Ottawa Business Journal 20151221

DIGITAL-ONLY EDITION

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Stars are born Gigataur scores hit with deal to produce Star Wars game for Disney subsidiary > PAGE 6

Office • Industrial Space Retail • Development Land

613-226-2000 www.arnon.ca December 21, 2015 Vol. 19, NO. 4

Ottawa Commercial Leasing creating the right space for your business merkburn.com 613.224.5464

For daily business news visit obj.ca

Party on!

City hopes CIBC partnership pays big dividends in 2017. > PAGE 7

R&D dip

Jeffrey Dale says Canada is losing ground in innovation. > PAGES 8-9

Bruce Firestone calls his group’s effort to land an NHL team a “one-in-a-million shot” he probably wouldn’t take if he had to do it all again. PHOTO BY MARK HOLLERON

Rare air Carleton student’s startup reaching for the stars after landing $500,000 software contract with space agency. > PAGE 11

‘It was really a coming together for Ottawa’

In a very candid new book, Senators co-founder Bruce Firestone looks back at the highs and lows of his quest to bring an NHL team to his hometown OBJ has in-depth conversation with Firestone > PAGES 3-5

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ENTREPRENEURSHIP I think the evolution of Shopify has been pretty exciting for our town. It’s made a difference. I think the coming together of Lansdowne Park and TD Place and the RedBlacks has been pretty exciting. But for a town of almost a million people, it’s not like you have a daily headline that blows your mind. We need to do more to brand Ottawa and to give our most precious resource, which is our kids, an opportunity to stay here in town, be proud of their town, and do world-class things here. Where’s the next Terry Matthews or Mike Potter? We can’t just have Tobi (Lütke) and Shopify. We need more. years nobody will care. And for that matter, I might not be here to write it. I did promise (Senators president) Cyril Leeder, who’s a history buff himself, that I would write the book someday, and it just seemed that the day had come.

OBJ: You mention many personal incidents, including several near-death experiences and the breakup of your first marriage, which left you a single parent.

How difficult was it to relive some of those painful moments from the past and put them out there for the world to read about?

BF: I didn’t put everything in the book (laughs). What I did was I put an edited version of it together. I could’ve written it, you know, “(NHL commissioner) Gary Bettman said this, (former NHL president) John Ziegler said that, (former Chicago Blackhawks owner) Bill Wirtz said this,” but I didn’t think that would be very interesting for a reader, just a chronology. The timeline is staggered, and I went back between the personal, recounting stories about the actual team itself and the league. I tried to make it maybe a little bit more interesting, so that I hope anyway, the reader’s going to kind of cheer for the underdog, which would be yours truly.

OBJ: You reiterate throughout the book that to be an entrepreneur, you have to be a little bit crazy…

BF: I would like to write another book one day titled “Entrepreneurs Are Idiots” because you have to be an idiot to be an entrepreneur, especially in real estate. You

In a revealing new book, Ottawa Senators co-founder Bruce Firestone details his relentless effort to bring the NHL back to the nation’s capital. But his ambitious goal was achieved at a heavy personal cost, and if he had to do it all over again, Ottawa – and the NHL – might be very different today

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n Dec. 6, 1990, a group of young Ottawa entrepreneurs accomplished what most pundits thought was impossible – they convinced the NHL to grant an expansion franchise to the nation’s capital.

That intrepid trio was led by a 39-yearold real estate developer named Bruce Firestone, whose goals included delivering a Stanley Cup to Ottawa and turning 600 acres of land next to the team’s future westend arena into a thriving neighbourhood with a hotel, office space, shops, parks and homes.

Twenty-five years later, Mr. Firestone

is no longer part of the Senators organization, and his dreams of a Stanley Cup and a bustling mixed-use development at what is now the Canadian Tire Centre have yet to be realized.

Still, he hasn’t given up. Left virtually penniless by the team’s bankruptcy in the early 2000s, Mr. Firestone, now 64, rebuilt his life. Today, he is a real estate broker, professor, motivational speaker – and writer. A regular columnist for OBJ, Mr. Firestone just released a book on his quest to bring back the Senators that is part autobiography, part thesis and all Bruce.

In Don’t Back Down: the Real Story

03 OBJ.CA

OBJ: What prompted you to write this book now?

BF: In some ways, I probably should have waited another 25 years, but one of the reasons why I did it now is I just turned 64 and frankly waiting another 25 years would just be too long, and maybe after 50

Firestone the author back in the game

MONDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2015

behind the Founding of the NHL’s Ottawa Senators, Mr. Firestone shares his tale of the league’s return to the city it left in 1934. He recently spoke with OBJ print editor David Sali about the book, and what follows is an abridged transcript of that conversation.

OBJ: It sounds like you didn’t always have the most idyllic childhood. In particular, you describe some less-than-happy experiences attending a pretty rough-andtumble all-boys’ school. How do you think that shaped your future behaviour and aspirations?

BF: I wouldn’t be the only person who went through a difficult time at school, and I think it does shape you in many ways. That school in particular, I remember reading in the newspaper two decades after I left it that one of the teachers had ended up in jail for very serious crimes. How does that shape a person? Well, I think in the sense that I wanted for my children and myself that my family and my children and hopefully my grandchildren will have a better experience than I did. But it also gives you a bit of a tougher edge to your character. Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but my personality is kind of like biting on tinfoil. Some of that, I think, comes from my childhood experiences, some of which were marvellous and inspiring, but some of which were really, truly terrible.

Bruce Firestone has written a candid and very personal history of the drive to bring the NHL back to his hometown. PHOTO BY MARK HOLLERON

ENTREPRENEURSHIP something that’s world-class.’

OBJ: What do we have to do to get back on that path?

BF:If you don’t have political will, you cannot achieve anything today.

You need to be able to say to people, “Look, we know that not everybody wants a boardwalk or not everybody wants Expo 67 or not everybody wants the Palladium in Kanata. We get that, because there are differences of opinions, but we’re going to do it.” Unless you have that from your political leadership, you’re going to really struggle over the next generation.

I used to teach architecture at Carleton for 14 years, and I would see these wonderful talented 22-year-olds and I was thinking, “Wow, I’d like to see them 10 years from now after maybe they’ve got one or two projects off the ground.”

That’s not good enough. It’s logical and sensible if you’re an elected official to do nothing, because then you don’t get anyone mad at you and you probably will get re-elected. That is a political problem and to be honest with you, I don’t know how to fix it.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2015

know how difficult it is to get real estate projects approved. It took us 60 months to get the Palladium, now the Canadian Tire Centre, approved. Sixty months! And only 25 months or something like that to build it. We had, I think, 85 major conditions, and each of them had to be fulfilled before you could actually build it. That’s the kind of thing that young entrepreneurs are facing, which is why I wrote for OBJ that the real estate business is suffering from a shortage of entrepreneurs, certainly here in Ottawa.

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OBJ: How can we change that?

BF: I gave a couple of keynote speeches in Saskatchewan last month. I said I think the single biggest challenge that we face in terms of getting our economies on track is defeating the forces of NIMBYism.

Now, I come at it from a developer’s point of view. Other people don’t agree; I get that. But I cannot tell you the number of homebuilders and developers I talk to here in Ottawa who literally are shaking with fear and trepidation before and after they meet with city planners and officials.

If I were to show the list of projects that had gone the tubes (since amalgamation 15 years ago), it would be an amazing list.

First and foremost amongst those would be light rail to the south of our city. I had clients of mine buying land around those (proposed) stations to build apartment buildings, shopping centres. The City of

Ottawa not only didn’t build a kilometre of rail, they ended up paying tens of millions of dollars in penalties. This a huge problem. It’s political – it’s not, do we have good entrepreneurs, do we have good ideas? We do. But we’re constantly battling with our own city and really shooting ourselves in the foot.

