OCRIRadio.com blog: for the show that podcasts Ottawa's tech energy to the world

Sunday
30Nov2008

Ottawa tech entrepreneurs from cleantech and biotech utilize region’s telecom strengths

DateNovember 30, 2008

By Nathan Rudyk

While there's still nostolgia for Ottawa's telecom-dominated past, next-generation companies in new Ottawa tech sectors such as cleantech and biotech are retooling the region’s traditional strengths in communications, optical, and software technologies to build their businesses, according to CEOs from Quadra Solar Corp. and Spartan Bioscience Inc. interviewed on the latest edition of the OCRIRadio.com.

At DNA analyzer company Spartan Bioscience Inc. Founder and CEO Paul Lem said, “We’re very fortunate to be in Ottawa because there are these great optical engineers, high tech executives, who we’ve recruited onto our team at Spartan Bioscience. So all those guys who were at Nortel and JDS – they know what it’s like to fight it out with the big boys. They know what it’s like to build out companies … so we have world class management, world class engineers, and we’re targeting them towards biotechnology.”

The cleantech sector is also benefiting from the Ottawa Region’s deep well of technology and talent. “All this technology in Ottawa can be transferred towards renewable energy. And we are seeing a lot of companies do that. The optical, the software, the mechanical … all that stuff does exist in Ottawa and we are taking that energy and entrepreneurship and channeling that,” said Ra-ed Arab, President and CEO of start-up Quadra Solar Corp.

The latest podcast of OCRIRadio.com also includes interviews with Rob Brennan, President and CEO of Triacta Power Technologies Inc., an established smart metering company, and Dave Vicary, President and CEO of Wise Eyes Inc., a start-up specializing in intelligent video indexing software that originated at the University of Ottawa.

If you check out this past OCRIRadio.com interview with Rob you'll discover Triacta's another great example of Ottawa tech sector retooling. Most of Rob's senior team earned their stripes in Ottawa's west-end telcom equipment companies, and are now using their skills and experience to build wealth and jobs in the cleantech sector.

(Nathan Rudyk is President and CEO with market2world communications inc., Ottawa, Canada's tech PR and product marketing agency, and founder of the OCRIRadio.com tech business podcast.)

AuthorNathan Rudyk | CommentPost a Comment |
Friday
31Oct2008

Boo! A Holloween wake-up call to the Federal Government from Ottawa's technology sector

DateOctober 31, 2008

By Nathan Rudyk

I have to admit that this month's Ottawa Venture & Technology Summit (OVTS) had a scary dimension. The news on VC fundraising was ghoulish in the face of the ongoing credit crisis. To add urgency to that fear, as you listen to OCRIRadio.com's Holloween podcast, recorded at OVTS, it's clear Ottawa’s angel and venture capital investment community believe their newly elected government representatives on Wellington Street don’t grasp the opportunity offered by the tech sector.

OCRI President and CEO Jeffrey Dale said, “Our innovation economy is producing more jobs than the auto sector and the resource sector combined but we don’t seem to have much focus on it. Our public policy better pay very close attention to the challenges.” Indeed.

One challenge to the innovation economy that requires immediate attention is a couple of paragraphs in something called "Section 116" said Irving Ebert, a former Nortel executive who has invested in 27 Ottawa technology companies as part of the Purple Angel investor network. Section 116 is an esoteric part of Canada’s tax code that makes it unduly difficult for foreign investors to get their money out of the country once a tech company is bought or goes public. (Check out Charley Lax's peHUB blog post for more on 116.)

“This thing has no impact on revenues flowing into the Canadian treasury,” said Ebert. But it does stop many high tech investors cold at our border, and causes Ottawa companies to locate in the U.S. or elsewhere when they grow enough to warrant venture capital investment. He cited the recent local example of MODASolutions Corp., an e-payments company that moved out of Ottawa to relocate in New York.

What difference would such changes make? Israel has no such barriers to investors, according to Ebert, where the population of the entire country (8 million) is less than the population of Ontario (12 million), and the amount of venture capital there is greater than that invested in all of Canada.

With such barriers out of the way and a concerted focus on building the tech sector, does Canada have what it takes to succeed? Absolutely, believes venture capitalist Bernie Zeisig, who has just launched a new Ottawa-based fund called Great Northern Capital concentrating exclusively on emerging growth-stage technology firms with established products and revenues of approximately $5 million. “Canada has strong technology – nobody’s going to question that,” said Zeisig on the podcast. But he also points out Canadian entrepreneurs need to be encouraged to think on a global scale.

With a quick fix to the tax code and some globally scalable thinking from the politicians on Wellington Street, Canada's tech sector can easily beat back the ghouls of the credit crisis and contribute more wealth ($140 billion a year right now) and jobs (600,000-plus). Check out our podcast and see what you think.

(Nathan Rudyk is President and CEO with market2world communications inc., Ottawa, Canada's tech PR and product marketing agency, and founder of the OCRIRadio.com tech business podcast.)

AuthorNathan Rudyk | CommentPost a Comment |
in
Friday
11Jul2008

"Best of show" OCRIRadio podcast with Geoffrey Moore, John Chambers, Mike Manson and David Wolfe

DateJuly 11, 2008

If you're one of those OCRIRadio.com listeners who tunes in occasionally throughout the year (it's OK, just admit it, besides, our Web stats know who you are, where you live, and the kind of car you're going to drive three years from now :) and is now looking for earbud nuggets to take to the cottage, we've done the work for you with our "best of show" podcast.

