If Ottawa is the city of comfortable brown shoes, Toronto a bland tweed jacket and Montreal warm woollen slacks then Canada justly deserves the title of innovation laggard. One of my favourite blog posts from “The Road Less Travelled” a while back is “Ottawa the city of comfortable brown shoes”. I love this post because it is so indicative of the Ottawa and perhaps the Canadian craving for comfort and aversion to risk taking. This mentality has served Canada very well going into the Great Reset. However, it will also be our downfall when prosperity returns and the new world order emerges.

Apparently I am not alone in thinking along these lines. The Globe and Mail had an article yesterday entitled “Canada has everything going for it … except innovation”. Canada is #1 in spending on public innovation; however, we are #14 in terms of innovation productivity. Innovation has long been a challenge for Canada yet we continue to stay the course.

In fact there is a good article in the Ottawa Citizen recently by Richard Florida on “Why Canada needs a Great Reset”. Change seems like a good thing when you are spending like a gold medal winner but performing like an also ran. The two key points from my perspective are;

- Focus on growth industries
- Create new and better jobs

This 1st place spend coupled with a 14th place finish has me pondering Canadian innovation performance. I’ll be dong some pondering and writing of the “Innovation Series” over the summer break.

Stay tuned.

Ian Graham

Why Canada needs a great reset!
Canada has everything going for it … except innovation.

Filed under: Innovation, Ottawa by Ian
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Regular readers may have noticed a decrease in the number of blog posts. I will be scaling back the number of blog posts during the summer to roughly one per week.

Steven Covey wrote several of my favourite books including; Principled Centred Leadership and the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Habit 7 is Sharpening the Saw. Sharpening the saw is a metaphor for taking the time to take care of you. The intent is to rejuvenate you in each of the 4 areas of; physical, social, mental and spiritual.

Part of rejuvenation involves more play and less work. Let the summer of the saw begin.

Ian Graham

Filed under: Featured, The Code Factory by Ian
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Its 5am raining and the neighbourhood is just starting to come to life. Birds are chirping, the odd car drives by and the coffee pot has just finished brewing. It is the perfect time for writing with little or no distractions and a fresh mind.

I am feeling very reflective today and pondering to myself that big question should we live our life by numbers. So often in western society we try and boil everything down to a very specific solution. Nice compartmentalized solutions that speak for themselves. In school particularly in engineering and science there is usually some formula or method for determining the “right” answer and correct methodology. Life isn’t a formula or a methodology and I don’t think you can boil everything down to a causal analysis or finite solution. Perhaps the key point is numbers are important but they are not the only dimension to a potential outcome.
The challenge of course is that how you feel about a possible outcome can be equally or more important than what you think about a potential outcome. In fact Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink delves deeply into the science of “thinking without thinking”, which really is very likely feeling. You often hear stories about CEO’s that make decisions based on that gut check. Getting in tune with how you feel about a potential decision and visualizing the outcomes IMHO is probably as or more important than the math.

Perhaps one of my most important lessons learned in the last two years is don’t live your life as a slave to numbers. Numbers don’t always tell the whole story and sometimes you just have to go on that gut check.

Ian Graham

Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Featured by Ian
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Coming to Suite 408 real soon “Media Style Studio @TheCodeFactory” The studio is a joint venture of Media Style and TheCodeFactory and our newly minted logo is shown above. Couldn’t wait to show it off.

The studio will be of professional quality for podcasting and video complete with Green screen and an array of tech gadgets. Expect an announcement about some custom TheCodeFactory content in the near future.

Ian Graham

Filed under: Collaboration Corner, Featured, Innovation, Ottawa, The Code Factory by Ian
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When: Tuesday June 22nd
Where: The Velvet Room (62 1/2 York Street)
Why: Mobile apps rock and a great line up of Ottawa talent including Zeebu Mobile.