OBJ: You had some suggestions for how Ottawa can achieve a lasting legacy with its Canada 150 celebrations in 2017.

What are your thoughts on the progress of the Ottawa 2017 plans?

BF: I said back in 2013, “Look, we’ve got the longest skateway, let’s build the longest boardwalk in the world and connect the wonderful institutions and rivers and canals that we have.” It would be a lasting project for 150 years. If you read between the lines of everything that’s been said up until today by the (Ottawa 2017) committee, they’re really saying, “Well, gee, wouldn’t it be great if somebody had an event in a park and we all lit candles” or something. I mean, there’s nothing going on as far as I can see that’s going to be special about 2017. Canada, I think, has lost some of that energy and vision that we had when (former National Capital Commission chair) Douglas Fullerton said, ‘Hey, we’re going to create the longest skateway in the world,’ when we did things like Expo 67 in Montreal, where we thought as Canadians, ‘We can do

OBJ: Walk us through the thought process that led you to spearhead the effort to bring the NHL back to Ottawa.

BF: When I first started building office buildings (with real estate firm Terrace Investments) in the early ’80s, I think we were getting $18 or $19 a square foot for suburban offices, which was a pretty good number. Then it sort of tracked downwards, and I think by 1987 or ’88, it had dropped down to $6. So I said to Cyril (Leeder, who was then president of Terrace), “We just can’t build any more office buildings. The writing’s on the wall.”

Office space is just a tough, tough game.

You’re competing against pension funds and REITs. We were facing that back in ’87.

That’s why I asked myself, “What do we do next? Let’s look at what Toronto’s doing.

Maybe we can predict the future by looking there.”

I think we had a good plan. Cyril Leeder is a sensible individual. (Former Terrace vice-president and Senators co-founder) Randy Sexton is as well. Everybody thought it was a doable plan because we had done that sort of thing before. But we just didn’t anticipate a change in political direction when David Peterson, the Liberal former premier of Ontario, called an election two and a half years early. He was riding well over 50 per cent in the polls and he lost.

OBJ: Do you think things would have turned out differently had the Liberals stayed in power?

BF: I think so. I think yours truly would still be with the Sens and we’d be having quite a different conversation today. That was a pivotal point for me.

OBJ: Bob Rae’s NDP government ended

up fighting your arena plan at the Ontario Municipal Board. Was there ever a time when you thought, this whole thing is going to go up in smoke?

BF: No. I never felt that way. I never doubted we would win that (OMB hearing). The Ontario Municipal Board is about land use, it’s not about one backing one political party of another. I also knew that it would be the end of me as the owner of the team at one point because we took an $80-million writedown. We built the (Highway 417) interchange and we had to pay for it, and you can’t finance that. And we took a $50-million writedown on the value of our property. I knew at that point I wouldn’t be the owner for much longer, but we would get hockey in Ottawa.

OBJ: What was it like to be there at the Civic Centre on opening night against Montreal on Oct. 8, 1992?

BF: That was really quite special. That building at that time held about 10,500 people, but I bet you we had 12,000 people in there that night. And I’m sure there’s 120,000 people living in Ottawa who claim to have been there that night. The most magical moment for me was when the team was introduced for the first time.

There was a standing ovation that went on for, I think, five and a half minutes. It just went on and on and on. I remember watching (original Senators) Brad Marsh and Mike Peluso and Laurie Boschman and the others looking up in the stands as people just kept applauding. Then it occurred to me that people in the audience weren’t really applauding me or our team, they were kind of applauding themselves.

It was really a coming together for Ottawa.

OBJ: You spent several years in Australia in the 1970s, earning your master’s degree in engineering and PhD in urban economics, and your oldest son Andrew

FROM ‘DON’T BACK DOWN’

OBJ: If you had to do it all over again, would you still bring the Senators back?

BF: No, I would not. That was a one-time deal. I had some fun. There were 20 major things that had to happen to make the Senators a permanent fixture and if each one of them is a 50-50 shot, that’s 0.5 to the power of 20, which turns out to be a one-in-a-million shot. As an entrepreneur, you don’t want to take too many one-ina-million shots in your career. You could live a million years and only one of them would be successful. That’s not gonna work. When I coach young people, I’m not telling them to take moonshots. There are very, very few people on this planet who can take moonshots. There are seven billion people on the planet, and there’s really only one Elon Musk.

OBJ: Still, you argue that Ottawa is a better place today because the team is here.

BF: I do think that’s true, especially if you’re trying to attract and keep young people here. That’s everything. I deal with communities that are literally vanishing, where the average population age has gone from 30-something to 50-something, and in 20 years it will be 80-something, because there’s so much political obstruction and so little economic opportunity. What are the things that motivate entrepreneurs?

One, they want to be loved. Two, they want to be close to family. And three, they want to be appreciated. When you go into a planning or economic development office and all they do is express one concern after another, it’s a big-time downer.

OBJ: In 2005, after the Senators went

bankrupt, all you were left with was your car (a Saab 9-5).

BF: I still have it (chuckles). It’s so old I call it a collector car.

OBJ: You write in the book that you were owed $57 million in your exit deal from the Senators. But you ended up with just $3,500, and you were actually hundreds of thousands in debt to the bank and the Canada Revenue Agency. You argue you were worse off after the team’s bankruptcy than you were as a 20-year-old university graduate.

Looking back, what were your emotions at that time?

BF: You know, I was flabbergasted when I got the settlement from the (bankruptcy) trustee. I still don’t know how you can have $485 million in liabilities and $650,000 in assets.

That I never was able to understand.

You’d have to ask Mr. Bryden (Rod Bryden, the former CEO of Terrace Investments and president of the team at the time). I tell people, you’ve got three days to be upset: the first day you can be mad, the second day you can be sad, but the third day, get up, get a little bit of exercise and get on with the rest of your life. That’s what I did. I’ve worked every day of the last 10 years – every single day. I had to go back to school and get my real estate licence so I could support my family. It’s been a long haul.

(Editor’s note: His debt to creditors was finally paid off in October, when he was still writing the book.) You just have to recognize that you have one life, and you have to get up and dust yourself off. You cannot be an

entrepreneur if you can’t sell, you cannot be an entrepreneur if you can’t execute and you cannot be an entrepreneur if unhappy events are going to derail you permanently.

After this book is written and launched, the chances of me revisiting this subject are zero. I will move on with my life and I will never look back.

OBJ: What can you say about your family and their support through all of this?

BF: It makes it sad when you ask me that, to be honest. I think they deserved better. I have five kids.

They went from a life that was pretty good in many ways to one that was more difficult. They have all said it’s made them tougher and stronger as adults. But obviously as a father, that’s not something that you would ever wish for your children. You want the best for them, and when you’re not able to provide that, that’s obviously something that you regret.

OBJ: But they stuck by you, as did your wife Dawn.

BF: (At the book launch on Dec. 6, the 25th anniversary of the day the Senators’ franchise was granted), I was able to thank my wife in front of the Sens staff and the original investors. Something happened at that moment that will make me forever grateful. The entire audience stood up and turned to Dawn and gave her a wonderful, amazing standing ovation. There were a few tears, and it was a great moment. I was really grateful.

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OBJ: What is the biggest lesson you learned from all of this?

BF: If I were to do my career over again as an entrepreneur, I would’ve spent a lot more time understanding the field of finance. The average Wall Street 30-year-old is making $900,000 a year. For people like you and me, we’re in the wrong business.

The people who are making the most money on this planet are clearly on Wall Street or Bay Street or in Shanghai. Finance is something I would’ve acquired more expertise in.

