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In January, Stephen Sorocky was appointed CEO of Waterloo, Ontario-based Virtek Vision. Fresh from a successful turnaround of a small VC-backed Toronto-based instrument company, Stephen brought a breadth of experience developed at firms such as EDS and Spar Aerospace where he rose to run one of the firm’s most successful divisions.... Events of the ensuing six months however caught everyone by surprise and took the firm down an altogether different path of hostile takeover attempt, restructuring and eventual sale to NYSE - listed Gerber Scientific of Connecticut. StoneWood Group’s Bob Hebert sat down with Stephen Sorocky to discuss the lessons which Virtek Vision holds for all small-cap publicly traded companies.
In January, Stephen Sorocky was appointed CEO of Waterloo, Ontario-based Virtek Vision. Fresh from a successful turnaround of a small VC-backed Toronto-based instrument company, Stephen brought a breadth of experience developed at firms such as EDS and Spar Aerospace where he rose to run one of the firm’s most successful divisions.
Virtek Vision is a $53mm per year technology spinout founded years earlier by two University of Waterloo professors. Publicly traded on the TSX, the firm’s performance had been uneven and its stock had steadily declined from a high of $7.00 per share several [...] read more »Roger Miller is the Jarislowsky Professor of Project Management at École Polytechnique de Montréal.
Marcel Côté is a senior partner at Secor Inc., a Canadian-based international strategic consulting firm.
As a recently released federal task force report emphasized, Canadian companies need to become more competitive. But “competitive” these days is practically synonymous with “innovative.” The issue is a “But” because there is a dearth of knowledge, especially in Canada, on how companies around the world innovate. These authors researched companies around the world, and their findings, described in this article, will help Canadian companies jump start their efforts to become more innovative.
~ This article is reprinted courtesy of Ivey Business Journal. ~
Innovation is a major engine of economic growth. While competition forces businesses to innovate, managers have no easy recipes at hand. From a public policy perspective, the challenge is even more obscure. Despite very aggressive innovation policies, Canada is a laggard when it comes to innovation, resulting in significantly lower productivity growth— and in the creation of an issue that has become a major national concern.
This paper attempts to shed light on this dilemma by presenting a global survey of over 1000 large and small firms—the MINE (Managing Innovation in the New Economy) survey—which [...] read more »Eric Morse is Associate Dean, Programs, and the JR Shaw Professor in Entrepreneurship and Family-Owned Business, Richard Ivey School of Business.
On many levels and from several perspectives, an entrepreneur’s challenges are different. One of the most acute challenges may be managing in a credit crunch, specifically, finding cash when traditional sources of funding have all but stopped extending credit. This author, who has worked with many highly visible and successful entrepreneurs, offers helpful suggestions.
~ This article is reprinted courtesy of Ivey Business Journal. ~
Over the past several years I have had the privilege of working
with entrepreneurs who are the leaders of a number of successful
high-growth companies. Most of these entrepreneurs don't like to
take on debt or give up equity to grow their businesses. They are
more comfortable growing organically, at a measured pace, because
they are in it for the long haul and are not in a hurry to harvest
the value they have created through private sale or public markets.
For the most part, these are the value creators, or builders, of
the Canadian economy, and collectively they have a significant
impact on the [...] read more »
Data Domain has been nothing short of a spectacular success story. The firm is the leading provider of Deduplication Storage systems for disk backup and network-based disaster recovery. From zero revenues in 2003, the firm recorded net revenue for the third quarter of 2008 of $75.0 million, an increase of 23% from the second quarter of 2008 and an increase of 134% from the third quarter of 2007. Having gone public in June 2007, with a valuation of close to $1billion the company continues to grow at a breath taking pace with ambitions to be the ‘next Net App’.
Frank Slootman joined the company as CEO in 2003. The firm was very small, with no management team, less than $3M in available cash, and no revenues in sight. The outlook for technology startups was bleak. Frank was also a first time CEO from out of the category.
Schweichler-Price and Partners interviewed Frank Slootman about his tremendous journey in building Data Domain, lessons learned and the firm’s ambitious path going forward.
Selection excellence is one of the more elusive goals of all organizations. From poorly defined job requirements to poorly considered and inconsistent selection techniques, the process of hiring executives remains haphazard and more art than science.
RHR International is one of the world’s premier industrial psychology consultancies. The firm pioneered the field in the 1930s, and remains a renowned innovator of theory and practice. With 19 offices around the world, RHR counsels some of the world’s most successful organizations on improving selection practices.
