Cool Companies 2008
Vol 3 Issue 1
Issue theme: Dragon’s Den
Inside Dragon’s Den [Full article]
Dragon’s Den is a TV show featuring Canadian entrepreneur hopefuls pitching business ideas to angel investors called the Dragons. The question Cool Companies magazine wanted answered was: Is Dragon’s Den serious in offering real value to Canada’s entrepreneur community or is it taking advantage of want-to-be entrepreneurs for TV entertainment?
The Entrepreneur Interview: Jim Basillie, Co-founder and Co-CEO of RIM
Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis are the co-CEOs of Canada’s superstar, Research In Motion Inc. (aka RIM), producer of the BlackBerry®. Mike started RIM in 1984 and Jim joined in 1992 to help grow RIM into the company it is today in 2007 with $3 billion in revenue and 7,000+ employees. This interview with Jim Balsillie was done in 2001 when RIM was a mere 1,000 employees. While the interview is now 7 years old, it is a treasure of rare insight into the ideas that have fuelled RIM’s past and recent growth. It’s an interview all true entrepreneurs will appreciate: it is Jim speaking candidly and at length about his approach to vision formulation, planning, organizational design, hiring and employee motivation. [Article Excerpt]
Collaborative R&D and Innovation in Smaller Companies
Innovation is a requirement for survival and success. Faced with limited resources, small and medium-sized companies have discovered that teaming up in collaborative innovation projects can have its advantages. This article presents 6 types of collaborative situations to consider, and explores the factors that make collaborative R&D and commercialization succeed or fail. [Excerpt of Article]
Inspiring Trust is Good for the Bottomline
Trust is big. It underlies every relationship and organizational culture. It’s also a strategic asset that directly affects profits. We explore what trust means, the behaviours of organizations with high trust and low trust, and interview experienced entrepreneurial leaders on how they inspire trust.
Book Gems
Today’s modern “thinking” companies should be creative machines, but most are not. Mobilizing Minds presents 9 ideas to what that next-generation model for a company might look like.
Canadian Innovations
• Heated stake blades from Therma Blade
• Cell phones read barcodes from Semacode
• Safe trucking from Intelligent Imaging
• Remote sensing of gases from Synodon
Editor Letter
Letters from Readers
Insight Corner
Cool Opportunities MarketPlace
Cool Opportunities Classifieds