Bruce Firestone with one of his biggest supporters, original Senator Frank Finnigan. PHOTOS SUPPLIED BY BRUCE FIRESTONE

MONDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2015

The NHL is made up of member clubs, and I should underline the word club. It’s a club made up today of 30 men plus commissioner Gary Bettman. In December 1990, the club had 21 members together with president John Ziegler.

Off the ice, the club is mostly friendly, and they do try to help each other in terms of business development. In the matter of on-ice performance, all bets are off. They will frequently lie to each other, deceive one another, cheat, prevaricate, feint, misdirect and generally get away with everything they can but staying just an inch shy of getting into trouble with the commish.

One member of the BOG told me (when they were trying to depose John Ziegler early in 1993), “Getting rid of a sports league president or a commissioner is like getting rid of Julius Caesar or Saddam Hussein. All the members of the opposition have to run up at the same time and stab him repeatedly. Because if you don’t kill him, he’ll kill you and your team.”

Commissioners are tyrants. They have security apparatuses that are purportedly there to protect the integrity of the game against gambling, rule breaking, drugs, alcohol, violence, blackmail, and criminal activity such as money laundering and tax evasion. But they also provide the Commish with an endless supply of dirt on member clubs, their owners and executives.

If you fall out of favor with a commissioner in any major league sport, that’s it, you’re done. They have so many ways to hurt you, your team, your business and your family (via, for example, suspensions, fines, removal of draft picks, investigations, withholding league funds, arranging to have any initiative you bring forward to the board voted down, removing you from key league committees, not giving your city the opportunity to host major league functions like entry draft, all star weekend, outdoor game, leaking embarrassing news to the media, mucking up your team’s schedule, appointing arbitrators who have a predisposition to finding against you and your team) that you might as well give up unless… as English pilot, 17th century adventurer John Anjinsan Blackthorne said to Lord Toranaga, future shogun of Nippon, “Unless you win.”

The way the boys got rid of Mr Ziegler is that fearless New Jersey Devils owner Dr John J McMullen got a few members of the board on his private plane, and flew from city to city securing support for terminating the president. He did not make a single phone call; he was that afraid of premature leaks.

Then they called an impromptu NHL meeting via conference call. When every member of the board was on the line, they asked John Ziegler to join the call. Next Dr McMullen asked for a vote on his motion, got a seconder, minutes later John was looking for a new job.

was born there. At one point, you write, “I should have stayed in Australia.” Do you really think so?

BF: There were two future-shaping moments in my life. One was my decision to leave Australia and the other was to leave Los Angeles (where first serious girlfriend Ava lived). I’m 64 now, and you do some looking back. Those were two forks in the road. One would have continued to allow me to develop as an academic in Canberra at the (Australian National University) and the other would have been maybe to stay in L.A. I came back to Ottawa to help my dad out for six months (in the early ’80s), and here I am 30 years later.

DEALS OF THE YEAR The force is with them A major contract with Disney to produce a Star Wars-themed game landed a small Ottawa company called Gigataur on the industry’s A-list in 2015

BY DAVID SALI david@obj.ca

MONDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2015

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ith Star Wars: The Force Awakens triggering a new wave of interest in George Lucas’s enduring sci-fi saga, a small Ottawa mobile gaming company is hoping to cash in.

“Right now is the epicentre of Star Wars,” says Gigataur CEO Andrew Fisher, whose firm developed a new Star Warsthemed game for Disney Interactive that launched earlier this year. “It’s been an interesting time.”

Since the release of Star Wars Rebels: Recon Missions in March, the game has garnered plenty of rave reviews from fans. Working with an entertainment colossus such as Disney has also helped Gigataur raise its profile significantly in the small but highly competitive mobile gaming sector.

“We’ve produced at that level and very few people have, so it’s opened all kinds of doors for us,” Mr. Fisher says.

It was a project two years in the making, one that really started in about the most low-tech way possible in today’s world.

A self-described “old-school sales guy,” Mr. Fisher simply picked up his phone and cold-called Kevin Feige, president of Disney subsidiary Marvel Studios.

Mr. Fisher and his colleagues at what was then known as Glitchsoft – they numbered all of about five people – were big fans of Marvel’s mobile games.

Fresh off their highly praised release of He-Man: The Most Powerful Game in the Universe, the team at the local firm wanted the studio to know they had the same kind of passion for Marvel’s characters and would be more than happy to collaborate on a project.

“We pitched (Mr. Feige) with a standard pitch call – short, two sentences,” Mr. Fisher says. “And he was like, ‘OK, I’m interested.’”

Marvel’s CEO soon introduced Mr. Fisher to his vice-president of business development, planting the seeds for what would become Gigataur’s most important business partnership.

“He treated me like I was at that level,” Mr. Fisher says of Mr. Feige.

Mr. Fisher’s relationship with another high-powered individual – Terry

Matthews – through his past association with Mr. Matthews’ Wesley Clover investment firm likely helped with that.

“From then on in, we would just use my Terry Matthews skill set and we negotiated ourselves into a project with Marvel, which then led us into introductions to Disney.”

The project with Marvel, a tie-in with the studio’s 2014 film X-Men: Days of Future Past, helped cement the Ottawa company’s reputation as an industry leader.

“It put us into a triple-A category that very few other studios worldwide could compete with at the time,” says Mr. Fisher, 47.

“When we were negotiating for the (Star Wars) contract, they said flat out to me, the reason that we’re signing this with you is because we feel that Marvel’s already done the diligence with you. We unfairly got in through a cold call, if you want to call it. That’s old-school Sales 101. It works.”

Not that landing the deal with Disney was a piece of cake. Mr. Fisher figures he probably had at least 50 phone or faceto-face meetings with company execs, who left no stone unturned despite already being familiar with Gigataur’s work.

In fact, his team spent eight weeks of coding time putting together a prototype, free of charge, to prove they had what it takes.

“It was, I’d say, a year of wooing back and forth, where we were sort of jawing with each other, figuring out where we would find a sweet spot,” he explains.

After finally beating out nearly a dozen competitors to get the go-ahead, Gigataur ramped up its Ottawa head count to 30 full-time employees from five. The company spent a full year developing the game with help from the technical wizards at Lucasfilm, another Disney subsidiary.

“They taught us all kinds of tricks – how to improve our visuals, how to push our graphics,” Mr. Fisher says. “It was a lot of just working back and forth.

Our team responded. They rose to the challenge.”

Gigataur’s founder says his old boss at Wesley Clover taught him a company will never succeed unless it dares to venture outside its comfort zone.

Andrew Fisher’s “old-school” sales methods paid off with a big win. PHOTO BY MARK HOLLERON

“We purposely tried to win a deal that was way above our capability, and we were able to learn from it and grow from it.”

– GIGATAUR FOUNDER ANDREW FISHER

“This is a Terryism: if you build to the size of the company you are, you’ll never get anywhere,” he says. “You’ve got to go out and win bigger deals, so that, one, you understand how bigger business operates and two, so that you can start to scale your company. We purposely tried to win a deal that was way above our capability, and we were able to learn from it and grow from it.”

Since the release of the Star Wars game, Gigataur has scaled back to about 15 employees. In addition to changing its name earlier this year – “It’s a much stronger, bolder name, and so I think that’s sort of more representative of our capabilities and the types of projects we’ve been working on,” Mr. Fisher explains – the firm is also tackling its biggest challenge yet: changing the mobile gaming business itself.

Currently, the industry makes most of its money through the “freemium” model, in which users can download a game for free but must pay for all the really good stuff.

Mr. Fisher says that’s unfair.

“The best games rip people off,” he

says. “They force them to pay to win. So it’s not a model that we’re really fond of.”