StoneWood Group’s Bob Hebert sat down with RHR’s Head of International Operations, Dr. Guy Beaudin to discuss best practices in selection...
About The Author
Robert Hebert, Ph.D., is the Managing Partner of Toronto-based StoneWood Group Inc.
Selection excellence is one of the more elusive goals of all organizations. From poorly defined job requirements to poorly considered and inconsistent selection techniques, the process of hiring executives remains haphazard and more art than science.
RHR International is one of the world’s premier industrial psychology consultancies. The firm pioneered the field in the 1930s, and remains a renowned innovator of theory and practice. With 19 offices around the world, RHR counsels some of the world’s most successful organizations on improving selection practices.
StoneWood Group’s [...] read more »Finding the right employees has always been one of the toughest challenges facing small and medium-sized firms. The bad news is that the labour shortage is going to get worse. In fact, many HR experts believe that all the ingredients of a "perfect storm" are converging on the workplace. The competition for good employees will become as fierce as the competition for good customers. In this report, CEOs of rapidly growing Ontario firms talk about their experiences in finding, recruiting and retaining employees. Experts also provide valuable insights into the changing nature of the workplace and human resources management
~ Reprinted with permission from Ministry of Small Business and Entrepreneurship ~
Mentorship programs can boost a company’s productivity, enhance morale, improve employee retention, contribute to leadership development and aid in succession planning. Companies that practice mentorship, as the profiles in this report show, say that mentoring has a clear, bottom-line impact and is an ingredient of their recipe for success. No longer limited to the traditional senior mentor-junior protégé archetype, mentoring today takes many forms.
~ Reprinted with permission from Ministry of Small Business and Entrepreneurship ~
In “Mischief of Many Sorts” I offered the view that rules are all very well but they follow the dictum of necessary but not sufficient. I concluded that piece on the issue of ethics and asked the question: “How should directors prepare for the sins they know will be committed?” Sound, strongly held ethics are the best defense, and if we could only be sure that they will always be in operation this page would be unnecessary – but it is.
About the Author
Donald B. Hathaway is currently serves on the boards of four private businesses and he is the Chair and a Founder of one of them.
Watch for the Red Lights
In "Mischief of Many Sorts" I offered the view that rules are all very well but they follow the dictum of necessary but not sufficient. I concluded that piece on the issue of ethics and asked the question: "How should directors prepare for the sins they know will be committed?" Sound, strongly held ethics are the best defense, and if we could only be sure that they will always be in operation this page would be unnecessary - but it is.
A dilemma for directors is the fact that ethical behaviour is not simple. Not only does one have to know the right [...] read more »In 1994, Tony van Marken joined Toronto-based Architel Systems Corporation and over the next 5 years helped grow the telecom software vendor from $1mm to $50mm in revenues while taking the company public on the TSX and NASDAQ. In recognition of his contributions, he was awarded the Canadian Entrepreneur of the Year (1996) award by the Canadian Venture Capital Association (CVCA) and was named one of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 (1999). Architel was subsequently sold to Nortel for US $400mm.
About The Author
Robert Hebert, Ph.D., is the Managing Partner of Toronto-based StoneWood Group Inc.
In 1994, Tony van Marken joined Toronto-based Architel Systems Corporation and over the next 5 years helped grow the telecom software vendor from $1mm to $50mm in revenues while taking the company public on the TSX and NASDAQ. In recognition of his contributions, he was awarded the Canadian Entrepreneur of the Year (1996) award by the Canadian Venture Capital Association (CVCA) and was named one of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 (1999). Architel was subsequently sold to Nortel for US $400mm.
In 1999 Tony became a partner in venture capital firm XDL Intervest and over the next 5 years [...] read more »This report is based on a survey of CEOs of Ontario's leading growth firms. It looks at succession as a leadership issue and explores CEOs' strategies and experiences.
~ Reprinted with permission from Ministry of Small Business and Entrepreneurship ~
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Recent Posts
- The Plight of the Canadian Small Cap ~An Interview with Stephen Sorocky, CEO of Virtek Vision
1 second ago - THE GAMES THAT INNOVATORS PLAY
3 days ago - ENTREPRENEURS: GENERATING CASH IN A CREDIT CRUNCH
10 days ago - StoneWood Interview Series - An Interview with Frank Slootman, CEO of Data Domain
2 weeks ago - The Art & Science of Selection Excellence ~ An Interview with Dr. Guy Beaudin of RHR International.
6 weeks ago
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