EQ Journal

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County of Renfrew Reborn

Here are the slides from a talk on economic renewal that I am giving for the County of Renfrew on Monday September 17, 2012 at 10 am at the Best Western Renfrew Inn and Conference Centre. The challenges facing the county are not unlike small towns elsewhere in rural Ontario and, for that matter, in [...]

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 [...]

Open Letter to Ottawa Sports Hall of Fame

To: Michael Flanagan, Chair and Members of the Board of Directors From: Dr. Bruce M Firestone, Founder Dear Mike and Board of Directors of the Ottawa Sports Hall of Fame: On behalf of myself, Cyril Leeder, Rod Bryden, Randy Sexton, my family and theirs, I wanted to express my profound gratitude that you saw it [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

CV Writing

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 is quite sufficient if you are POTUS, say, to just have the seal of the President of the United States of America with your full name underneath. That’s it, that’s [...]

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 [...]

Can You Bootstrap a Chain of Specialized, Cash-Only Restaurants?

I recently had a chance to ask one of the founders of Toronto-based vegan ‘fast food’ restaurant The Hogtown Vegan (http://www.facebook.com/TheHogtownVegan), Madeleine Foote, six questions about her startup. There are some terrific entrepreneurial lessons here—like KISS (Keep It Simple), be authentic, have a sense of humour about yourself, deliver a lot of value to customers, [...]