Dianne Buckner's Top 10 Lessons on Entrepreneurship

Dianne Buckner, television host of CBC tv shows: Venture; Dragons' Den; and, FortuneHunters, was a keynote speaker at the Shannon School of Business Visiting Scholar Lecture Series on September 18. Her talk was the "Top 10 lessons in Business & Entrepreneurship from a TV perspective". The entire top ten is presented as a comment to this post...read on...

David Heinemeier Hansson at Startup School 08

What could be achieved with a unified and/or visionary mayor & council?

With municipal elections fast approaching and the recent doom and gloom press coverage from municipal council regarding population decline and budget wrestling, it certainly gets a person thinking about what it might be like to have both a unified as well as visionary municipal council. Imagine what might be possible if instead of suing the provincial government we worked together on something progressive like developing the Ports of Sydney as part of the Atlantic Gateway. What could be done on developing entrepreneurship? Or attracting migrated youth back to Cape Breton? Leave your thoughts in the comments section to this post - you can do so anonymously (please be polite and no personal attacks.) :-)

A Guide to Job Descriptions that Don't Suck

With the pressure for finding talented people continuing to mount I thought this article on writing good job descriptions to be full of practical advice. It recently appeared on Red Canary and was written by Trevor Stafford.

See the comment for the full article

Learnings from Irving Schwartz at TecSocial

TecSocial was fortunate to have Irving Schwartz share some wisdom on February 7th. I found the whole evening very interesting and wanted to share some of the key points that I picked up that night:

• Rural broadband as important as electrification of Nova Scotia - Irving is very excited about winning the contract to bring broadband internet access to parts of rural Nova Scotia. As he discussed this, he talked about growing up during the era when electricity was being provided to rural communities and areas. He said that many people now can't imagine what it would be like to NOT have electricity in their homes. He figures that in 50 years when we look back at history, the rural broadband project will be just as important as the electrification of rural areas was prior to that.
• Good partners key to success - A critical element that should not be hurried when forming a company is understanding and assuring a good working relationship with your business partner(s). He pointed out that he had often started a business without really knowing his potential business partner all that well, yet he would go on to spend days, weeks, months and years with the person. His experience taught him that it just didn't make sense to be spending that much time with a person without really getting to know them. He said, "You don't get married after a couple of dates so why rush into things with a business relationship. Take some time and get to know the person".
• Delegation gets things done - When asked how he is able to be so actively involved in so many diverse companies his response was crisp and clear: "Hire good people to run the company". His theory is that if a really good person is running the company, they then only need advice now and again.
• Skillsets required in business are the same for non-profit sector - When asked what he noted as the key differences between running a company vesrsus an non-profit organization he indicated that there were very few. As an active philanthropist, he noted that the skills to have successful organizations were critical to both types of orgnaizations and included good financial management, project management, marketing, and human resource management.

I-3 Competition Announces Zone Winners

InNOVAcorp today announced the winners in each of the five zones of the I-3 Technology Start Up Competition. Full details of province-wide winners and prize packages are available here.

We now have two rounds of the I-3 competition under our belt here in Cape Breton. Both were very positively received within the business community, by participants and by local media.

The quantity and quality of submissions was also impressive: 18 submissions a year ago and 17 this year.

There have been numerous questions about whether the competition will be run again next year. While it is unknown at this point if we'll see it again next year, I'm confident that we've not seen the last of InNOVAcorp's I-3 Technology Start Up Competition.

Bob

5 Smart Strategies of Super Startups

From Canadian Business Magazine:

1. Build HR systems early
2. Make acquisitions
3. Try outsourcing
4. Choose partners wisely
5. Develop your product pipeline

To read the complete article please click on the following link:http://www.canadianbusiness.com/rankings/hot50/list.jsp?pageID=article&type=startup&year=2006&content=startup&page=1&print=

Wind Energy Workshop

Internationally renowned expert on renewable energy Paul Gipe led an interactive workshop at CBU's Multipurpose Room earlier this week. The workshop was very informative and included topics on opportunities for renewable energy in Cape Breton, economic benefits to communities, businesses and investors, local ownership and government policy and regulations.

More information on the topic may be found on Paul Gipe's website http://www.wind-works.org/

The PowerPoint files for the presentation given in Sydney and Halifax as well as the full-day workshop in Truro are available for download on the site as well. These file may be found at http://www.wind-works.org/Downloads/PaulGipeDownloads.html

WARNING: the PowerPoint files are image-intensive and large (~15MB) and will only remain on the site for a couple of weeks.