He says Gigataur is working on a “more advanced” revenue model that will allows sponsors to display their ads to gamers in a “non-exploitative” way. He plans to unveil the beta version with a “big partner” in April or May. “All I can tell you is that we’ve figured out a way to not interrupt the players’ flow so they don’t get any interruptions, we don’t exploit them in any way through our game designs,” he says. “That’s our special sauce. It’s something we’ve been working a long time on.”

Most media will soon be consumed on mobile devices, Mr. Fisher says, and whoever figures out the most innovative way to generate revenue from games and apps will be in the driver’s seat.

“The next wave of reaching consumers is all through mobile touch devices,” he says. “Mobile is becoming so important for brands to engage with their customers, and their challenge is, how do they deliver value? That’s the nut we’re trying to crack.”

“We really wanted to do something that would tie our 150th birthday to Canada’s in a significant way. (Ottawa 2017 planners) were early, they were organized and they were quite visionary in what they were trying to achieve.”

– STEPHEN FORBES, CIBC’S EXECUTIVE VICE-PRESIDENT AND CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER

Banking on a bigtime 2017 bash City’s ‘clear vision’ for Canada 150 celebrations convinced CIBC to jump on board with multimillion-dollar contribution

BY DAVID SALI david@obj.ca

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Ottawa 2017 executive director Guy Laflamme has big plans for Canada’s big bash. FILE PHOTO

promoting Ottawa 2017 and its mission.

“It was definitely a team effort,” he says.

Securing a lead sponsor of CIBC’s magnitude makes landing “second-tier” sponsors much easier, Mr. Laflamme says.

“It opens up all kinds of additional

possibilities,” he notes, adding Ottawa 2017 is in serious negotiations with four other “very prestigious” companies on deals it hopes to announce over the next few months. Those agreements will be worth millions of dollars, he says.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2015

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he most important number in the recently announced sponsorship deal between Ottawa 2017 and CIBC isn’t even in the financial bottom line.

It’s 1867.

After all, how many corporations that have the wherewithal to fund the biggest birthday bash in the nation’s history also happen to have been born in the same year as the country itself?

Probably only one, it’s safe to say. So when Ottawa 2017 executive director Guy Laflamme and his team began compiling a list of potential sponsors that would be celebrating key anniversaries in the year of Canada’s 150th, CIBC was, not surprisingly, right at the top.

“This was a perfect fit for us,” says Mr. Laflamme, a driving force behind the multimillion-dollar agreement that was revealed in a glitzy ceremony at city hall earlier this month.

CIBC’s arrangement with Ottawa 2017 – which, according to Mayor Jim Watson, is the largest event partnership in the city’s history – means most events during the year-long celebration will be free.

But the deal involves more than just millions of dollars in cash.

The country’s fifth-largest bank will provide marketing support, incorporating the Ottawa 2017 logo in its advertising and promoting the nation’s capital as a “destination of choice” for Canada’s 150th birthday, says Stephen Forbes, CIBC’s executive vice-president and chief commercial officer.

The financial institution will also play a key role in planning major events, such as a gala it will co-host with the city on July 1, 2017 at the Shaw Centre, along with helping to draft the Ottawa 2017 economic impact study.

“We really wanted to do something that would tie our 150th birthday to Canada’s in a significant way,” says Mr. Forbes. “We knew we had a common vision, a common passion.”

Mr. Watson first approached CIBC about sponsoring Ottawa’s Canada 150 bash a couple of years ago, around the same time that eight to 10 other potential 2017 partners contacted the bank. But Mr. Forbes says Ottawa was the No. 1 contender right out of the gate.

“It’s a natural for us,” he says, adding the city’s status as the nation’s capital was an important factor but not the only one.

“It was also the depth of the plan they brought forth. No doubt in my mind, when I look across the country at other cities and other partners we talked to, Ottawa 2017 has always had a very clear vision. They were the first ones to the table with a clear plan. They were early, they were organized and they were quite visionary in what they were trying to achieve.”

Still, the partnership didn’t get off to the most auspicious start.

Fifteen minutes before Ottawa 2017 was scheduled to make its first presentation to CIBC’s sponsorship committee in downtown Toronto on Sept. 14, 2014, Mr. Laflamme got a phone call from the committee asking if he’d changed his mind.

He was told no one there had received a soft copy of Ottawa 2017’s presentation.

Realizing there must have been a technical glitch, a frantic Mr. Laflamme e-mailed the package to the executives just in the nick of time.

“It was a bit of a rough start,” he says, adding the committee’s reaction was “positive, but not overly positive.”

The bank saw enough in the city’s plan to invite Mr. Laflamme and Mr. Watson back to make a more formal presentation at CIBC’s head office the following month.

“I think it would be fair to call it a home run,” Mr. Laflamme says.

His work wasn’t finished, however.

With help from local marketing agencies Banfield and Mediaplus, the Ottawa 2017 Bureau – the not-for-profit organization responsible for planning the city’s Canada 150 celebrations – continued to fine-tune its flashy audiovisual presentation.

More meetings followed, and in April Mr. Laflamme and his team were asked to make one final 20-minute pitch to a group that included Mr. Forbes and CIBC president and chief executive Victor Dodig.

“That was a pretty high-stress and highpressure moment,” Mr. Laflamme says.

“Once again, it was very well-received.”

The entire process involved at least eight face-to-face meetings, not to mention hundreds of e-mails and phone calls, Mr. Laflamme says. He credits his group’s corporate partnerships chief Kim Haliburton and communications chief Annie Desrosiers for their leadership in

COMMENTARY Great River Media 250 City Centre Ave., Suite 500 Ottawa, Ontario, K1R 6K7 obj.ca

Nortel, BlackBerry and Bombardier were once all true world leaders in innovation.

However, they were slow to recognize changes in the marketplace, and when they did, their level of innovation was below what the market expected

TELEPHONE Phone: 613-238-1818 Sales Fax: 613-248-4564 News Fax: No faxes, email editor@obj.ca PUBLISHER Michael Curran, 238-1818 ext. 228 publisher@obj.ca CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER Terry Tyo, 238-1818 ext. 268 terry@greatriver.ca EDITOR, PRINT CONTENT David Sali, 238-1818 ext. 269 david@greatriver.ca EDITOR, ONLINE CONTENT Tom Pechloff, 238-1818 ext. 291 editor@obj.ca COPY EDITOR Krystle Kung ADVERTISING SALES General Inquiries, 238-1818 ext. 286 sales@obj.ca

Whatever happened to Innovation Nation?

In the third instalment of a new series on entrepreneurship, Jeffrey Dale examines why the likes of BlackBerry and Bombardier are no longer market leaders and what Canada needs to do to reclaim its place as a prime source of disruptive corporate R&D

MONDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2015

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OBJ.CA

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have always thought of Canada as an innovation nation. We have many entrepreneurs with great ideas who start companies and grow them to be successful businesses. Our governments and businesses invest in research and development to drive more innovation.

Businesses rely on innovation to increase sales and profit.

So why are many of Canada’s corporate research and development leaders misreading changes in their market and not developing the innovative products or services their customers are looking for?

Nortel, BlackBerry and now Bombardier are all examples of Canadian corporate leaders that didn’t adjust to major changes in their industries and lost their competitiveness.

Until 2008, Nortel was the largest corporate investor in R&D in Canada, according to Research Infosource’s annual reports. In 2000, Nortel spent more than $5 billion on research, six times the amount of the No. 2 Canadian company, and revolutionized telecommunications.

But the company missed key shifts in the telecom market to optical and wireless products, leaving it playing catch-up despite the fact it invested more in R&D than any of its competitors.

