Perspectives
The So-Called Housing Bubble is Just Bad Metrics
There has been a lot of talk recently about Toronto's housing bubble. In fact, I think if you check, the talk has been filling up the press for several years. Well if all of these people are right about the bubble, when is it going to pop? I don't think in fact that...
The Narwhal List 2017
We are pleased to introduce the Narwhal List for 2017. Our previous Impact Brief (A Failure to Scale, February 2017) set out to show that relative to US firms, Canadian companies have historically slower growth rates that make them less appealing to potential...
Canada’s Scaling Problem
Policy experts and innovation practitioners have criticized Canada’s scaling problem - its inability to grow and scale companies. This has been a baffling issue because Canada’s technology sector has been successful at starting companies and generating innovations...
Canada’s Lacklustre Innovation Performance
Improving Canada’s lacklustre innovation performance has been a persistent challenge. Experts continue to blame our inability to turn ideas into tangible products and services on a complex set of factors such as low business expenditures on research and development...
The Curse of Millennial Job Churn
I was surprised that Finance Minister Bill Morneau warned Millennials that they should "get used to so-called job churn – short-term employment and a number of career changes in a person’s life." Does this mean he's giving up on the economy? I looked around the other...
Your Job is to Make Your Boss Happy
I was surprised to read in the Globe that Guy Laurence had been turfed as Roger's CEO but I wasn't surprised about why. Apparently he had a rocky relationship with the Rogers family who still have control of the company Ted Rogers built. I had heard from people inside...
Canadian Venture Capital – Too Little or Enough?
The lack of Canadian venture capital has been denounced consistently in studies and think tank reports, and by the media, entrepreneurs, and even venture capitalists themselves. Yaletown Partners completed a report on the state of venture capital in the country,...
Do we need a Masters of Disruption?
The comments from my last blog got me thinking about MBA programs in general and Masters in Innovation programs in particular. The businesses that are succeeding today (and by succeeding I mean are having huge growth in acceptance, revenue, valuation, etc.) are the...
Are MBAs killing businesses?
There was a great article on the Harvard Business Review site yesterday that said that companies that have a founder's mentality deliver returns to shareholders that are three times higher than in other companies. It goes on to say that a founder's mentality has three...