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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By Alexandra Reid
As in all marketing efforts, establishing benchmarks and measuring metrics in social media are fundamental to determining success.
Benchmarks are the standards against which all measurements and metrics are measured. In order to determine if a social media strategy is effective, businesses must establish their desired outcomes and what it will take to achieve those outcomes. To track progress, key performance indicators, including competitive performance metrics to reach these targets, must be determined. But how do you determine benchmarks and which data points require measuring? And, more importantly for startups, how can you measure and track these metrics consistently to ensure targets are being reached on a limited budget?
The difference between metrics, measurements and benchmarks
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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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Marketing vs. public relations: Clarification for the confused
May 13, 2011 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 […]
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What an IP coordinator should know
May 12, 2011 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. Returning to more micro details, what sort of knowledge should an IP coordinator possess? We will start this review from the viewpoint of understanding patents […]
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What does an acquisition mean for the reputation of the buyer? The seller?
May 11, 2011 by Linda Forrest
When Microsoft announced that it had acquired Skype for the tidy sum of $8.5B US, the tech world positively buzzed with questions.
What would this acquisition mean from a functionality perspective? Was Microsoft, as ZDNet suggested, just trying to head off prospective buyers Google and Facebook? […]
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The risks of being a nation of R&D junkies
May 10, 2011 by Denzil Doyle
Anyone who is involved in high technology in Canada would have to agree that the country has a very strong R&D lobby. Politicians and policy makers are bombarded with messages from both industry and academia on a daily basis saying that we need more of it, even though our incentives for doing it are already among the best in the world. And everyone in the debate is frustrated […]
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Government: Too hot, too cold, just right
May 09, 2011 by Francis Moran
How much should government intervene in the process of innovation and commercialization? In a truly entrepreneurial culture […]
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What’s in a startup’s name? A lesson in tough changes from Tara Hunt of Buyosphere
May 06, 2011 by Alexandra Reid
Startup entrepreneurs have a lot on their plate already without having to decide on a fabulous name. And who cares about the name anyways? You can always change it later […]
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For business, the social media honeymoon is over
May 05, 2011 by Linda Forrest
Thanks to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge for inspiring the title of this post; much to the chagrin of my colleagues, I was quite excited about the wedding, hence the title. In all seriousness, when this last week’s many news events – the royal wedding, Osama bin Laden’s demise, and the Canadian election […]
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How to define, embrace and lever your startup DNA
May 04, 2011 by Jason Flick
As I mentioned in my last post, startups don’t have a culture, that’s a myth created by 95 percent of people who’ve never worked for a startup, perhaps even intentionally so. Who would want to search out and work for a company that can’t pay much if anything in salaries, expects you to work 12-hour days and in the end, has a 50-percent chance of failure? […]
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