From 2009 to 2011, BlackBerry was Canada’s largest investor in R&D. But its focus on enterprise users caused it to completely miss the consumerization of the smartphone on which Apple and then Android focused. BlackBerry’s revenue has fallen from $19 billion in 2010 to less than $3 billion in 2015. Currently, it is struggling to reinvent itself and stay in business. (Full disclosure: I am a dedicated BlackBerry user and hope it succeeds.)

Now Bombardier is struggling to recover from failing to see the market change to more fuel-efficient and largercapacity regional jets. From 2012 to 2014, Bombardier was the largest investor in R&D in Canada. Bombardier invented the regional jet market with the CRJ, an evolution of the Challenger business jet.

The CRJ dominated the regional jet market with planes that carry fewer than 100 passengers. Bombardier’s main innovation for more than a decade was to extend airframes to increase the passenger volume from 50 to 70 and then 90.

In 2004, Embraer, Bombardier’s largest competitor, revolutionized the regional jet approach when the company designed a new airplane, the E-Jet, with two-by-two seating, 18.5-inch seats and larger overhead bins than on the smaller, cramped CRJs and

ERJs. Bombardier’s CRJ sales plummeted despite the release of new models.

It took Bombardier until 2009 to announce its new aircraft to compete, the C Series. So far, however, the new plane has still not been completed and Bombardier is still relying on the old CRJ for sales. The firm had a very poor fiscal 2014 and president and CEO Pierre Beaudoin announced this year he was stepping down. The company unveiled plans to raise $600 million in new equity and $1.5 billion in new debt and asked both the Quebec and federal governments for billions in loans and grants.

Nortel, BlackBerry and Bombardier were once all true world leaders in innovation.

However, they were slow to recognize changes in the marketplace, and when they did, their level of innovation was below what the market expected. Their first reactions were to deny the market had changed. When they finally did recognize that painful fact, they were years behind and struggling to catch up. Their reaction was very consistent: the companies changed leadership, brought in outsiders to take over, announced big recovery plans and spent a lot of money to be followers rather than market leaders.

Wendy Baily, 238-1818 ext. 244 wbaily@obj.ca Carlo Lombard, 238-1818 ext. 230 carlo@obj.ca Alison Stewart, 238-1818 ext. 226 alison@obj.ca SPECIAL PROJECTS Nikki DesLauriers, 238-1818 ext. 240 nikki@obj.ca MARKETING & SALES CO-ORDINATOR Cristha Sinden, 238-1818 ext. 222 cristha@greatriver.ca CREATIVE DIRECTOR Tanya Connolly-Holmes, 238-1818 ext. 253 creative@obj.ca ART DEPARTMENT Regan VanDusen, 238-1818 ext. 254 regan@greatriver.ca Celine Paquette, 238-1818 ext. 252 celine@greatriver.ca FINANCE Jackie Whalen, 238-1818 ext. 250 jackie@greatriver.ca SUBSCRIPTIONS/DISTRIBUTION Patti Moran, 238-1818 ext. 248 subscribe@obj.ca PRINTED BY Transcontinental Qualimax 130 Adrien-Robert, Parc Industriel Richelieu Gatineau, QC J8Y 3S2 NEWS RELEASES News releases for the Ottawa Business Journal’s print or Internet news teams can be e-mailed to editor@obj.ca.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR We welcome opinions about any material published in the Ottawa Business Journal or issues of interest to local businesspeople. Only letters with the writer’s full name, address and telephone number will be considered for publication. Addresses and phone numbers will not be published, but they might be used to verify authenticity.

Letters can be e-mailed to editor@obj.ca.

Ottawa Business Journal is published by

MASSIVE INVESTMENTS Why do so many of Canada’s leading R&D companies miss major market changes, despite their massive investments in research and innovation? Is there too much of a focus on incremental innovation and not enough on disruptive innovation?

Research and development investment by governments is done mostly through research-granting councils, with a focus on peer-reviewed academic research that is not linked to an industrial strategy. More

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Mark Sutcliffe PRESIDENT Michael Curran All content of Ottawa Business Journal is copyright 2015.

Great River Media Inc. and may not be reproduced in any form without permission of the publisher. Publisher’s Liability for error: The Publisher shall not be liable for slight changes or typographical errors that do not lessen the value of an advertisement. The publisher’s liability for other errors or omissions in connection with any advertisement is strictly limited to publication of the advertisement in any subsequent issue or the refund of monies paid for the advertisement.

A guaranteed minimum of 11,000 copies per week are printed and distributed.

READER COMMENTS

MUDDLED MARKETING SR&ED has been a great funding program for startups, and many will tell you they would not have survived without the program. However, in larger companies, SR&ED has mainly driven spending rather than innovation. Most large Canadian companies overinvest in technology research and underinvest in market research. Our companies are known for great technology, but not so much for knowing how to market it.

But changing our research-granting system and the SR&ED program is like trying to amend the constitution. We know changes are needed, but no one wants to open that discussion because there are so many widely varying views and entrenched positions. I have thick skin, so I’ll start.

Due to our increasingly limited government research funds and the need to continue funding academic research to develop skilled talent, we need to align government investments to national and provincial industrial strategies.

Business will need to be more involved in these discussions and in setting the direction for government investments. We must continue to rely on our academic institutions to lead focused research initiatives, but we must require them to

Jeffrey Dale is the president of Snowy Cloud and the former president of the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation.

COMMENTARY Great River Media 250 City Centre Ave., Suite 500 Ottawa, Ontario, K1R 6K7 obj.ca PUBLISHER Michael Curran, 238-1818 ext. 228 publisher@obj.ca CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER Terry Tyo, 238-1818 ext. 268 EDITOR, PRINT CONTENT David Sali, 238-1818 ext. 269 david@greatriver.ca EDITOR, ONLINE CONTENT Tom Pechloff, 238-1818 ext. 291 editor@obj.ca COPY EDITOR Krystle Kung CREATIVE DIRECTOR Tanya Connolly-Holmes, 238-1818 ext. 253 creative@obj.ca ART DEPARTMENT Regan VanDusen, 238-1818 ext. 254 regan@obj.ca ADVERTISING SALES Wendy Baily, 238-1818 ext. 244 wbaily@obj.ca Alison Stewart, 238-1818 ext. 226 alison@obj.ca

Jeffrey Dale says Shopify (whose CEO Tobias Lütke is shown above) is a prime example of a firm that epitomizes the Canadian brand. FILE PHOTO

Will Justin’s Liberals deliver for the local tech sector?

In the first of a new series of columns for OBJ, Jeffrey Dale offers some timely economic advice to Canada’s next prime minister

MONDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2015

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new government on Parliament Hill is a time for new ideas. The Oct. 19 federal election certainly signalled that Canadians want real change and a more positive future.

For the most part, businesses look to government to help make it as easy as possible for them to conduct their affairs and provide them with a competitive advantage when they venture into international markets. So what does Ottawa’s tech sector want from the new Liberal regime?

Over the past 15 years, the government has invested significantly in programs to help tech startups, including initiatives such as the Venture Capital Action Plan, the Industrial Research Assistance Program, the Canadian Technology Accelerators and the Canada Accelerator and Incubator Program.

What tech CEOs are now looking for is encouragement and assistance to support their growth. We have created some great companies in Canada, but now they need help to scale into global leaders.

But what specifically do tech firms have on their wish list? This is not an easy question to answer.

A few months ago, I was at a meeting

with some senior deputy ministers and a number of tech CEOs. These chief executives were very excited about their businesses, which they all want to grow and be successful on a global scale. They also talked about some of the challenges they are facing, and the deputy ministers discussed some of the new federal programs and policies that have been implemented to help them.

