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Well at least it is big news to those of us with coffee style blog templates. Today I saw the first sign of spring. When I drove up to our local Tim Horton’s for a coffee they gave me a “roll up the rim” cup. Wait, it gets better, I won a cup of coffee when I rolled up the rim.

One of the first signs of spring in Canada is the Tim Horton’s “roll up the rim” to win coffee cups. These are paper coffee cups where, you guessed it, you roll up the rim to check for prizes. The contest starts late winter early spring and is a sure sign summer is not to far away.

cheers,

Ian Graham

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I am feeling a little philosophical this morning. There are two fables/stories that have a very similar message that I have been thinking about.

The first one I believe is Chinese in origin and is the story of how the wind and the sun had a bet on who could get a man to take off his coat. The man was walking along a road between two towns and it was a bit cool so he had his jacket on. The wind boasted to the sun that he could force the jacket off of the man. The Sun replied that he didn’t think that the Wind could make the man take off his jacket, but that he the Sun could convince the man to remove the jacket by himself. Both parties accepted the bet.

The wind went first and in a fury blasted the man with gusts of wind. The harder the wind blew the tighter the man clutched his coat about him. After a period of time the wind relented and said to the Sun “it is obvious that this man will not remove his coat and now it is your turn.”

The Sun started by shining brightly and clearing away all the clouds. As the clouds cleared it warmed up and the man loosened his jacket. The Sun continued to shine brightly and the man was hot and perspiring so he removed his coat.

I am not sure the origin of the second story but it has a similar theme. If you want to keep the sand in your hand you are better to cup your hand and cradle it gently. If you make a fist and squeeze the sand it will escape through your fingers.

These principles are extremely important when you are building relationships within your company or making partnerships with external companies. You will catch more bees with honey than vinegar.
cheers,

Ian Graham

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There is a new resource available to the Ottawa technology community that you may want to check out. Tony Bailetti, Luc Lalande and the team at Carleton University have come up with the OttawaTechWiki. This is a promising resource and excellent idea on how to capture the pulse of the Ottawa Technology sector and at the same time provide a valuable resource to Ottawa Entrepreneurs and Start-ups.

Check it out; add some information regarding your current company, a previous employer, yourself or check for potential future employers and contacts.

This is a good example of how to use wiki technology to capture the knowledge of Ottawa entrepreneurs and start-ups, large companies too.

Cheers,

Ian Graham

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BarcampOttawa3 is ready for takeoff. The event is being held at Carleton U on the 31st of March and there will be a stream on opensource technology and business models. This promises to be a great event and sign up has already started.

If you live in Ottawa, like technology and want to mingle with many of the technology entrepreneurs and start-ups this is a good opportunity.

Hope to see you there.

Cheers,

Ian Graham

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Do you need an NDA when you are pitching your idea?

Very likely yes, however, the people you want to talk with probably won’t sign one because they see so many ideas.

So what do you do?

Ask if they will sign an NDA, if the answer is yes great. If not move on the gut check.

The gut check is essentially do you trust this person and are they someone that you want to share your idea with. If the answer is no probably best to walk away.

If they pass the gut check do some context setting. What I mean by context setting be very up front about what your goals are for the meeting and longer term. If you goal is to develop a relationship, secure financing and launch your product let them know. Next is their turn, have them explain what their interest is in your project, how they will use the information you provide. If your goals and theirs seem in sync you can present your idea, if not walk away.

We now start our introduction meeting presentations with a bit of context setting.

Cheers,

Ian Graham

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The stakeholder analysis is perhaps my second most favourite analytical tool next to the value chain. Where the value chain shows your path to market, pricing and margin information along the way and is usually fairly linear in nature. The Stakeholder analysis while similar to the value chain is much more dynamic, less deterministic and potentially a veritable spider web of interconnections.

The stakeholder analysis shows your market in a relational perspective. Which groups are connected to which and who can influence which other groups. I have found the greatest value in stakeholder analysis is to help prepare you marketing strategy and who to target with which messaging. Having your message get to your target audience from multiple sources can be very powerful and valuable.

The best way I know of to develop a stakeholder map is to first make a list of all your stakeholders. Next determine which stakeholders interact with other which stakeholders. Now draw a circle for each of your stakeholders on a piece of paper with the stakeholders name in the middle of the circle. Then start with one stakeholder and draw a line connecting that stakeholder to each of the other stakeholder they interact with, and then do the same thing for the next stakeholder. Repeat the process of connecting stakeholders to influenced or influencing groups until you have done this to all the stakeholders on the page. Now you probably have a very large complicated spider web that is almost impossible to decipher.

I usually do a couple of things to make the stakeholder map less crowded and more user friendly. Group the stakeholders into like interests. For example for the City of Ottawa stakeholder map I prepared I grouped professional services like legal, accounting, consulting into one group. You lose a bit of detail by grouping the stakeholders, but in a complex stakeholder map like the city of Ottawa ecosystem it is too complicated to have a circle for each individual stakeholder. After you group your stakeholder’s use a spreadsheet to make a matrix with the groups of stakeholders listed on the X and Y-axis. Then put marks in the cell if the two stakeholders interact, do this for each cell in the matrix. The result is a matrix showing the interaction of the various stakeholders. If the stakeholder has lots of marks next to their name put them in the centre of your page, this is also an indication that this is a very influential group. Place the rest of the stakeholders on the page with the most influential ones in the middle and the less influential around the outside.

