By Alexandra Reid
I see, time and time again, in professional articles and blog posts and hear in every day conversations the misuse of the terms marketing and public relations, and it annoys me.
But I admit I am not entirely innocent either. It’s really easy to mix up these two terms because they are complementary fields that share so many similarities. They are both public facing, require many of the same skill sets and share some methods of media and public engagement. However, it is important to understand that their goals and processes for reaching these goals are distinct.
Boiled down to its bare bones, the answer is quite simple. The goal of marketing is to determine the customers that a company should sell to and to devise a strategy on how to reach them. PR involves creating a purpose-driven, active dialogue with a target audience, whether it’s potential customers, employees or stakeholders, with the goal of developing visibility and a positive corporate image and reputation by relating it to its interest groups.
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As part of our ongoing series examining the ecosystem necessary to bring technology to market, David French, a senior Canadian patent attorney with 35 years of experience, now provides the third of his commentaries on the importance to a company of protecting its Intellectual Property.
By David French
In a previous blog posting, we talked about the importance of having an IP coordinator on the team and how this role fits into an organization. We identified the role of the IP coordinator as including:
- knowing or able to understand all of the issues and requirements in order to ensure that there is good IP hygiene within the firm
- acting as the guardian of the intellectual property within the firm
- understanding what should be done and seeing that things are done on a timely basis
- communicating with outside legal professionals
- being present when your patent lawyer, trademark lawyer, litigation attorney etc. speaks at a meeting, and explaining what was said once the professional has left
- maintaining cost control over your IP expenses
This person was summarized as being your contact with the IP universe, your scout, your guide, your Man Friday in matters IP.
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This is the 15th 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
How much should government intervene in the process of innovation and commercialization? In a truly entrepreneurial culture that has healthy risk tolerance, one could argue that the government doesn’t need to play any substantial role at all. Entrepreneurs worthy of that title just get out there and do what they must to succeed.
In his book, The Way Ahead: Meeting Canada’s Productivity Challenge, Tom Brzustowski, RBC professor for the commercialization of innovation at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management, wrote, “I believe that it is only the private sector that creates wealth.” The public sector, on the other hand, is a consumer of wealth in order to bankroll the two fundamental roles it plays.
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By Francis Moran
The morning after the election that wouldn’t change anything, the political landscape in Canada has been radically, perhaps permanently, altered.
The Conservative Party of Canada, led by prime minister Stephen Harper on his fifth stab at power, finally grabbed the brass ring, winning 167 seats and a decisive majority. That he did it with just a handful of seats in Québec defied all conventional wisdom that said Canada can’t be won without Quebec. Certainly, no Tory predecessor has managed to take the country with so few seats in Québec.
The Liberal Party of Canada, long nicknamed the Natural Governing Party for its historic hold on the broad political centre of the country, went down to its greatest defeat in history. First-time campaigner Michael Ignatieff, better known in Washington and London as a globe-trotting journalist and intellectual before returning to Canada several years ago, did what no Liberal Party leader, not even John Turner with his epic 1984 loss that yielded a scant 44 seats, has managed to do before — reduce the once-dominant Liberals to third-party status for the first time since Canada was born.
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This is the 14th 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
“If Canadians were as good at innovating as we are at explaining why we’re bad at it, Canada wouldn’t rank 14th among industrialized nations in the Conference Board of Canada’s report card on innovation. And because innovation is the key to improving productivity, we wouldn’t be earning $7,000 less a person each year than Americans.”
That blunt comment came courtesy of none other than Conference Board president and CEO Anne Golden in an editorial published last August in the Globe and Mail titled “Canada’s innovation malaise: The cure’s in our culture.”
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