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While searching on the Internet last night I came across “Mobilizing Science and Technology to Canada’s Advantage” a report by the Canadian government on essentially their new commercialization strategy. I have given the document a qucik scan and generally like what I see. Lots of facts and figures and some thoughts about how we spend on R&D and commercilization in Canada.

My initial thoughts were that you will likely see some reductions in the amount of funding directed at public R&D and more towards private R&D in the form of incentives and tax credits, which in my opinion is a good thing. For example one fact quoted was that 44% of R&D in Canada was private compared to 68% in other OECD countries. In terms of spending in R&D Canada is first in public R&D spending and sixth in private R&D spending. Expect to see some changes in the allocation of funding.

In terms of priorities the government plans to focus spending on key strategic areas rather than across the board. Also a good thing provided they pick the right strategic targets. I suspect you will see clean and envirnomental technologies as one of the strategic initiatives.
More on “Mobilizing Science and Technology to Canada’s Advantage” in a future post when I have had time to give the document a thorough read.

Cheers,
Ian Graham

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Creative thinking is one of the most important elements in innovation. In order to solve the really big problems you need the courage to change according to Stephen Covey. To solve tomorrow’s problems you need to think outside the box.

My wife put me on to this story, although I do not remember the source.

There was a young boy who had just moved into a new school. On the first day of school the teacher said to the students I want everyone to draw a flower. The boy started to draw a field of flowers of all shapes and colours and was very pleased with his work. When he finished he looked around the room at all of the other students pictures and they had the same red rose with three leaves and a green stem.

As the teacher walked around the room checking the students flowers he stopped at our boy. The Teacher said to the boy “what is this you have drawn?’

“Why a flower like you asked” replied the boy.

“That is not a flower” said the teacher. “A flower is red with three leaves and a green stem. Draw it again the proper way.”
The boy redrew his flower the proper way and this scene repeated itself a number of times through out the year.

After a year or two the boy and his family moved to a new school. On the first day of school the boys teacher asked the students to draw a flower. The boy drew a red rose with three leaves and a green stem.

If you want to inspire creativity and innovation you need to create a culture that values outside the box thinking.

Cheers and have a great weekend.

Ian Graham

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If you are  interested in the different aspects of what makes and entrepreneur successful you may want to attend my seminar tonight at Staples on Bank Street. I am working with a company from Toronto that have partnered with Staples to deliver training to up and coming entrepreneurs. Staples sponsors the seminars and provides the venue, Bizlaunch manages the process and I deliver the trining for BizLaunch and Staples. If you can make it out it would be great to see you.

 

Seminar: “Success Secrets”
Location: Staples 2210 Bank Street Ottawa
Time: 6:30pm to 8:00 pm

Hope to see you there.

cheers,

Ian Graham

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There was a good article in the Saturday edition of the Ottawa Citizen. It told the story of how a team at Nortel developed the “Nortel Orbitor”. The Orbitor it postulates could have been the fore runner of the RIM Blackberry or Apple’s IPhone. The fact is however that it wasn’t and it is a bit unclear to me why exactly it didn’t succeed.

I am going to go out on a limb here and speculate. The Orbitor likely had some of the finest technology and Engineering minds at Nortel and from that perspective it was world class. From a business development perspective it received minimal support from senior management and was not considered core to Nortel. The article mentions that the product came out in 1998 but does not go into to much detail about why it didn’t succeed only that the design group was disbanded in 2001 during the bust.

The key points, in my opinion, related to this article are that commercialization success is made up of two component parts; supply side and demand side.  Supply side commercialization is all about everything necessary to develop products; demand side commercialization is all about market place success.

The Nortel Orbitor in 1998 is a good metaphor for the state of the Canadian nation today in terms of Commercialization. We as a country have done a great job at developing and creating the supply side of commercialization, however, our ability on average on the demand side could use some improvement. We rated a “D” in innovation according to the Conference Board of Canada. As a country we need to do a bit a paradigm shift in terms of looking at both halves that make up commercialization success. In order to succeed and excel at commercialization you need to manage both the supply and demand sides.

Lets not have Canadian Commercialization follow the same trajectory as the Nortel Orbitor.

Cheers,

Ian Graham

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Tony Bailetti from Carleton University sent a notice this weekend regarding the inaugrial issue of “Open Source Business Resource” OSBR. The July 2007 issue of the Open Source Business Resource (OSBR) published by the Talent First Network. You can find the resource at:

http://www.osbr.ca 

Dru Lavigne is the editor of the OSBR.  Her email is: dru@osbr.ca

If you are interested in helping in the following:
  * distribute the link to the OSBR to those who may benefit
  * contribute articles
  * suggest topics of interest and potential authors
  * let us know how we can improve the OSBR
  * subscribe to the OSBR
  * volunteer to the Advisory Board, and
  * highlight events and news that pertain to open source development and commercialization in your community.

Please contact Dru if you can help.

Cheers,

Ian Graham

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As you can probably tell by now I enjoy stories as a way of making a point. This life long learning post will be in two parts, todays and next Firday where I will do a bit of story telling related to the topic.

There are a number of assocaitons that I am aware of that base the results of their entrance exams on the ideal solution. A group of markers get together and brainstorm to come up with the ideal solution. The results of all of the exams are measured and compared to the ideal solution.