Now that you have the stakeholders on the page with the most influential in the middle you are ready to start adding interaction lines. Connect the stakeholders to every other stakeholder that they influence or are influenced by. Some shuffling will likely be required to make the stakeholder map look better and keep lines from crossing over stakeholders. There are two other features that I sometimes add to the stakeholder map. The first is to have three thicknesses of lines. The thicker the line the stronger the relationship between the stakeholders. The second item I add is arrowheads on the lines to show the direction of influence.

I have also found it best to do stakeholder maps in PowerPoint. You can do some initial placement with pen and paper; however, once you start moving stakeholders around you will appreciate having a softcopy. There is a feature in PowerPoint called “Auto Shapes” - “Connectors”. I strongly recommend that you use this feature when doing stakeholder maps. The feature will keep the influence lines connected to your stakeholders circles when you shuffle them about on the paper. Very Handy.

Cheers,

Ian Graham

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Maybe I don’t understand advertising to the consumer market. However, If I was paying to distribute hundreds of thousands of one page pieces of collateral to every home in Ottawa I would want my logo and brand to appear on the piece.

I received in the mail today a collateral piece from Bell and Rogers. The Bell piece had the logo appear once, the Rogers piece four times. One side of the Bell piece is conspicuously absent of any Bell branding at all. The Bell genius that did the piece would likely argue well Frank or Gordon (spokes beaver) is on that side and people will associate him with Bell. WRONG! Some may but many won’t and you are losing out on an opportunity to build brand by having both the Bell logo and the beaver on the same piece of collateral. Another missed opportunity for Bell.

Bell just doesn’t get that building brand is about Bell brand and NOT beaver brand. Someday Frank and Gordon will retire and then how valuable will beaver brand be. Have the spokes beavers but build the Bell brand not the other way around.

Looking forward to the upcoming annual reports from Bell and Rogers.

Cheers,

Ian Graham

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I am familiar with a number of different personality profile tools and techniques like Myers Briggs Type Identifier and others. I recently came across a behaviour analysis tool that I had not heard of before. The Behavioural assessment is known as DISC.

The DISC profile is based on a four-quadrent system. The X Axis is Task Oriented on the left and People Oriented on the right. The Y Axis is Outgoing on the top and Reserved on the bottom. Therefore what you have is four quadrants:
- I - Outgoing and People Oriented
- S - Reserved and People Oriented
- C - Reserved and Task Oriented
- D - Outgoing and Task Oriented

This profiling system is much simpler than MBTI and easier to comprehend and apply. There are plenty of resources available on the web if you would like to check it out in more detail.

Cheers,

Ian Graham

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Montreal is having its’ first democamp on Tuesday February 27th if you are a native Montrealer or a curious Ottawian take the time to check it out. Details at:

http://barcamp.org/DemoCampMontreal1

Peter Childs and I attended Montreal Barcamp and will be heading back for DemocampMontreal1. If you are able and or interested in attending please drop us a line and we can investigate sharing transportation.

On an economic note having closer ties between Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa is extremely important in the bigger picture. Cross pollinating at the various bar and democamp events is one way to bring the communities closer together.

Cheers,

Ian Graham

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What is the difference between an Entrepreneur and a Small Business?

I think that the two are often confused. There is an ad in today’s Ottawa Citizen for the small business forum. One of the features that they have at the forum is an entrepreneur’s roundtable. The four people on the entrepreneurs round table are very successful Ottawa business people in traditional businesses.

In the traditional business forum I would say that the four panellists are entrepreneurial and in each case they are running a service-based business; restaurant, sports team, funeral home and health care services.  If we reflect on my previous post about the “New Economy” all of these businesses are in the service sector rather than the value sector.

The definition of Entrepreneur for an economic and policy perspective would be based on entrepreneurs in the value segment of the economy. Here is how I define the type entrepreneur that resides in the value sector:

Entrepreneurship involves;
- Innovation,
- Risk taking,
- Knowledge creation and
- Value creation.

Innovation forms the basis of entrepreneurship in the sense that something new is being created. This something new could be a process, or product. Arguably this is not the case for service-based businesses in the entrepreneurial round table. There must be an element of risk involved. The element of knowledge is intertwined within innovation and creates a solution to solve a customer problem. Finally and most importantly (in my opinion) the innovation must create value. Most service-based businesses do not have innovation, rather adaptation. Creating value means injecting money into the economy from export rather than taking money from an existing local source.

The definition of entrepreneur is an incredibly important in an economic and policy context. If governments of all levels intend to invest in Entrepreneurship then the definition of Entrepreneurship needs to be clearly understood.

Cheers,

Ian Graham

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