EQ Journal

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Artpreneurs Aren’t Important, Right?

Wrong! Here’s a thought experiment for you to perform. Close your eyes for a moment and ask yourself: how diverse, sustainable, interesting and vibrant a place would your city be if every one of these professionals went on an Atlas Shrugged-inspired strike forever? Here’s my list of suddenly vanishing artpreneurs: graphic artists, architects, musicians, writers, [...]

Exploriem.org, History and Future

Moneyball Movie

10 Things You Can Learn about Sports and Business from Moneyball What the Ottawa Senators did Right to Make the Playoffs 12 out of 13 Years Television’s Golden Age could be Ahead not Behind I am an Aaron Sorkin fan from his days writing A Few Good Men, The American President and, of course, The [...]

Great Art

At TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) 2011, U2′s Bono made an offhand, almost throwaway comment that stopped me in my tracks. He said something like this: ‘The difference between good, maybe even very good art and great art is HUGE.‘ Entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs and artpreneurs would do well to keep this in mind. Steve Jobs was [...]

How did Ross Video Experience 21 Consecutive Years of Growth?

(Portions of this article originally appeared in Ottawa Business Journal, March 30, 2012: http://www.obj.ca/Opinion/Bruce-Firestone-5444.) The sky is falling, the sky is… Many observers of Ottawa’s tech scene seem to think it’s the end of Silicon Valley North but try telling that to David Ross, 90% owner of Ross Video. The other 10% is owned by [...]

IOE, Institute of Entrepreneurs

IOE5100, Advanced Business Models Exploriem.org’s Institute of Entrepreneurs presents IOE5100, Advanced Business Models for Entrepreneurs, Intrapreneurs and Artpreneurs, an MBA level course (For available dates and times as well as more information, please contact: Ms. Theresia Scholtes, tscholtes @ exploriem.org or @tclsholtes) Come study with Prof Bruce, a leader in designing and building business models [...]

How, Why and Whether to Write a Media Release

Understanding the simple arithmetic of how blogs, Twitter, FB, Digg, Reddit and YouTube are cratering mainstream media In case you missed it, I added Exploriem.org’s media release about 2012 Bootstrap Awards winners to this blog. See below. Writing media releases is tricky to do and these days many people are saying that they are less [...]

On Leadership (Continued)

(Prepared for Professor Matthew Archibald’s 4th year Seminar on Leadership Development: Friday March 9, 2012 from 1 to 3 pm in DMS 4140) For more on this subject, please refer to: Defining Leadership, http://www.eqjournal.org/?p=2668. Corporate Culture, http://www.eqjournal.org/?p=2656. The Entrepreneur Skill Set: A to Z, http://www.eqjournal.org/?p=1274. On Leadership, http://www.eqjournal.org/?p=1155. 10 Things that Entrepreneurs can Learn from [...]

Bottom Up Versus Top Down Selling

If you look at the diagram below you will see one of the most common mistakes made in sales—the top down sales method. In this scenario, lazy salesperson X in Organization A, knowing that their President or CEO is friends with the President of Organization B, asks him or her to call/text/message/Facebook/Tweet/email/meet with the other [...]

MMB, Magic Marketing Button

(How Picture Inc can Develop a Sustainable Community Built Around its Redesigned Biz Model) If your enterprise cannot connect efficiently and cost effectively with customers and clients, you’re dead. This is the sine qua non of marketing. It also means that each enterprise (non-profits, charities, for-profits, even NGOs and gov’t departments) needs to have a [...]

Bundling

I think bundling is going to be a big factor in terms of leveraging entrepreneurial ventures in this century. For example, Lululemon Athletica not only sells active wear they also have Yoga classes in their stores. In essence, they are housing two complementary businesses under the same roof. But there is no reason why they [...]

How Do I Beat The Competition

Professor Carlisle Adams at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Engineering challenged me to train his second year class on how they can build world class enterprises in a tough competitive world and then sustain them. In an hour and a half no less. Case studies I use include: Rick Hunter’s Mont Cascade and Pro [...]