13 great companies in Canada to watch
Love these companies in Canada.
Key Cafe is a portfolio company of Venture Development Canucks. Great company, great founder doing some amazing things with secure key exchange in local cafe’s.
AN EXPLORER IS NEVER LOST
AN EXPLORER IS NEVER LOST
XMAS DAY HIKE with my dad and four of my sons. We ended up at the summit of this mountain but took a wrong turn and ended up off course. Two of my sons went down this sharp embankment whilst the rest of us passed around the other side to follow a deer trail to the creek bed in the valley to follow the stream up to reconnect with the trail. We were lost but as my dad and 8 year old son said “An explorer is never lost”
In a business sense an innovator is never lost? You come up against an obstacle and what do you do? Go back and retreat….? Push through and find away around. Adapt, pivot overcome and make it to the top.
Along the way we met a 15 year mountain biker who was pushing his bike from the base of the mountain to the top so he could get the best ride down….. Persistence and “best do what the rest are not prepared to do story” Love it.
Howard Brodsky Chairman of CCA Global Partners one of the largest private companies in the USA gave a speech a few years back where he talk about the great entrepreneurs. They get to one summit and they are always looking for what’s next……
We made it to the summit that day and had some great fun and great lessons….
Creativity relating the seemingly unrelated to the related to find break through
Creativity relating the seemingly unrelated to the related to find break through
My father Vic Lindal often said whilst growing up “Creativity is relating the seemingly unrelated to the related” I often talk of Thomas Edison who got creativity breakthroughs for his innovation by studying and doing completely different things but picking up unbelievable break through ideas. In particular having a musical orchestra in his invention factory at night.
Other notable modern day examples include Chetan Maini a leading entrepreneur from India who has created the Reva Electric Car. Chetan’s breakthrough for the electric car came whilst he was out playing with his son and using his remote control car. Through this play and messing around he was able to find the break through for the storage battery.
I received an email two days ago from a colleague who had studied the music industry for the past year and had done an analysis of what the top albums were and where they were from and what the upcoming artists were. I notice through his analysis there were some interesting correlations to the global business world from the perspective that creativity not need to be defined to one particular country. There are pockets of creativity and innovation globally and creating a global colloboration workforce and company to unlock those pockets could be powerful. Lends to the argument that in one’s business one should consider having an incredible culture quotient at the top with executives and senior leaders, advisory board members that have diverse cultural backgrounds, languages.
I have personally built numerous advisory boards taking into account culture quotient with folks from Brasil, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, USA, Canada. I noticed the dialogue and interaction and experience sharing was rich, different and ultimately provided some break through perspectives.
Cheers
Dean o
Venture Development
Business Week
State of Entrepreneurship past 20 years to now.
CHINA CALLING
I recently made a post on China.
Sean Stanleigh Globe and Mail
Encourage you to follow Sean Stanleigh at the globe and mail
https://twitter.com/seanstanleigh
compilation of some great articles on some great entrepreneurs below. Particular like the kevin langley article. Kevin is a great entrepreneur from the entrepreneurs organization http://www.eonetwork.org who is a former global chairman whom I worked with very closely to build http://www.gsea.org and http://www.eoaccelerator.org and who has been a big supporter of global entrepreneurship week
Early Days Young Entrepreneurs’ Organization
7 HABITS
I caught up with a former staff member I hired back in 1996 to help me in building the young entrepreneurs’ organization. It was great to catch up and chat about business and each of our activities. It got me thinking about Steve Covey’s book the 7 habits of highly effective people and a few of the principles “Think Win/Win”
deanrodneylindal 