presentations and long days of work all intended to make them investor-ready on demo day. That day dawned yesterday.
I have been a mentor at FounderFuel for both cohorts so far and was a bit more actively involved in this one. I saw all the companies in their far more raw state on mentor day in March, and spent a full day with them a couple of weeks later, talking about marketing strategy and counselling them on messaging and positioning. I continued to work with a couple of the companies as they honed their pitches heading into yesterday’s big event.
With only one clear exception, every company had changed its core messaging by demo day. Some had changed their entire offering. In every instance, it was a change very much for the better, with most now much better at articulating how their application creates real value for identified customers or users rather than simply explaining what their app did and how cool that was.
Many of the FounderFuel companies will exit the program with a fresh injection of cash courtesy of a $150,000 convertible note from Business Development of Canada, and all were, of course, pitching the audience of investors for seed rounds of between $400,000 and $650,000.
The 11 companies are:
- : Converts WordPress blogs into iPhone and iPad apps in less than a minute.
- : A booking engine that helps consumers find health professionals while delivering up new patient referrals to doctors, dentists and others.
- : A marketing platform for app developers.
- : Lets shoppers browse the mall before leaving home.
- : Creates personal web pages that adapt their content depending on who’s viewing it.
- : A community marketplace where drivers and passengers can find each other to share the cost of drives.
- : A mobile wallet that gives merchants the data they need to engage better with their customers.
- : An automated platform to let even small adwords users optimize their programs.
- : Aggregates social media feeds about events, creating powerful marketing and analytics offerings for event organizers.
- : Crowd-sourced note-sharing for university students.
- : Lets small and local retailers publish online catalogues to social media sites.
The afternoon session was the second Accelerate program brought to Montreal by The C100, a group that connects Canadian startups and entrepreneurs with Canadian ex-patriots working in technology companies in Silicon Valley. With a couple of keynotes, a panel of CEOs and a Q&A session, the program was thick with personal stories and great counsel.
My highlights:
-  founder Martin Ouellet shared hilarious anecdotes about starting his company in his living room “because I was not even rich enough to own a garage,†funding its earliest days with money that should have been paid in income taxes to Revenue Canada, and having to haul six friends in at short notice to fill office chairs because his first big potential customer, which had been told the company had eight employees, was coming by for a due-diligence visit.
- Potentially topping Ouellet was  co-founder . Since no brands would let the startup company list their wares, the founders used to (with permission) plunder friends’ clothing stores overnight, photograph the merchandise, and get it back on the store racks by opening time. Then, every time they sold a piece online, they’d have to go to the store, buy that item off the rack and ship it. All went well until a piece they had just sold was being tried on by a customer when Shtern’s co-founder went to the store to buy it. Putting his company’s interests against his own wellbeing, the guy told the customer that the clothing item made her look a bit fat. She didn’t buy the dress so Beyond the Rack could fulfill for what was only their fourth or fifth customer.
- I missed a fair bit of Zuora founder ‘s keynote but did catch his emphasis on working only in companies with the potential to massively disrupt markets. Doing so is a bit of a high-wire act, he acknowledged, telling us, “Innovation = experimentation. Experimentation implies failure.â€
- Copious founder and former Facebook marketer  challenged us to question conventional wisdom. “You don’t need to be first. You don’t need experience. You don’t need to be in the Valley.†He also counselled entrepreneurs that no matter what they do, they’re going to be wrong. And so will their investors, advisors, mentors, bankers and board members. Be ready to be wrong, he said, and have a clear sense of your own vision. “If you don’t have a sense of what you want and where you’re going, everyone’s advice sounds good.†Finally, he said, every business has one dominant metric that means success. Find your “magic number,†he said, and then focus everything on achieving it.
I caught up for a few minutes towards the end of the day with Phil Telio, founder of the  which will have its second outing in a cruise ship terminal on Montreal’s historic Old Port from July 11 to 13. Phil reminded me there is a fantastic lineup of speakers, whose presentations will be divided between “inspirational†and “executional.†The festival has also bought out the entire house for one evening at Montreal’s world famous Just for Laughs festival so there will be mirth along with the business. (I’m going to hold you to that plus-one for my spouse, Phil! See you in July.)
All in all, a great day in Montreal, where there’s a lot more going on than student protests.
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Small biz acquisition as a tech talent raid strategy
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