EQ Journal

Category

C.O.M.M.U.N.I.C.A.T.E.

As readers of this Journal already know, I have become more convinced than ever that artpreneurs play and will play a larger role in carving out sustainable city-state economies in the future than at any time in the past or, at least, since medieval times. Creativity cannot be outsourced and is much harder to knock [...]

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 [...]

What if…

(Blogger Graeme Nichols challenged me and 19 other people to answer the question: ‘What if?’ For example, what if the NCC, the National Capital Commission, had said ‘yes’ to putting the Palladium on their lands at Lebreton Flats in downtown Ottawa instead of being constructed on the suburban Kanata site where Scotiabank Place (as it [...]

‘Siberian Cedar Medallion’

(This is a story of how ‘Siberian Cedar Medallions’ first came to Red Pine Camp as a craft in 2010. This story is written by Prof Bruce and his daughter, Rachel Firestone, and first performed live at Coffee House during Week 6 in the summer of 2011 (August). Prof Bruce narrates the role of Senior [...]

10 Reasons Why Landlords Wouldn’t Lease to God

This is becoming a serious input problem for startups– I see this every week: Landlords refusing to lease space to entrepreneurs. They prefer A-rated Tenants and are so risk averse that they are missing out on the next generation of major space users. So my son, Matthew, and I came up with a list of [...]

Landlord from Hell

Ten Reasons Why Your Landlord Wouldn’t Lease Space to God I recently saw a notice from a property management group that I thought just might be the worst form of ‘client relations’ ever. I scrubbed it of identifiers and here it is: Worst Client Relations Notice Ever As you can see this Landlord has pretty [...]

Check Check Check

My Dad, the late Professor OJ Firestone, and I tried to determine which three things were the most important skills for an entrepreneur to master: – SALES SALES SALES (moi) – CHECK CHECK CHECK (my Dad). As I have grown older, I have come to realize they are equally critical: without sales, all organizations will [...]

Show a Little Humility

I was thinking the other day about how fiendishly complex the ecology of this planet is. It reminded me again of why it is important for humans to be a bit humble in the face of many unknowns. Just when we think experts have a thing figured out, new evidence appears that upsets accepted wisdom. [...]

Entrepreneur’s Venn Diagram

What does it take to create a successful, large-scale entrepreneurial organization? Can you stock it exclusively with rebels who bring a great deal of creative energy to it? What if, instead, you have top-down military style leadership? People who are real doers. Will that work? Or how about having a lot of order takers on [...]

Should Ottawa Allow Chickens in Residential Areas?

To find out the answer to that question, I asked someone who has experience in the matter—my son, Andrew, who lives in Canberra (Australia). I asked him how his neighbours reacted to his hen house in their quiet suburban neighbourhood. Were they opposed? Here’s his answer: “Quite the opposite the neighbours delighted in it. One [...]

A Humorous, Yet Apt Description of What a Human Being Actually Is

Here is a description (by author Neal Stephenson from his novel, Cyrptonomicon, pp. 315/316) of what the corpus erectus of a human being is actually made of. It is one of my favorite, laugh-out-loud paragraphs from that WWII adventure story (which has a contemporary theme mixed in as well). Next time you are in an [...]

Why Cheering for the Leafs Is … Unnatural

In Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and Montreal Back in 2004, I wrote this essay on how a sports team can positively impact a City’s development. I approached the subject by looking at an unusual phenomenon: the presence of significant numbers of Toronto Maple Leaf fans who are resident in other Canadian NHL cities. Now as [...]