|
| |
Innovation Nation: Canadian Leadership from Java to Jurassic Park
by Leonard Brody, et al.
Made in Canada.
Canada is a land of innovation. It is a tradition that goes back many years. St. John, Newfoundland's Signal Hill, for instance, provided the locale for the first transatlantic wireless signal in 1901.
But Canadians, as a whole, are too modest about their accomplishments, an image the authors of Innovation Nation – including information technology professors from Ryerson University, and private researchers – are determined to put to shame.
There is much Canadians should be proud of, even recently, from the innovative software known as Java for business computers, to the 3-D animation used in Jurassic Park and other films, to wireless e-mail, and online auction company eBay.
As a nation, Canada is certainly poised for success, ranking first in the world for individuals achieving a college or university education; and boasting the highest penetration of technology, including telephones, cable, and Internet access.
Among the success stories is that of Terry Matthews, who founded Newbridge Networks and went on to sell it to Alcatel for $7 billion; and that of JDS Fitel, a company developed by Jozef Straus and three of his co-workers from Nortel – they sold the company to Uniphase in 1999, also for $7 billion.
DocSpace Company, offering electronic document storage through the Internet, was co-founded by Evan Chrapko and Sandra Wear. They sold it to a Silicon Valley firm for $568 million (U.S.) in 2000. And then there is Dr. Julia Levy, CEO and co-founder of biotech company QLT Inc., one of only a few such companies (out of 400 around the world) to weather the startup process and achieve profitability. Her company developed a drug that can treat age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of blindness in those over 50; and there is also Andrea Reisman Johnson, who “founded Petopia.com, setting off a 2-year explosion of pet products sold over the Internet.”
And there should be more success stories to come. To address the issue of “brain drain” the federal government has reduced capital gains taxes, and by 2005 the corporate tax rate will be lower than that in the U.S. In addition, the authors point out, “The Canadian Pension Plan (CPP) has recently committed to growing its capital allocation towards private equity.”
In the meantime, the book profiles 30 successful Canadian entrepreneurs. But among these individuals' successes were also failures, for failure seems to be a necessary ingredient, and not necessarily a bad thing. As venture capitalist John Eckert of McLean Watson Capital puts it, “We would rather invest in an entrepreneur who has fallen flat on their face, yet returns with another good idea looking for money. These entrepreneurs have been tested, and have shown enormous resilience in the face of failure, and are often times a much better bet to back than those who have yet to experience failure.”
But as the authors put it, many entrepreneurs chose to make their businesses in Canada “because they simply loved living in this country.” Brian Edwards of BCI Emergis notes, “Canada has got some very good skills, at a much cheaper rate than the Americans. It's very expensive to do business in the United States. People cost more; benefits cost a lot more. We are well positioned in those markets.”
Modesty aside, many of the individuals profiled are proud of not only their accomplishments, but of being Canadian and showing the world what Canadians can do. Chrapko says, “In the back of my mind, I am thinking…if one of my words lights up some kind of spark or fire in a fisherman's son, or an Inuit daughter, or someone else sitting in a tractor cab in the middle of nowhere, who doesn't know whether they have the right to think that they can do it, too. I need them to know they can.”
Don Mattrick, co-founder of Electronic Arts, adds, “The one thing I've learned, and that we've learned as a company, is that there are amazing people inside Canada. The quality of the people, their ability to excel, both technically and creatively, is one of the reasons why our company has succeeded the way it has.”
Innovation Nation is an anthem to Canadian accomplishment and an antidote for Canadian modesty.
Title: Innovation Nation: Canadian Leadership from Java to Jurassic Park
Author: Leonard Brody, et al.
Publisher: Wiley
ISBN: 0470832029
Review written by: Marc Duane Anderson
Reviewer's Rating:8.5
Reader's Rating: 0
Reader's Votes: 0
Talk to other readers about this story.
|
|
|
|
|
|
