As part of our ongoing series examining the ecosystem necessary to bring technology to market, we asked Andrew Fisher, executive vice-president at Wesley Clover, to share his insights on public policy issues and the culture of entrepreneurship. This is the second of his commentaries and we welcome your feedback.
By Andrew Fisher
As someone who engages with entrepreneurs, investors, bureaucrats and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic, it is clear to me that we don’t stimulate and nurture the entrepreneurial spirit in Canada and the U.K.
In my previous post, I questioned whether Canada’s rich buffet of government subsidies for technology companies, subsidies that focus far more on research than they do on commercialization, in fact weaken the entire eco-system. We need to support and encourage commercialization, an essential part of innovation, with tweaks to our current models that will also weed out those companies that use government subsidies as a crutch rather than doing what it takes to become a viable going concern.
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By Alexandra Reid
Martin Gomez spoke yesterday at Social Media Breakfast Ottawa on the principles behind the design and development process and how they could be applied to web design to boost online presence.
Gomez is an accomplished professor at Algonquin College, where he teaches Design for Interactive Media and Business Graphic Design. One glimpse at his reviews on the oft-ominous RateMyProfessor.com lets you know that Gomez is “beyond cool” and one of the “best professors in the IMD program,” weighing in at 5/5 for overall quality, helpfulness and clarity. One student went so far as to speculate “half the guys [in his class] had developed a man-crush by the end of the semester.”
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This is the 16th article in a continuing series that examines the state of the ecosystem necessary to successfully bring technology to market. Based on dozens of interviews with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel investors, business leaders, academics, tech-transfer experts and policy makers, this series looks at what is working and what can be improved in the go-to-market ecosystem in the United States, Canada and Britain. We invite your feedback.
By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
As we stated in last week’s post, government’s role in the commercialization eco-system should be to create that “supportive and normative framework.” The common sentiment among the various VCs, angel investors, accelerator and incubator executives, entrepreneurs and others we have interviewed is that government should stay out of the way as much as possible.
But before the big G steps back, what should it do to enable startups that are trying to get to market, or more established enterprises looking to break into foreign markets or migrate their product lines?
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As part of our ongoing series examining the ecosystem necessary to bring technology to market, we asked Andrew Fisher, executive vice-president at Wesley Clover, to share his insights on public policy issues and the culture of entrepreneurship. This is the first of his commentaries and we welcome your feedback.
By Andrew Fisher
Businesses in Canada have a lot going for them. From the SR&ED program, to other services provided by Export Development Canada, the Business Development Bank of Canada and DFAIT, Canadian technology companies are certainly not starved for choice compared to most other jurisdictions.
Still, there are tweaks that could be made to improve the system and enable those areas that offer the greatest potential gain for the country as a whole. Nor is a rich buffet of government support and subsidy paid out of the public tax base necessarily a good thing.
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Thank you for being with us for the third month of our new blog. Although a bit late, here is a recap of our posts from April in case you missed them, beginning with, in chronological order, the latest installments in our ongoing series on getting technology to market, The Commercialization Ecosystem, which covered a great swath of topics including lean startups, cultures of risk, the right stuff entrepreneurs need to succeed and other pearls of wisdom.
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By Andrew Fisher
