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 [...]

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 [...]

Generation Q

Film by prototypeD.org, Directed by Janak Alford My name is Janak Alford. I am an Architect, a hacker, an artist and a filmmaker. I run not-for-profit, Ottawa-based, underground film studio, prototypeD.org. About eight months ago and after reading an early version of his manuscript, I was captivated by the world of Quantum Entity created by [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

Exploriem.org, History and Future

Publishing

Why so many established enterprises let entrepreneurs eat their lunch There is no industry that is changing faster than this one. Not music, film, television, nothing. It’s not just book publishing that is changing at an incredible rate as e-publishing platforms proliferate across the Internet and tablets, smart phones and computers become the medium of [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]