Registration Link: http://bit.ly/9qaF4T/

Presenters: Glitchsoft, Magmic Games, QContinuum, Wicksoft, Zeebu Mobile

Rob Woodbridge is quickly becoming a world thought leader in the mobile space. His Vlog untether.tv chronicles leaders in the industry and offers inspirations and insights into the business of mobility. Some of Ottawa’s rising stars in the mobile space will be highlighted at the appshowcase. Hope you can make it sign up is above.

Ian Graham

Filed under: Events, Featured, Ottawa, Start-up, The Code Factory by Ian
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Perhaps one of my proudest moments in the past two years was last week when the summer time edition of Carleton University Alumni Magazine came out. Thank you to Zachary and Fateema for their contributions to the article. The article is entitled “Office 2.0” and has a picture of some of the really talented people that are Carleton Alumni and faculty. While I am not a Carleton Alumni I have worked very closely with the students, faculty at the university and like to think I share the same entrepreneurial spirit.

In the picture from left to right are:

Richard Alam – co-founder Blindside Networks, BEng/96, MEng06
Tony Bailetti – Associate Professor, Technology Innovation Management Program
Michael Weiss – director, Technology Innovation Management Program
Jason Daley – President Ucreate Media, BComm/99
Steve Muegge – faculty member, Technology Innovation Management Program, MEng04
Ian Graham – founder TheCodeFactory

Filed under: Collaboration Corner, Entrepreneurship, Featured, Innovation, Ottawa, Start-up, The Code Factory by Ian
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TheCodeFactory quietly celebrated our second anniversary on May 26th, 2010. A very happy day and certainly cause for some reflection and the opportunity to look back over the last two years. There is also a time to ponder the infinite opportunities that have unfolded in serendipitous sort of fashion. Finally where does TheCodeFactory go from here …

I have decided to turn these thoughts into my Summer time series of blog posts. I am not really sure how many posts there will be or the exact content, however, I am really looking forward to writing this series. As the title suggests the themes will be:

- Reflections
- Small Victories
- Future Plans

These posts will be in a pseudo random order.

Next post – Small Victories – The Carleton Connection

Ian Graham

Filed under: Featured, Ottawa, The Code Factory by Ian
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I am a big fan of the great stuff that OCLF (Ottawa Community Loan Fund) is doing in the Ottawa. In fact I participate as a mentor in the CYBF (Canadian Youth Business Foundation) helping a young entrepreneur that is starting up their own business … not just a business plan but a real business creating real jobs. You have to like that.

OCLF is sponsoring an event at Algonquin College on June 23rd from 6pm to 9pm sign up:

Register HERE

Tony Bailetti from Carleton University, the chief instigator of Lead to Win and lots of other really great stuff will be the keynote speaker. Two Ottawa area entrepreneurs will also share their stories. This promises to be a great event and one that I will make some time for. Hope to see you there … details below.

Filed under: Events, Featured by Ian
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… And the one you have the most control over.

I was letting people into a training session this morning at TheCodeFactory. The board room is designed to hold 16 people. The trainer called me in and pointed out that there were only 2 extra seats and they were expecting 3 more people, shouldn’t I look to find another chair for when the 3 people arrived.

The response was “when the third person arrives I will find them a chair.” My thinking was that right now this isn’t a problem and I have other stuff to do. The risk is relatively low and I know where to find a chair, why solve a problem that doesn’t exist.

When managing time does a stitch in time save nine or is solving problems that don’t exist frittering away valuable resources on useless pursuits?

Time will tell.

Ian Graham

Filed under: Featured, Start-up, The Code Factory by Ian
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… is a bit like learning to ski by reading a book on the beach.

I read this on one of the blogs I follow or on twitter within the past few weeks and just wanted to share with everyone. One last bit that goes so well with this:

“In theory there is no difference between practice and theory. But, in practice there is.”
Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut / Yogi Berra.

Best,

Ian Graham

Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Featured by Ian
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