This is the sixth 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
“Government doesn’t start companies,” Iain Klugman, CEO of Communitech, told us a little while back. “Individuals do.”
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This is the first contribution to this blog by Associate Andrew Penny, an Ottawa-based business development and market strategist for B2B companies, and president of Kingsford Consulting Ltd. Andrew’s post is part of our continuing series about the ecosystem necessary to bring technology to market. We welcome your comments.
By Andrew Penny
A lot has been said about creating an Innovative Culture. Research labs, government departments and agencies are all trying to figure out just how to make us innovate. The thought being that innovation equals wealth creation. However, to create this wealth someone has to do something with the innovation, someone who is prepared to take the risk that things may not work out quite as planned.
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By Alexandra Reid
To break the ice at a recent IABC Ottawa event that dealt with measuring online marketing, Alex Langshur, President of PublicInsite, displayed the Google homepage on an overhead and asked the audience what it was. People shouted out the obvious answers like, “That’s Google of course,” and, “It’s a search engine,” but no one was able to provide Langshur the answer he was looking for. “Google is your home page,” he said. “These days, it is all about search.”
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As part of our ongoing series examining the ecosystem necessary to bring technology to market, we asked David French, a senior Canadian patent attorney with 35 years of experience, to discuss the importance to a company of protecting its IP and how creating the position of “IP Coordinator” can facilitate the process. This is the first of David’s commentaries and we welcome your comments.
By David French
The theme of this website is getting technology, to market. This is an honorable objective. Indeed, I would like to present why intellectual property is a key part of the business case for getting technology to market. And doing it right.
Intellectual property such as patents, copyright, trademarks, designs and corporate secrets, all have an important place in the modern business enterprise. Entrepreneurs who are founding a business based on a new product invariably see the patent right as key. Angels and venture capitalists look for the comfort of patent protection when considering whether to make an investment. But even in the absence of a new patentable concept, every business has to address choosing a trademark under which it will be known. So you have to get at least a little bit wet in the IP birdbath.
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By Francis Moran
The Capital Angel Network, a new angel organization whose launch we covered about a year ago, is stepping up its activity levels in support of what organizer Laurie Davis said this morning is an effort “to make Ottawa a more vibrant (investment) community and a better place to start a company.” The first step in that process was this morning’s first of what the network intends to be regular monthly meetings of people who are, or who are interested in becoming, angel investors.
Intended primarily as a networking event to allow angels and prospective angels to get to know each other better, the breakfast meetings, scheduled for the first Thursday of every month, will also include a presentation by a company or two. This morning’s presenting companies were What Wins, an online tool that helps horse racing bettors pick their bets both more easily and, the company claims, with better odds of winning, and JetstreamHD, a consumer appliance from Ottawa’s Nuvyyo that can stream to an iPad any media — movies, photos, music files, home videos and more — from wherever you keep it in your home network. (JetstreamHD executives have just returned from launching their product at Demo Spring 2011 conference that wrapped up yesterday. They were quite chuffed by the response they got, including some boffo media coverage.)
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Silicon Valley: A big bright heat lamp for startup incubation
March 02, 2011 by Francis Moran
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, talks about the “social contract between science and society in the U.S.” that arose in the late 1940s and gave rise to that unique eco-system we know today as Silicon Valley […]
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February Roundup: It’s all about getting technology to market
March 01, 2011 by admin
Thank you for being with us for the first month of our new blog. In case you missed any posts, here is a recap, beginning with, in chronological order, our special report on getting technology to market, The Commercialization Ecosystem, which continues this month […]
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Marketing lessons from the Oscars
March 01, 2011 by Linda Forrest
I’ll admit it – I look forward to the Oscars all year. I’m an ardent movie fan, and so I look forward to seeing which movies are the most celebrated at the annual awards ceremony. This year was no different but I did feel highly skeptical going into it about the hosts that had been selected in an attempt to lure in a younger demographic to watch the show […]
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The media tablet ecosystem race
February 28, 2011 by Phil Newman
When the iPad was finally revealed in 2010 it took time for the market to know how to categorize the device; everyone settled on simply creating a new category. One year on, the lead that Apple has is a replay of its iPod/iPhone momentum, but Google’s Android caught up quickly – 2011 will be a truly fascinating year of winners and losers. Not interested? You should be. Media tablets have re-written the rules […]
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Making the SaaS model work for you as a vendor
February 25, 2011 by Leo Valiquette
Offering customers this option versus the traditional model of selling boxes of CDs in shrink wrap is a “price of admission capability for software companies these days,” Rob Bell, director of service operation and corporate IT for Kinaxis, said at OCRI’s #smarTALKS event last night […]
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How startups can use social media to court angel investors
February 25, 2011 by Alexandra Reid
How are entrepreneurs currently using social media to get their startups noticed by angels?
In general, entrepreneurs are using social media such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook for outreach both to angels and to the wider community […]
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B2B marketers need to budget more than just dollars and cents
February 24, 2011 by Linda Forrest
Francis kicked off the launch of this blog by listing some of the more common objections made by technology companies about why they’re not investing in marketing. One of these straw man arguments, an all too common refrain, is a lack of budget. From that first post […]
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How do you find, define and, most importantly, exploit ‘exploitable’ technology?
February 23, 2011 by Francis Moran
In his book, Making Technology Happen, Denzil Doyle makes a valid point that “technology” is not only found in research laboratories or other establishments that form part of what is commonly known as the “knowledge industry” […]
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This is the sixth 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.
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