By Denzil Doyle
Canada’s debate on productivity is one in which the country’s high-tech industry has both a right and a responsibility to participate.
If you read what passes for conclusions in the many reports that have been written on the subject over the years, you would be left with the impression that all we have to do is run a little faster on our individual treadmills and apply more sophisticated manufacturing equipment; in no time, we would be as productive as our largest trading partner, the U.S.
Unfortunately, most of these reports are flawed because they fail to take into account the forces of globalization, particularly those that impact on a branch-plant economy like Canada’s.
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By Francis Moran
Outside of my annual summer vacation, one of the things I most look forward to when the weather turns hot is the International Startup Festival, returning to Montreal from July 10 to 13 for a third great year. I chatted this week with Phil Telio, the festival’s maestro, to get a preview of what the startup entrepreneurs, investors, support community members and general hangers-on (like me) can expect from this year’s edition.
I started by asking Telio why the festival was such a success. “You tell me,” he declared, before itemizing factors like “economic development is super important to any community,” and “there’s a real hunger for startups” to be part of that development. Mainly, though, the festival is “fun and playful. I think people appreciate that it’s not a stuffy investors’ conference where people are all wearing suits and ties.”
“And it’s Montreal in the summer!”
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By Leo Valiquette
Here we are, a few days from the Canada Day long weekend, with Independence Day in the United States not far behind. For many of us, it marks the beginning of a two-month stretch of general slacking as many workplaces downshift in response to mass vacation taking.
Or … maybe not.
I am heading into what promises to be one of the busiest two-month periods I have ever had as several clients ramp up various public relations and marketing efforts. Why? Because these clients understand that, while business may slow over the summer months, it certainly never stops.
It’s a disconnection between perception and reality that we haven’t focused on in a while, but I think always warrants a revisit this time of year.
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By David French
This post is about why it is appropriate to limit disclosures of new technology under confidentiality agreements or understandings. This applies to “confidentiality agreements,” and “nondisclosure agreements – NDAs,” which are essentially the same thing.
Everyone has heard about confidential disclosures and everyone knows something about them. I’ll attempt to consolidate many important issues and clarify others.
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By Hailley Griffis
Every Friday, we round up some of the best articles we’ve come across in the past week and share them with our readers. Front and centre this time around are Marketing Tech Blog, TopRank, CopyBlogger and Business2Community.
Expectations on your marketing investment
Douglas Karr, President and CEO of DK New Media, goes over the importance of understanding where your marketing dollars are going, and how to optimize that. He compares outbound, advertising and inbound marketing, concluding that for a lot of people, inbound marketing is one of the best investments if you have the right resources and strategy.
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Are developers responsible for how their products are used?
June 20, 2013 by Francis Moran
Ottawa finally got its version of the C100’s terrific Accelerate conferences last week and it was a stellar event from beginning to end. […]
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You are what you think
June 19, 2013 by Bob Bailly
Humans have relatively big brains, and certainly it’s our defining characteristic, as much as a trunk is for an elephant, or the size of its neck is for a giraffe […]
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The art of ignoring feedback
June 18, 2013 by Anil Dilawri
I see a lot of presentations every week. Many of these presentations are investor pitches from small technology companies. Most of these investor pitches are bad … really, really bad […]
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A little cleverness goes a long, long way
June 17, 2013 by Leo Valiquette
“True trumps clever any day of the week … It’s far more important to tell a true story even if it’s not perfect in all the details than to make up a clever lie […]
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Great articles roundup: Customer stories, VC or not, getting things done, AdWords, plugging content
June 14, 2013 by Leo Valiquette
Every Friday, we round up some of the best articles we’ve come across in the past week and share them with our readers. Front and centre this time around are MarketingProfs, Ventureburn, Search Engine Journal, Fast Company and Convince and Convert […]
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Customer surveys are great. Unless you ask the wrong questions.
June 13, 2013 by Francis Moran
The chief technology officer of a company for which I occasionally do some work dug into his archives this past week and came up with a customer survey that was administered when this company was developing its first major product about 20 years ago […]
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Why my pony tail ain’t my brand
June 12, 2013 by Francis Moran
One day last week, I tweeted the message you see to the lower right because I was tickled by the email that came in. In my haste, however, I added a snappy hashtag and thereby made the same common mistake I often accuse marketers — even branding experts — of making […]
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With clients, you must sometimes be cruel to be kind
June 11, 2013 by Leo Valiquette
I recently worked on a client’s blog post that discussed how an IT project can easily stray far from its original problem statement by the time it moves through an RFP process and the creation of a statement of work to at last reach the implementation stage […]
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Traditional Marketing is Dead – Long Live Bikini Waxer Marketing | Scalexl : [...] pointed out by Alexandra Reid on the Francis Moran website content marketing is becoming more and more like journalism. So, it is not just about the content, [...]
It’s Summertime…and the Networking is Easy? | THE MERRAINE BRAIN : [...] In fact, summer is perhaps one of the times least used to network, yet at the same time has shown to be the most productive time to network. People tend to be in a brighter mood compared to during the gloomy winters-especially where I am from in England! Networking needs to be fun and not approached as another chore, like mowing the lawn. (http://francis-moran.com/marketing-strategy/social-media-strategy-why-meeting-in-the-real-world-matt...) [...]