EQ Journal

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Negative Cost Selling Solar Arrays

School Board Pays Negative Cost for new Solar Panel Installations Rex Parris, Mayor of Lancaster, California doesn’t like to lose. It must come from his class-action lawyer background where he won almost $1 billion in claims for his clients and himself. Three years ago he decided to make the city where the sun (almost) always [...]

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 [...]

Big Video Shout Out to Brevis Gallery Artists & Artifex Sponsors

Plus Introduction to Generation Q, Film by prototypeD.org Plus Introduction to Quantum Entity Trilogy How diverse, sustainable, interesting and vibrant a place would Ottawa be or any city if every one of our artists went on an Atlas Shrugged-inspired strike forever? We want to thank each of our Brevis Gallery Artists and our sponsors for [...]

Artifex

Professional Artpreneur Gala We want to take this opportunity to thank all the sponsors of Artifex in advance of this very special event that will take place on June 20th, 2012 at the National Gallery Of Canada. These organizations make it possible to celebrate the essential role that the arts play in building better, more [...]

Carp Road Corridor Business Improvement Area

We have in Ottawa a BIA (Business Improvement Area) focused on improving the Carp Road corridor. It’s an important stretch of road connecting the fast growing suburb of Stittsville and the historic Village of Carp. It is a mostly rural area but there are municipal services at both ends but not along much of the [...]

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 [...]

The Arts

What is Beauty? We came to Vancouver a few days ago to celebrate early stage career Hnatyshyn Foundation Award winners at an event held at the VSO School of Music. The concert hall at the VSO (Vancouver Symphony Orchestra) is acoutistically and virbationally isolated not only from street traffic outside its downtown location but from [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

CV Writing (Part 2)

Writing a CV is not as easy as you might think. As the saying goes, the shorter the resumé, the more important the person. It’s all part of building your personal brand which is incredibly important to entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs and artpreneurs. Marketing (i.e., writing/creating your CV) creates a personal brand (for you) which creates trust [...]