EQ Journal

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Take Responsibility Mindset (TRM)

Guest Post by Gus Takkale. Excerpted from his book, THE ROAD: A Journey through the 5 C’s of Change, General Store Publishing House – Canada, 2011 People either live at “cause” or “effect”. Average people don’t live at “cause”, they are living at “effect”. They blame situations or other people for their lives. They feel [...]

Things Every Tech Startup Needs to Know about Business Models

By Bruce M Firestone, B Eng (Civil), M Eng-Sci, PhD Abstract The Business Model is supplanting the Business Plan in many organizations. It not only describes the complete business ecosystem, it is a mechanism to discover profitable new relationships amongst stakeholder groups. The Business Model is more resilient than a plan and harder for competitors [...]

Why Businesses (Really) Fail

And Why Even Mighty IBM Can’t Forget the Basics Below are some data published by BusinessWeek on why businesses fail. I’ll bet you that the top five reasons (too much debt, inadequate leadership, poor planning, failure to change and inexperienced management) are in fact related to number six on their list: not enough revenue; i.e., [...]

Ten Key Lessons from Business Owners This Year

[Guest Post by Kingsford Consulting. Follow Kingsford on Twitter @KingsfordConsul] After talking to and working with hundreds of business owners – each with their own success stories and challenges – this compilation highlights the top 10 strategic lessons we’ve learned and passed on time and time again. 1. Simple is good The more complex a [...]

Exploriem.org Newsletter: June 12, 2012

Join Exploriem, all our sponsors and Artistic Entrepreneurs displaying their works at Artifex on June 20th 2012 at the National Gallery of Canada. Doors open at 6:00 p.m. There will be a silent auction. View items Tickets can be purchased: Here. This Year’s Spotlight Artists Spotlight Writer – Bruce M. Firestone The official Book Launch [...]

Taking Life by the Horns

(Follow Your Passion/Face Your Fears) (Guest Article by Geoffrey Scoates, Student Entrepreneur, World Traveler, Writer) It’s really hard to forget someone like Prof Bruce. He’s bold, passionate and in your face. He’ll tell you what he thinks not because he wants to hurt you or crush your idea but because he cares and he has [...]

An Entrepreneur’s Journey

Govindh Jayaraman Tries to Change the World and Himself (This article originally appeared in Ottawa Business Journal, May 28, 2012: Portions of this article originally appeared in Ottawa Business Journal, March 5, 2012: http://www.obj.ca/Opinion/Bruce-Firestone-5444.) I met Govindh Jayaraman when he was a student and I was with the Ottawa Senators back in the day. He [...]

Renaissance Repair

Ottawa’s Next $100 Million Tech Startup? (Portions of this article originally appeared in Ottawa Business Journal, April 16, 2012: http://www.obj.ca/Opinion/Bruce-Firestone-5444.) When you first meet Len Anderson in his company’s bustling headquarters—a capacious Kanata office building on Leggett Drive which looks more like a warehouse once you are inside—you are struck by his sense of humour [...]

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 [...]

Looking Back to Look Forward

To find out if your startup is really going to be of any real use, take a few moments to perform an Einsteinian thought experiment. Ask: If my product or service had been around ever since Jan 27, 1756 (Mozart’s DOB), what would it be worth today? Imagine YouTube, for a moment, having been around [...]

Advanced Business Models, MBA6298 I

Telfer School of Management Course Outline, April 2012 Professor: Bruce M. Firestone, B. Eng. (Civil), M. Eng.-Sci., PhD. Office: 2525 Carling Avenue, Suite 23, Ottawa ON Telephone: 613-422-6757 x 250 E-Mail: bmfirestone @ exploriem.org Office Hours: After class for one hour Class Location: DMS4170 Class Hours: Monday April 16th to Saturday April 21st, 2012 from [...]