These CEOs had very legitimate concerns. However, business and government often speak a different language, and it was difficult for the executives to articulate their concerns in a way the deputy ministers could understand and address. Business issues don’t translate easily into policy solutions, and policy solutions don’t always address the issues they were meant to.

HIRING HURDLES As an example, a CEO at the meeting said his HR department was having a hard time hiring foreigners to come work for his company in Canada. The businesspeople said federal bureaucracy was too time-consuming, causing them to lose candidates before the government gave its approval.

Meanwhile, the deputy ministers

touted the new fast-track immigration process that has been implemented to allow people with needed skills to immigrate to Canada. The businesspeople asked how that would help them; they were offering people a job, not asking them to become Canadian citizens. What they needed was fast approval for a work visa.

At the heart of the issue is the updated Temporary Foreign Worker Program. The initiative was revamped last year to stop big corporations such as Tim Hortons and Royal Bank from bringing in foreign workers to do jobs that Canadians could be doing.

TFWP and the Labour Market Impact Assessment process are adding a huge layer of red tape for all companies looking to hire foreign nationals to work in Canada. As a result, many firms are not able to hire the talent they need to support their business plans.

This is just one example of a situation in which the tech sector and government aren’t on the same page when it comes to creating an environment for growth and prosperity. So what do these businesses really need from the federal government?

After discussions with tech leaders in Ottawa and across Canada, these are the top suggestions I’ve heard:

Susan Salsbury, 238-1818 ext. 229 ssalsbury@obj.ca MARKETING & SALES CO-ORDINATOR Cristha Sinden, 238-1818 ext. 222 cristha@greatriver.ca INSIDE SALES SUPPORT Marc Nordemann-Keller, 238-1818 ext.259 marc@obj.ca CAREER ADVERTISING & MARKETPLACE ADVERTISING SALES 238-1818 ext. 251

I’m sure they will both compromise and something will be worked out.

However, with the glut of condos currently on the market (and with many more proposed), I still maintain that this project is years away from breaking ground (if ever). Looks esthetically awesome, though!

— Peter Quinlan

VICE-PRESIDENT OF OTTAWA BUSINESS EVENTS Susan Blain, 238-1818 ext. 232 susan@ottawabusinessevents.ca FINANCE Jackie Whalen, 238-1818 ext. 250 jackie@greatriver.ca SUBSCRIPTIONS/DISTRIBUTION 238-1818 ext. 248 subscribe@obj.ca PRINTED BY Transcontinental Qualimax 130 Adrien-Robert, Parc Industriel Richelieu Gatineau, QC J8Y 3S2

Ottawa Business Journal is published by

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Mark Sutcliffe PRESIDENT Michael Curran All content of Ottawa Business Journal is copyright 2015.

Great River Media Inc. and may not be reproduced in any form without permission of the publisher. Publisher’s Liability for error: The Publisher shall not be liable for slight changes or typographical errors that do not lessen the value of an advertisement. The publisher’s liability for other errors or omissions in connection with any advertisement is strictly limited to publication of the advertisement in any subsequent issue or the refund of monies paid for the advertisement.

A guaranteed minimum of 14,000 copies per week are printed and distributed.

Governments too risk-averse, reader says

Re: “Will Justin’s Liberals deliver for the local tech sector?” (OBJ, Oct. 26):

Good article, Jeff. The one thing I would add is that tech companies and startups specifically need lead customers. Governments in Canada at all levels are generally risk-averse and have little appetite to try new things. It would be great if this could be eased somewhat so that Canadian companies can develop products here with Canadian governments as lead customers. It would help them domestically and greatly improve their chances internationally.

— Jim Carty Re: “Place des Peuples development creates controversy in Gatineau” (obj.ca, Dec. 17):

Oldest trick in the book. The college is obviously playing hardball and wants more money than the lot is worth. This has nothing to do with preserving the old neighbourhood and is purely motivated by greed.

Neil joined EMERION 10 years ago, just shortly after the company was founded. He has been a key member of our team and our success in growing the company from its early days to its current size of over 250 professionals. Throughout his time at EMERION he has been instrumental in helping build our business within the NCR, securing a number of high profile contracts and brokering business relationships with Clients, Consultants and Strategic Business Partners.

Ottawa has so much potential to design and develop an amazing city! It has the room for urban development, but it needs to be done in an interesting manner, not like every other city that thinks that by condensing the downtown area, you attract more people. Come on, Mr. Cardinal, you can do better. This is not flattering to the downtown skyline at all. Think up a design that complements the museum and not that clashes with it. Ottawa is about modernity, beauty and charm. We are not tacky Las Vegas and should not aspire to be.

— Nicki

innovation, passion to win, respect for all and most importantly, the ability to have a sense of humor.

Neil has excelled in all facets of the field and will be missed for his professionalism, personality and presence.

09 OBJ.CA

Neil will always be appreciated by his clients and peers for his hard work, logical thinking,

Re: “Brigil unveils ambitious $400M condo, hotel plan for Gatineau” (obj.ca, Nov. 13):

MONDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2015

After a successful career of over 20 years in Business Development, EMERION wishes Neil Campbell great success as he makes the transition away from the Business and Technology consulting services sector.

develop closer linkages with corporate partners on most of these projects.

The SR&ED program, which was implemented in its current form in 1986, has undergone dozens of incremental changes but remains largely the same.

It provides very different benefits to companies at each of their stages of growth. For startups it is a source of funding; for growing companies it helps offset investment costs; and for mature companies, it influences how expenses are categorized and accounted for.

The original purpose of the program was to encourage Canadian business to invest in advanced research activities as a way to boost their global competitiveness.

While the SR&ED program is still very important to Canadian businesses, it is no longer the principal driver for globally competitive research.

The SR&ED program needs to be broken down into different components to achieve different results: first, a nonrefundable program for startups to offset a portion of their initial development costs; second, a program offsetting tax and other levies for research initiatives linked to new product or service developments; and third, a generous corporate granting program that supports our industrial strategy and requires an academic and corporate partnership for the development of disruptive innovation.

The success or failure of any changes to our research framework will be measured by how we effectively manage the transition from the current structure to a new structure without a major negative impact to both our academic and corporate sectors. Smarter people than me will be needed to design and implement a new program.

Our nation’s goal should be to provide Canadian businesses with every advantage possible to make them global innovation leaders. Right now, our R&D programs are failing.

OBJ.CA

than 60 per cent of government R&D investments go to health-related projects, but corporations are investing more than 70 per cent of their research budgets in technology-related projects.

The result is a complete mismatch of government and academic research and corporate research. This is a concern to government R&D investors if they expect to achieve commercial success from their investments, because the majority of their investments do not align with our industrial research focus.

Canadian businesses, for the most part, rely on internal research teams to drive innovation. The challenge is that research tax credits through the Scientific Research and Experimental Development program reward science-focused research activities, and that drives how our corporations invest in R&D.

2016

POST-BUDGET BREAKFAST The highly-anticipated federal budget will be released in a matter of weeks. What will it mean for business? What will it mean for Canada? What will it mean for Ottawa?

Stay tuned for more information on this must-attend breakfast.

Gain insights on business, tax and economic measures and determine what it means for you.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2015

Watch ottawachamber.ca for event details.