Click here to check out why:

  • ANY tech entrepreneur can learn marketing and succeed, with Geoffrey Moore, “Crossing the Chasm” author and Mohr Davidow Ventures Partner
  • EVERY tech entrepreneur should be selling to India, with Mike Manson, Partner with the Taraspan Group
  • ANY tech company can learn from the Web 2.0 transformation of Cisco, as told by Cisco Systems Inc.’s CEO John Chambers
  • EVERY Canadian city can learn from the strengths of Ottawa’s tech
    cluster, with University of Toronto Professor and economic cluster expert David Wolfe

Enjoy the podcast! And have a great summer,

Yours hosts,

Nathan Rudyk and Jeffrey Dale 

 

AuthorNathan Rudyk | CommentPost a Comment |
in
Monday
31Mar2008

India’s a marketplace — not just an outsourcing centre for tech companies

DateMarch 31, 2008

By Steve Reside

university-of-ottawa-telfer.gifIn the March episode of OCRIRadio.com, market2world President and CEO Nathan Rudyk interviews five Canadian and Indian executives in attendance at last month’s Telfer India Forum at the University of Ottawa. Four technology executives and one experienced India observer are quick to push aside the myth that India’s only role in the technology sector is as a supplier of outsource labour.

In fact, a compelling argument can be made that India’s most important role moving forward for high tech Canada will not be as a supplier of talent, but as a market for Canadian technology products and services. And Ottawa’s technology sector is well placed to take advantage of this growth — especially in the booming Indian telecommunication, health care and software industries.

Consider the evidence:

  • India’s economic growth is forecasted to exceed 8% percent for 2008
  • India is projected to be the world’s seventh-largest economy by 2020, up five spots from where it sits today
  • According to Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, Canadian exports to India reached $1.7 billion last year — a 54% increase over 2005
  • The number of new mobile telecom subscribers in India rose from 16 million in 2003 to 65 million in 2006. With 156.31 million subscribers across the country, India has become one of the fastest growing mobile markets in the world
  • According to the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority, the Indian healthcare industry has the potential to show the same exponential growth that the software industry showed in the past decade

To get more insight into the opportunities available for Ottawa high tech companies in India, listen to Nathan's interview with Peter Nesbitt — Export Development Canada’s (EDC) Chief Representative for India International Business Development. Nesbitt says that EDC is focusing on India’s middle-class because "it represents the fastest growing consumer market in the world”.

In a separate interview in the March show, Mike Manson, Partner with the TaraSpan Group — a company that accelerates market entry to India for Canadian companies — says that the economic opportunity in India is “at a scale where most Canadian’s can’t comprehend”.

“We’ve exploded this myth that only the big players can play in India. What we’ve found is that if you have a product with a value proposition, Indian companies are moving at such a pace that if they get the value proposition there is definitely room for smaller Canadian companies to enter the Indian market.”


Other guest on the show include; Gary Knee, Vice President of R&D and Operations, Redknee Solutions Inc., Sonam Devgan, CEO of Algol Semantics Inc. and Dr. Praful Naik, Chief Scientific Officer of Bilcare Ltd..

Listen to the entire show to learn how Ottawa high tech companies can leverage their experience to take advantage of opportunities in the rapidly growing Indian market.

Play podcast now or download as an MP3

(Steve Reside is Vice President and Creative Director with market2world communications inc., Ottawa, Canada's Web 2.0 tech PR and product launch agency. Steve has produced podcasts for many organizations including MADD Canada, MD Funds, OCRIRadio.com and the Canadian Bar Association.)
AuthorNathan Rudyk | CommentPost a Comment |
Thursday
21Feb2008

Geoffrey Moore says clean tech offers “the largest market in the history of the planet” in exclusive OCRIRadio.com podcast interview

DateFebruary 21, 2008

By Nathan Rudyk

Technology marketing guru and Mohr Davidow Ventures VC Geoffrey Moore sees big green in clean. In an exclusive half-hour interview with OCRIRadio.com, Moore says global warming is no longer a cause, but a market. A HUGE market.

I'm proud to say Ottawa appears well positioned to capture a fair share of this market – in November six local firms were named in the national "Next Ten Emerging Clean Tech Leaders of Tomorrow" by Corporate Knights magazine.

Referring to his takeaway from the 2008 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Moore says “People have completely, completely bought into the notion that this is going to be a global re-engineering of business practices and industrial practices, and it will possibly be the largest market in the history of the planet.” In terms of an investment opportunity, “I think it will dwarf I.T.”

Moore’s statements draw on his VC experience plus his wisdom as the author of four books including Crossing the Chasm, Inside the Tornado, The Gorilla Game, Living on the Fault Line, and his latest, Dealing with Darwin.

Our Geoffrey Moore interview also covers his opinions on the promise for technology’s role in “the entire reconstruction of consumer life around digitized media” and “the enormous opportunity to take the lessons we’ve learned in the computing industry and apply it to things like molecular diagnostics and catching disease states earlier.”

With sage advice that applies to any entrepreneurial technology company, but especially to the vast majority of Ottawa tech firms sized 50 people or less and in the midst of crossing the chasm, Moore states that marketing is much more about mastery than mystery, and that tech CEOs in any sector can apply the same systems approaches to marketing that they do in building their products.

Many thanks to Avoca Semiconductor's VP of Marketing and Sales Peter Fillmore (who introduces our featured guest as well as Avoca's digital audio entertainment technology) for connecting us to Geoffrey Moore! Peter's longtime association with Geoff gave OCRIRadio.com listeners a half-hour of inspiration and great advice that translated into in-person speaker's fees, would have required a five-figure investment. And of course many more thanks to Geoffrey Moore!

(Nathan Rudyk is President and CEO with market2world communications inc., Ottawa, Canada's Web 2.0 tech PR and product launch agency, and the founder and co-host of OCRIRadio.com.)

 

 

AuthorNathan Rudyk | CommentPost a Comment |
in
Page 1 2 3 Next 5 Entries »