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Finding Your Competitive Advantage
Before investing in a business, one of the most important things to identify is your competitive advantage. Answer the question “why would customers choose your product/service over competitor offerings?†What makes you stand out from the competition? I’ve found that not enough thought goes into what a company’s real competitive advantage is and many companies…
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Our Experience With 99 Designs
The website 99 Designs allows people to post design requests for logos, print, stationary, and websites. Designers then submit their designs to a contest where the purchaser picks a winner and pays them a fee. This blog post is about our recent experience with a design project we posted on this service. We posted a…
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Some Tips For Successful SDTC Applications
The Federal Government’s Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) Tech Fund is designed to help technology developers get funding in the hard to finance pre-commercialization phase. This $550 million fund supports technology supporting “products and processes that contribute to clean air, clean water and clean land, that address climate change and improve the productivity and the…
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What’s Better, Infallible or Successful?
While working with a client recently, an interesting issue arose. While generating reports, I was given specific instructions on what information was to be shared. More to the point, I was told what was not to be shared. The concern was the information would cast some people in a poor light. In other words, the…
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Managing the Construction of Your New Home
So you’re building a new house and decide to manage the project yourself instead of going through a builder. The downside is the risk of hiring bad contractors and the time investment required to manage the project. However, the benefits are great as well. You drastically cut builder costs and can potentially build a better…
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Some advice for new MBA Students
Last week I was asked to address the incoming MBA class at the Edwards School of Business at the University of Saskatchewan. I was one of the speakers along with Peter MacKinnon, President of the University of Saskatchewan and Daphne Taras, the new Dean of the Edwards School of Business. While their comments were welcoming…
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Alternative Energy Opportunities in Small Markets
I recently attended a bio-energy seminar at the 20th Annual PNWER Summit in Calgary. The seminar was informative showcasing innovative companies, new technologies and covering topics such as growth strategies and market demand for biomass energy. What I found most interesting was a common problem faced by all emerging alternative energy companies. There is a…
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Failing for Success? The Anomalies of Business!
Great team, great leadership, tremendous skill and a 1st place finish in the regular season. We had everything we needed to win the title this year, but we got knocked out in the semi-finals. What happened? We played well but still lost. Sometimes you can’t explain the dynamics of sports and just like in business…