I have some issues with this form of marking. While it does a reasonable job of ensuring that everyone has a common approach to problem solving, what it excludes is those solutions that are innovative but outside the box thinking.

I understand that many associaitons want to create consistency and homogeneous membership, however, when applied to something like creative thinking you want to encourage those creative solutions. I believe what this does is create a culsture that is averse to risk taking.
Friday morning ramblings.

Cheers,

Ian Graham

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In my opinion, technology for the sake of technology is a bad thing. Here are a couple of instances that I can think of where technology has run amok.

Today at a coffee shop meeting, where else would one meet? I visited the washroom at Starbucks and went to dry my hands. The paper towels were dispensed from a machine where you put your hands under an optic sensor and a small motor would automatically deploy the correct size of paper towel. Unfortunately the motor wasn’t working and I didn’t get a paper towel. As I left the washroom with wet hands I thought to myself, why not have a manual paper towel dispenser. The chance of malfunction would be lower.

The second instance is with respect to parking meters. Mitch Brisbois had an interesting post about this the other day. Sometime ago the City of Ottawa in its’ finite wisdom had a $100K program to replace all the mechanical parking meters with new electronic ones for no better reason than a “technology update”. Well now it turns out many of the electronic meters are now malfunctioning, probably at a higher rate than the old mechanical ones. If I recall correctly the operating range on most electronic components is less than the temperature variations that we experience here in Ottawa, possibly a cause of some of the malfunctioning meters.

The third instance was told to me by a friend when I worked at Alcatel. In Japan the newscasters speak very quickly to get through all of the news. A number of elderly citizens had trouble keeping up with the newscasters. An entrepreneurial Japanese inventor came up with a device that would allow the elderly people to record the newscast and then play it back slower. Wouldn’t it have been simpler just to tell the newscasters to speak slower?

Technology is great and can help improve efficiency and productivity when used correctly. It can also over complicate what should be a simple solution.

Technology, use it wisely.

Cheers,

Ian Graham

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… Well almost.

This is a bit like one of those announcements you sometimes see where a vendor says something like “Introducing new Feature X, or The Acme Widget has been qualified by lab XYZ to interoperate with the Phillips grommet.” So What!

Personally I prefer customer win announcements. You know the kind where there is revenue involved. Partnership announcements are cool to and can give an indication of where a company is going. 

We are almost ready to make an regarding TheCodeFactory announcement and it will be reasonably substantial, so be patient and stay tuned. In fact, in case you didn’t know we have a website for TheCodeFactory: www.radiantventures.ca/blog and no that has nothing to do with the announcement.

The announcement will be substantial and there will be Pictures,.. A substantial Announcement with photos … Oh I can hardly wait.

Cheers,
Ian Graham

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How effective is spam marketing?

As I was deleting comment spam that Akismet had trapped today (Thank you Akismet, great plugin!!) I wondered to myself; “where does all this spam come from and how effective can it possibly be?” Have sales of Cialis, Viagra and other such products actually benefited from blog and email spam. One has to wonder, however, they do continue to spamalot so one would think it must work to some degree.

I also wondered how are spam marketers compensated? Is it by commission, CPC, emails sent or leads?

Who knows, anyone Akismet seems like a good prospect for Google.

Cheers,
Ian Graham

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I am a regular reader of the Ottawa Business Journal (OBJ) and National Capital SCAN (SCAN) here in Ottawa. It is interesting to see the difference in comments on the two online papers. The comments on SCAN which you must submit your name and email address are always very positive and constructive. OBJ has a somewhat clunkier discussion board that allows you to post anonymously. The tone on the OBJ discussion boards is markedly different than on SCAN and far more negative. On the OBJ discussion boards posters hide behind anonymous identities and flame most everything. Highly negative and not very productive.

This post is a tribute to the Negative Nancy’s on OBJ’s discussion boards. I heard this story many years ago and can’t remember the source.
There was a king that had two sons; one son was always happy and content looking on the bright side of life lets call him Sonny, the other dour and pessimistic. The king often wondered how can two parents have such different children. His thought was that it must be the boy’s environment so he planned an experiment.

He took the unhappy prince and put him in a large room at the top of the castle that was basking in sunlight and filled with all the best food and toys that a boy could want. He took the pessimistic son and placed him in the centre of the room and left locking the door behind him.
The king took Sonny and brought him to the depths of the castles dungeon. He opened the door to a dark and dank room filled with horse manure and had the prince go in locking the door behind him.

After waiting a week he went to the upper room where the pessimistic son had been locked in. He opened the door and there was his son in the middle of the room crying.

“All the crummy toys are broken and I am tired of all this rich food.” wailed the prince.
The king closed the door and shook his head and then headed off to the basement. As he approached the door to the dungeon he could hear the other young prince laughing and calling ”here pony, here pony.”

The king opened the door and there was Sonny elbows deep in manure laughing and giggling. The king was shocked and delighted to see the prince so happy. He said to his son “son I have locked you in a dark dungeon filled with horse manure, how can you possibly be so happy?”

The boy looked at his father laughed and said “Dad, with all this manure I know there has to be a pony in here somewhere”.

Look for your pony.

Cheers,

Ian Graham

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