OBJ.CA

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LAUNCH PAD

“There’s a big, exciting new shift that’s going on in the space world, and I want to say in five years that I’m glad I started this space business five years ago, rather than saying I wished I started it five years ago.” — EWAN REID, FOUNDER OF MISSION CONTROL SPACE SERVICES

CHANGE LOG

Ewan Reid is the founder of Mission Control Space Services. PHOTO BY MARK HOLLERON

Sky’s the limit for robotics startup Carleton student lands $500,000 contract to design software for Canadian Space Agency

BY ADAM FEIBEL adam@obj.ca

A

‘TINDER FOR HIRING’ SET TO LAUNCH IN JANUARY A recent graduate of Algonquin College’s marketing program has designed a mobile and web application that uses a swipe-rightor-left feature – just like the popular dating app Tinder – to allow people to apply to jobs and employers to filter through candidates.

Quickily is set to launch in January and its creator Jared Floyd is looking for investors in order to expand the app in size and scope in the new year.

GROCERY DELIVERY FIRM EAGER TO EXPAND An Ottawa-based online grocery and alcohol delivery platform called Smartkart plans to expand its service to both the Toronto and Montreal markets in the new year. The bootstrapped startup earned $100,000 in revenue this year, and with 30 per cent monthly growth projects another $500,000 in 2016, according to Smartkart’s growth strategist Yacine Ouldchikh. But the company must prepare for competition as it moves into the Toronto market, including rival services such as Urbery and InstaBuggy.

ENTREPRENEUR DROP-IN Tuesday, Jan. 5 from 12 to 2 p.m.

Invest Ottawa, 80 Aberdeen St. Info and registration at investottawa.ca/events ESAX OTTAWA ENTREPRENEUR NETWORKING Wednesday, Jan. 6 from 6 to 10 p.m.

Lansdowne Park: Horticulture Building, 1015 Bank St. Info and registration at esax.eventbrite.ca IS YOUR BUSINESS IDEA FEASIBLE? Tuesday, Jan. 12 from 10 to 11:30 a.m.

Invest Ottawa, 80 Aberdeen St. Info and registration at investottawa.ca/events STARTING YOUR BUSINESS Tuesday, Jan. 12 from 12 to 2 p.m.

Invest Ottawa, 80 Aberdeen St. Info and registration at investottawa.ca/events STARTUP TUNE-UP: ONE-ON-ONE GUIDANCE FOR STARTUP GARAGE Thursday, Jan. 14 from 5 to 7:30 p.m.

University of Ottawa: SITE Building, 800 King Edward Ave. Info and registration at eventbrite.ca

these types of temporary contracts in order to stimulate some early cash flow.

Mr. Reid expects the company will be working on between four and six programs for the CSA and other customers within the next six months. Meanwhile, the team has been working on its own small spacecraft projects, which will be announced in the next few months.

“Space is changing a lot right now,” he explains. “There’s a big, exciting new shift that’s going on in the space world, and I want to say in five years that I’m glad I started this space business five years ago, rather than saying I wished I started it five years ago.”

11 OBJ.CA

would produce a system that allows a rover to avoid those trouble areas. By working in the software realm, Mr. Reid says preparing spacecraft for missions will rely less heavily on state-of-the-art hardware solutions that are expensive and time-consuming to develop and implement.

It’s the first of several significant contracts the company is hoping to secure in the coming months, he says.

“It is a big win for us. But that said, it’s a 21-month contract and it’s actually not as much money as it seems like it is.”

It does allow the young firm to avoid coughing up significant equity in an investment round and instead acquire

EVENTS CALENDAR

MONDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2015

new Canadian space industry startup based in Ottawa has its sights set high after landing its first major contract with the Canadian Space Agency.

The nine-month-old Mission Control Space Services will lead a $500,000 deal to design software to improve the efficiency of the CSA’s autonomous rovers. For instance, the startup’s technology will help ensure the rovers won’t get stuck in new terrain.

Ewan Reid, the company’s founder and CEO, says the “fundamental objective is to see this technology on a rover on Mars or on the moon in the next five or 10 years.”

The 38-year-old had a successful career in the space industry before deciding to venture out on his own, helped in large part by Carleton University’s Lead to Win incubator program while he was pursuing a master’s degree in technology innovation management at the school.

Mr. Reid says he felt there was no better time than the present to start his own company. He pulled together an executive team of members from his existing talent network, many of whom were former classmates at the International Space

University, where he completed the space studies program in the summer of 2013.

The company specializes in robotics, including real-time operations and simulations. It also does external consulting, helping other companies meet the stringent requirements of the industry and navigate the bureaucracy of space agencies to get funding and commercialize their technology.

Under the 21-month CSA contract, Mission Control – backed by a team of two other Canadian space companies and two outside academic partners – will develop an autonomous soil assessment system for planetary rovers, an area marked “priority for enhancement” by the space agency.

Currently, rovers can detect and reroute around large obstacles and steep slopes, but their weakness is their inability to adequately assess terrain quality. It leaves them vulnerable to “unknown soil hazards” such as patches of soft, fluffy sand.

“This is a situation where the Mars Spirit rover, which had a really successful, long mission, eventually did meet its demise because it got stuck in sand,” says Mr. Reid, who has degrees in electrical engineering and economics from Queen’s University.

Mission Control’s completed project

TECH FIRM WORKS TO END DISTRACTED DRIVING A former Nortel Networks software designer and current CEO of local firm Rumidifier, Jeri Rodrigs believes he now has the answer to distracted driving. His new venture, Ugran Drive Safe, is developing an app that will auto-disable the mobile phone of a driver, but not of the passengers, while in the car. The pre-revenue company has readied a minimum viable product and is in talks with various Canadian insurance companies to form partnerships. Mr. Rodrigs says the app will launch in the first quarter of 2016 and he projects revenues of $250,000 in the first year.

CASH FLOW PROBLEMS SHUTTER ECELERY Ottawa food delivery startup eCelery was forced to shut down recently due to a lack of cash flow, according to CEO Cyril Moukarzel.

The company garnered local media attention when it launched in mid-June and, with help from uOttawa’s Startup Garage, grew rapidly and planned to expand its rent-a-chef service from four to about 20. The firm was unable to raise enough money to scale quickly enough, but Mr. Moukarzel says the business model works and hopes eCelery can make a return.

CUSTOM MAGAZINES

A Major Anniversary, A New Building, A Company Milestone...

MONDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2015

Whether it’s the celebration of a major anniversary or the opening of a new headquarters, Ottawa Business Journal’s custom publishing division can help you create a custom print or digital magazine for your business. Our creative team of writers and designers can help you tell your story — and make your business look great. Based on our unique publishing model, its surprising affordable.

OBJ.CA

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Interested in finding out more? Contact terry@greatriver.ca or 613-238-1818 x. 268

THE LIST 1 2 2 3 4 5 6 7 7 7 7 8 9 10 10 11 13 14 15

(RANKED BY NO. OF OTTAWA EMPLOYEES)

Key local executive(s) Tobi Lütke co-founder and CEO Harley Finkelstein chief platform officer Patrick Nichols CEO

Leslie Rechan CEO Pete Low chief financial officer Greg Whetmore vice-president of research and development

J.P. Jauvin senior vice-president and general manager, MSP

David Sharpley general manager and vice-president of data experience John Sicard chief products officer

Scott Helmer chief financial officer

Edward Illiadge vice-president of engineering

Nishith Goel president and CEO

Jenny Findlay HR manager

Martin Sendyk senior vice-president of solutions Marco La Vecchia vice-president, Americas

Year established 2006

Publicly traded?

Major clients or markets

Product description

Y NASDAQ: SHOP TSX: SH

General Electric; Forbes; Wikipedia; Tesla; Maxim Magazine; CrossFit; Encyclopedia Britannica; Gatorade; Zagat; Lollapalooza; The Chive; TATA Group; Evisu

Platform to manage every aspect of clients’ businesses, from products to orders to customers, selling online, in retail stores and on the go.

