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Build more than just a great product

• Posted by Leo Valiquette
• November 12, 2013
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By Leo Valiquette

Legacy.

It’s been top of mind for me the past couple of weeks while wearing one of my other hats – editor of the Ottawa Chamber magazine, The Voice.

The next issue of The Voice will serve as a takeaway for the Best Ottawa Business Awards gala taking place in Nov. 21. The awards, previously known as the Ottawa Business Achievement Awards, recognize local business excellence in a number of categories. I’ve been busy interviewing this year’s Lifetime Achievement recipient (Wes Nicol), the CEO of the Year, Halogen Software’s Paul Loucks, and a host of other business achievers.

From this, I thought I would share some of the gems I’ve picked up that speak to legacy, which, from a business standpoint, I define as creating something that endures and has a distinct identity and reputation in the marketplace.

I have to start with a quote from Wes Nicol. This isn’t something he said to me when we spoke recently, but was part of a convocation speech he gave at Carleton University in 2006. It says a lot about the man himself and what has led to his business success:

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Leo Valiquette

Posted in:

• Commercialization ecosystem
• Product marketing
• Random thoughts
• Startups

Join Startup Canada for an entrepreneurial invasion of Parliament Hill

• Posted by Francis Moran
• November 11, 2013
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By Francis Moran

In a just over a week, the largest-ever contingent of Canadian entrepreneurs will congregate at the seat of Canada’s government, on Ottawa’s Parliament Hill, to engage in a national celebration of Canadian entrepreneurship.

I’ve been proud to be associated with Startup Canada since its genesis more than 18 months ago and I love the idea of Startup Canada Day on the Hill, a milestone event that will manifest the momentum, impact and scale of the grassroots start-up movement in Canada. The day will also advance discussion on the crucial role  played by partnerships between entrepreneurs, independent organizations and government in maximizing entrepreneurial success.

When you look at the numbers, there is no doubt entrepreneurship benefits all Canadians. Small businesses represent a huge part of Canada’s work force, and they created more than three-quarters of all private-sector  jobs from 2002 to 2012, according to Industry Canada statistics.

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Francis Moran

Posted in:

• Random thoughts
• Startups

Great articles roundup: Social media, creativity, startups and productivity

• Posted by Daylin Mantyka
• November 08, 2013
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By Daylin Mantyka 

It’s Friday again, which means we’ve compiled a short list of the top articles we read and loved this week. Compliments of Social Media Explorer, Startup Professionals Musings, The Huffington Post and V3 Integrated Marketing, these entries were shared extensively throughout the startup and marketing communities.

First up, an article that insists that as marketers, we are still doing social media wrong, followed by a post on identifying and nurturing creativity. Third, we’ve selected an article that summarizes the most effective measurement for startup progress and last, a post that shares top social media productivity hacks.

5 reasons marketers are still doing social wrong

Social media has changed the way people interact online. And, where there are people, there are marketers. Tracy Parsons thinks that the pros are still not using social to their full advantage. In this post, she provides five reasons why we are still doing it all wrong. There is a silver lining, however: Where there are failures, there are also solutions.

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Daylin Mantyka

Posted in:

• Content marketing
• Random thoughts
• Social media
• Startups

Best of: There is such a thing as bad publicity

• Posted by Linda Forrest
• November 07, 2013
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This is the next entry in our “Best of” series, in which we venture deep into the vault to replay blog opinion and insight that has withstood the test of time. Today’s post hails from September 2011. We welcome your feedback.

By Linda Forrest

There’s a famous adage in our industry that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. I beg to differ. Your PR resources are doing you a disservice if they fall into any of the following five categories.

1. They’re poor writers

We’ve actually had prospects tell us that their PR agency can’t write. Superior writing skills are essential to good publicity, especially in the technology realm. Technology is complicated and if you don’t clearly articulate what it is your technology actually does, your market won’t know its value and you’re subsequently hampering your market opportunity. Those media targets on your list who are interested in and write about hardware, for instance, may not give a fig about the software components of your offering. Speaking from experience, I’ve visited websites, read press releases and other marketing materials that fail to communicate the value proposition of whatever’s being written about. The death knell for your communications effort is sending out materials that leave the reader scratching their head, no clearer about what it is your company actually does, who for, at what price, why, and where they can learn more about it. The five Ws (and two Hs: how and how much) are essential to communicating effectively with your marketplace. Your PR resources must be able to articulate the important details of your offering, no matter how technical. If the technology is not well understood by your PR team, then they will be unable to write about it effectively.

Bad grammar and spelling are simply unacceptable.

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Linda Forrest

Posted in:

• Public and media relations

Our tribal identities govern our decision making, but change requires more than that

• Posted by Bob Bailly
• November 06, 2013
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By Bob Bailly 

My reading over the last several weeks has been all over the map, from political parties entrenching in unsupportable positions in Canada and the US, to the neuroscience of leadership. While I’ll discuss more about this later, it was at a board meeting of a not-for-profit that I attended last week that I finally was able to see a thread connecting my readings and what I was observing.

The meeting concerned the introduction of a new name and identity for the organization – a need clearly outlined as a priority in the organization’s strategic plan. The meeting shifted from the ordinary, however, because in the process of doing this work, there was a major disconnect between stakeholders. While the discussion was supposed to be about the rebranding, it quickly centred on the intent, tone and function of the new name that had already been approved. In fact, not only was a previously approved decision of the board being questioned, staff morale was in jeopardy and emotions were running high.

The particulars beyond this are unimportant and all the issues were ultimately resolved. But it was in this resolution that an ah-ha moment hit me. Most of what I was reading, hearing and now experiencing had tribal roots, but there was also something else going on that intrigued me.

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Bob Bailly

Posted in:

• Random thoughts