By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
In Part 1 we spoke with Bruce Lazenby, who is less than three months into his new job as president and CEO of OCRI. These days, the only constant is change as the organization works to remake a tarnished image under new leadership, with the support of a mayor whose election platform focused heavily on boosting economic development throughout the region.
Lazenby acknowledged how OCRI has fallen short in terms of serving the needs of young entrepreneurs, the need to better work with this group, and how it must engage with the broader community. We spoke about a new culture of collaboration with other stakeholders across the city, such as the universities and privately run business incubators, and the long overdue launch of Ottawa’s first accelerator centre.
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By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
It’s fairly safe to say that I struck a loud chord with my post of a few weeks ago that took Ottawa’s major economic development agency to task for preferring cheerleading from the sidelines to playmaking that would actually move the ball down the field. It wasn’t quite the best-read post of all time; it ran on American Thanksgiving, a day that saw our blog lose most of our south-of-the-border readers who typically account for about one-third of our daily visitors. But it did garner one of the highest PostRank scores of all time, a yardstick that measures levels of engagement — comments, tweets and the like — around posts. With the exception of comments from the new OCRI CEO and from the head of OCRI’s marketing agency of record — neither of whom is exactly what you might call a dispassionate observer — every comment, tweet and other reaction I received applauded my characterisation and concurred with it. Some went even further with my analogy, with, for example, one widely involved local angel investor telling me yesterday that far from simply standing on the sidelines cheering, OCRI has often stepped onto the field to take the ball away and out of play from entrepreneurs and others who are trying to score real goals for the technology sector in this community.
In a long telephone chat the day after my post ran, new OCRI CEO Bruce Lazenby didn’t argue with much of what I had written. Indeed, he told me, in the two weeks between the time he knew he was taking on the job and the time it was publicly announced, he conducted what he called some “mystery shopping,” asking people far and wide in the community what they thought of OCRI. “You must have been just appalled by what you heard,” I said, and he didn’t disagree. Nor did he disagree with my statement that OCRI was “a terribly tarnished brand.”
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Thank you for being with us for the 10th month of our blog. In case you missed them, here is a recap of our posts from November.
Moving forward with our two new series, Technology Marketing 101, and A Startup’s Story, we introduced a new startup, Teamly, and explored how it is managing to drive steady organic growth on a shoestring, and shared Screenreach’s recent adventures in radio and television.
Beyond our series, we offered best practices on how small business can work with government and universities to bring technology to market, explained what makes a good PR person and also what makes a great entrepreneur. We discussed the prior art wall and its impact on patent coverage, the importance of creating a well-researched, well-funded and coherent marketing strategy and sticking to it, as well as the benefits and determents of Google Plus brand pages. Of course, this list of posts merely scratches the surface of all that was covered over the course of the month. You’ll have to read them for yourselves by clicking the links below. And, as always, we welcome your feedback.
November 7: Breaching academia’s ivory towers by Jason Flick
November 10: Driving steady organic growth on a shoestring by Francis Moran & Leo Valiquette
November 14: What an IP coordinator should know: The prior art wall by David French
November 18: Making waves in radio and television by Francis Moran & Leo Valiquette
November 21: Taking the higher ground: from product to leadership positioning by Ronald Weissman
November 23: The layman’s guide for bringing technology to market by Francis Moran & Leo Valiquette
November 28: Beware the million-dollar cheque! by Peter Hanschke
And on a related note…
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By Francis Moran
When the British Columbia Lions and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers meet in the 99th staging of the Grey Cup, Canada’s professional football championship, in Vancouver this Sunday, both teams will have squads of cheerleaders jumping and shouting from the sidelines in a loud and colourful effort to get the B.C. Place crowd roaring for their side. But while the young women in short skirts waving pompoms might be interesting for some to look at, nothing that they do is actually going to move the ball even a single yard down the field. They will score not a single point. Their contribution to the spectacle will not be captured in a single game statistic.
This morning, I was at the second event in as many weeks where the whole game plan seemed to be on pumping up the volume of the cheerleading rather than on the fundamentals of moving the ball down the field.
Speaker after speaker at these two events — last week’s kick off to Ottawa Entrepreneur Week and this morning’s regular monthly execTALKS event, both organised by the Ottawa Centre for Regional Innovation — spoke of the imperative that more “buzz” be created around Ottawa’s moribund technology scene as though sheer enthusiasm alone could overcome the very real challenges that face this critical sector of the local economy.
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By Francis Moran
Two of the many events at last week’s Waterloo Region Entrepreneur Week featured presentations by young entrepreneurs who were generous in the sharing of personal stories and business and life lessons learned. Ryan Blair is a self-confessed former hoodlum and street-gang member who eventually embraced “legal entrepreneurship” and has built and exited a couple of companies. Y Combinator general partner Garry Tan shared his journey from “born employee” to reluctant entrepreneur and the lessons he learned along the way.
Here are a few of the things I heard that I really liked.
“You have to figure out what the customer is afraid of and become a solution.”
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