By Alexandra Reid
Scott Annan is widely known in Ottawa for being a startup champion. He’s an entrepreneur who has strong opinions about the local startup ecosystem and what needs to change to increase our competitiveness on the global stage. According to Annan, Ottawa punches above its weight when it comes to startup talent, yet we are lagging behind other major cities like Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver because we lack the cohesion and organization necessary to drive a vibrant startup community. It is with this mentality that Annan relaunched Mercury Grove, a startup accelerator, to advocate for local startups and provide them with the mentorship and financial support they need to be successful and drive a startup community that is proud to call Ottawa its hub.
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By Bob Bailly
Prior to leaving on a holiday to Europe at the beginning of May, I was preparing an article on how tribal behaviour has been shaped by our expanded use of technology. Scotland, southern Spain and London didn’t change my topic, but the way I look at it was certainly altered.
A number of years ago I was researching this subject and came across a threaded blog entitled Tribe.
What had got me going then was this part of the post:
…Basically what tribal life is about is kinship. A tribal society is a society that functions by kinship — which is not limited to blood kinship, because all beings in the universe are kin, just as all societies conceive of the universe based on their own social structure (example: medieval Europeans, who lived under kings, saw the universe as ruled by a Divine King; modern society, which functions like a machine in which people are more or less interchangeable parts, sees the universe as a machine, etc.) indigenous tribal people, who live in an extended family … see the universe as an extended family as well, in which everyone is obligated to take care of everybody else. The closer the kinship, the greater the obligation.
I was intrigued because so much of my research into human business behaviour at the time had been concerned with evolutionary neuroscience and the concept of how decisions are controlled by our primitive brain’s self-interest. What’s always intrigued me is why and how the me, or the ego, or the mind controls the brain to look beyond itself and to become tuned to the group, the pack or the tribes to which it belongs. My questions: Why should we feel obligation to our tribe? What is it in our belonging that is central to how we operate as individuals? And finally, are new technologies changing our tribal behaviours?
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By Peter Hanschke
I was a panelist at the latest Agile Ottawa meeting where we discussed our experiences with the process and concepts of Eric Ries‘ lean startup methodology. Today, I will share some of the points I made during the discussions.
By the time I got to reading Eric’s book, I was well on my way to using and advising clients and my employers on many of his teachings. Even though he focuses on startups, the principles in general are applicable to larger companies that need to bring new products to market with little investment. Note that larger companies have other challenges to successfully introduce new products quickly with little investment — Clayton Christensen‘s book The Innovator’s Dilemma does a good job of outlining these challenges.
The area I want to focus on is the balance between investment, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), and time to market.
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By Alexandra Reid
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are Joe Pulizzi, Fast Company, ReadWriteWeb, SpinSucks and The Accelerator Gazette.
Five reasons why content marketing is no buzzword
Most people who aren’t involved in the industry on a daily basis may think that the term “content marketing” and the industry came out of nowhere. Joe Pulizzi puts together an interesting list of happenings that may (or may not) change your feeling on the matter.
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By Rob Woyzbun
Marketers and their agencies need to shift from “cool tools” and “campaigns” towards an integrated design-thinking approach to products and services — it’s not about social media anymore, it’s about social business. And marketing basics!
I recently attended ICA Canada’s (Institute of Communication Agencies) annual Future Flash conference. Future Flash is a members-only event featuring some of the most innovative minds and companies in the global advertising, brand and communications industry. ICA members include most of the global ad giants as well as many independent Canadian companies, ranging from media planning companies, digital agencies and PR companies to full-service ad agencies.
The title of this year’s conference was Innovation, Brands and the Human Experience with speakers representing Canada, U.K., South Africa and the U.S.
The underlying theme for the conference was nicely captured by this snippet from the promo materials: “Too much technology, not enough value or relevance for consumers…”
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