1985

N

2001

Y TSX: HGN

1994

N

1985

Y NASDAQ: ORCL

2000

Y NYSE: SWI

1979

N

1982

Y NYSE: DOX

1984

Y TSX: KXS

1996

N

1999

Y NASDAQ: INTC

1995

N

1979

N

1998

N

1969

N

2013

Y NYSE: AVG

1987

Y NASDAQ: SMT TSX: SMA

Global software company, providing productivity, graphics and digital media software for consumer and professional use.

Healthcare; professional services; financial; manufacturing; education; public sector; Jelly Belly; San Diego Zoo; Purdue University; Christiana Care; Sharp; Drury Hotels

Cloud-based talent management suite that drives higher performance across all talent programs: recruiting; performance management; learning and development; succession planning; compensation

WND

Creates and provides software and services that secure digital identities and information for global enterprises and governments.

WND

Engineers hardware and software to work together in the cloud and in customer data centres.

Global

Remote systems and management software and complementary toolsets to reduce IT support costs, improve network performance and increase productivity through proactive monitoring and management.

WND

Develops enterprise software for the law enforcement community.

AT&T; Verizon Wireless; Sprint; Bell Mobility; Rogers; Telus

Develops subscriber-centric service control solutions, including access control and policy management software for fixed, mobile and converged networks.

Cisco; Qualcomm; Raytheon; Nikon; NCR; Sikorsky; Konica Minolta; Ford; Honeywell

Provider of cloud-based applications for improving analysis and decision-making across a company’s supply chain operations. RapidResponse creates the foundation for managing multiple supply chain processes.

Air France KLM; Qantas; LATAMAirlines; Icelandair Technical Services; Boeing; Thales; Pratt & Whitney; Ethiopian Airlines; Lockheed Martin; U.S. Navy; BAE Systems; Swedish Defence.

Software used to manage the maintenance and engineering operations of aviation and aerospace companies. Business consulting; implementation; integration; training; 24-7 support

Alcatel-Lucent; BMW; Boeing; Bombardier Transportation; Embedded and mobile software, operating systems, Mitsubishi; Motorola; NASA; Sony; Verizon middleware and software design tools; VxWorks and commercial-grade Linux software platforms; design services; software expertise; custom-build solutions; development tools; device-testing products WND Provides system integration and consulting services to public and private sector organizations of all sizes.

Services include Microsoft Practice, IT managed services, IT security and privacy, management consulting, and staffing services.

WND Delivers intelligent communications management and response systems for the public safety industry, including communications routing, switching and call-management hardware and software, as well as radio communication consoles.

Government agencies; private sector enterprises Business automation software solutions

Rogers; Comcast; Charter; Cablevision; Cablecom; Liberty Global; English Premier League; Polsat; Ziggo; Foxtel IT service providers, resellers and distributors

Provider of remote monitoring and management software for IT services providers; anti virus; online back-up; NOC; HelpDesk; content filtering; email security services

K-12 and higher education; business; government; military and custom solutions

Interactive whiteboard; interactive displays; interactive tables; student response systems; document cameras; full line of interactive learning software.

Plans, manages and develops digital solutions.

2000 David Muir president and CEO

Rob White senior location executive, Ottawa; vice-president of mergers and acquisitions and business analytics

1979

N

1917

Y NYSE: IBM

Canadian Air Force; Canadian Navy; USAF; U.S. Army; Vector; IMP; PAL; Cougar Helicopters; Pratt & Whitney; Avio; UTC Aerospace Systems; GE; Senvion; Siemens; Nordex, Moventas; EdF; RWE

Control system and health management products for critical machinery assets in the aerospace, marine and energy market sectors.

Public sector; financial services; retail; travel and transpor- Business analytics software; Eclipse open-source tool tation; education; utilities; chemicals and petroleum platform; J9 Java virtual machine and class libraries; WebSphere Customer Centre and Rational model-driven development products.

13 OBJ.CA

WND = Would not disclose. *Did not respond to 2015 survey – using data from previous years. †IBM would not disclose employee numbers, but OBJ has determined that it does rank on this list.

Should your company be on this list? If so, please send details to research@obj.ca This list is current as of August 24, 2015. © 2015 by Ottawa Business Journal. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced by any method in whole or in part without written permission by Ottawa Business Journal.

While every attempt is made to ensure the thoroughness and accuracy of the list, omissions and errors sometimes occur. Please send any corrections or additions by e-mail to research@obj.ca. OBJ lists are primarily compiled using information provided voluntarily by the organizations named. Some firms that may qualify for the list are not included because the company either failed to respond to requests for information by press time, because the company declined to take part in the survey or because of space constraints. Categories are drawn up in attempt to gather information of relevance to the Ottawa market.

Research by Patti Moran. Please send questions and comments to research@obj.ca.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2015

12

Company/Address No. of local Phone/Fax/Web employees Shopify 150 Elgin St. Ottawa, ON K2P 1L4 800 888-746-7439 shopify.ca Corel Corp.

1600 Carling Ave. Ottawa, ON K1Z 8R7 400 613-728-8200 corel.com Halogen Software 495 March Rd. Ottawa, ON K2K 3G1 400 613-270-1011 / 613-270-8311 halogensoftware.com Entrust Datacard 1000 Innovation Dr. Ottawa, ON K2K 3E7 350 613-270-2998 / 613-270-2501 entrustdatacard.com Oracle Corp. Canada Inc.* 400-45 O’Connor St. Ottawa, ON K1P 1A4 235 613-569-0001 / 613-238-2818 oracle.com SolarWinds N-able 450 March Rd., 2nd Floor Ottawa, ON K2K 3K2 225 613-592-6676 / 613-592-2242 n-able.com JSI Telecom 99 Michael Cowpland Dr. Ottawa, ON K2M 1X3 220 613-591-5910 jsitelecom.com Amdocs 500-303 Terry Fox Dr. Ottawa, ON K2K 3J1 200 613-595-5000 / 613-595-5556 amdocs.com Kinaxis Corp.

700 Silver Seven Rd. Ottawa, ON K2V 1C3 200 613-592-5780 / 613-592-0584 kinaxis.com Mxi Technologies 175 Terence Matthews Cr. Ottawa, ON K1M 1W8 200 613-576-2480 / 613-576-2484 mxi.com Wind River Systems 200-350 Terry Fox Dr. N. Ottawa, ON K2K 2W5 200 613-270-2240 / 613-592-2283 windriver.com Cistel Technology Inc. 200-30 Concourse Gate Ottawa, ON K2E 7V7 175 613-723-8344 / 613-723-8502 cistel.com Cassidian Communications 75 Technologie Blvd.

Gatineau, QC J8Z 3G4 165 819-778-2053 / 819-778-3408 cassidiancommunications.com CSDC Systems Inc. 200-279 Laurier Ave. W. Ottawa, ON K1P 5J9 150 888-661-1933 csdcsystems.com Irdeto 300-2500 Solandt Rd. Ottawa, ON K2K 3G5 150 613-271-9446 / 613-271-9447 irdeto.com AVG Technologies Canada Inc. 1125 Innovation Dr. Ottawa, ON K2K 1X7 147 613-232-1000 avg.com SMART Technologies ULC 501 Palladium Dr. Kanata, ON K2V 0A2 125 613-963-0801 / 613-271-1888 smarttech.com RealDecoy 100-205 Catherine St. Ottawa, ON K2P 1C3 110 613-234-9330 www.realdecoy.com GasTOPS Ltd. 1011 Polytek St. Ottawa, ON K1J 9J3 107 613-744-3530 / 613-744-8846 gastops.com IBM Canada Ltd.† 3755 Riverside Dr. Ottawa, ON K1G 4K9 800-426-4968 ibm.com/ca/en

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