And of course, the rise of the industrial world shows how wrong he is. Certainly there are many stories of brilliant entrepreneurs, knocking on doors for years and years before someone with the resources (e.g. money) finally listened to them – or sadly in some cases, never did. However once in awhile we hear of a genius who gains almost immediate recognition and such a man is University of Calgary based, electrical engineer Dave Irvine-Halliday.

A trek in the Himalayas

Dave had spent his sabbatical leave fulfilling his ambition to trek the Himalayas’ famous Annapurna Circuit. One day he paid a visit to a small rural schoolhouse and was struck by how dark the schoolroom was and immediately the teacher in him wondered how the children could concentrate on schoolwork in such an atmosphere. Exploring further he became aware of the further difficulties of children in the Himalayan villages trying to do homework in a one room family shelter, with the only light powered by paraffin lamps that generated massive amounts of pollutants resulting in major respiratory troubles and too often starting fires that would further add to the trials faced by the family. In fact his research showed that Only 200,000 of Nepal’s 3.4 million households have a reliable power supply. Furthermore that the same thing was true of many millions of basic housing units throughout the entire developing world.

Working with the Nichia Corporation of Japan, he and his colleagues successfully developed practical applications for the long-sought white LED – a major breakthrough, since the LED bulb uses a mere fraction of the needed power of incandescent bulbs. Furthermore the LED’s have proved almost indestructible as LED bulbs built and installed in the early 1970’s are still functioning.

Irvine-Halliday went on to build his own foundation and started to offer micro powered white LED’s throughout the third world. Today these systems power not only homes but when clustered together in bundles, illuminate village centers and even hospital surgical rooms. Power is often provided by small generators located in a local creek or even solar driven – solar power being something that is in abundance in much of the developing world.

The advent of any new technology triggers events in other aspects of life including social and educational benefit since with light to read and cook by, comes the promise of a better life. In poorer countries, as women in particular become educated, birth rates decline and household incomes rise.

Irvine-Halliday held up a (new generation) lightbulb to light the darkness – and the world did indeed listen.

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Our conclusion, however, is that the number one attribute of a great startup and one that has the ability to survive and prosper, is having a natural and abiding sense of curiosity.

Curiosity leads to such observations as “I wonder why that store does or doesn’t do this or that?”  OR…”I’ve noticed that people are complaining a lot about customer service, is there a better way to streamline or database to make people happier and make money from it?” OR…”How come when people order some carpeting or an appliance it has to be ordered from afar and wait weeks for delivery – how can I do it better?” OR… “I’ve read that 40% of all consumer purchases are made after 6 pm and yet most downtown stores close at 5:30, why is that?”

That same sense of curiosity and discovery leads to a desire to know what’s new in the world, or within their industry, or changes in the local business environment. Our experience has shown us that ‘readers become leaders’ and it’s only through knowledge of the world around us combined with a high level of curiosity about the WHY of life will we each find the opportunities to move forward.

In today’s world of knowledge access, virtually every curiosity can be answered in seconds through Google and other search engines, via online magazines unique to your industry or  general business issues.

There’s literally no excuse for not knowing.

As a one-time consultant I would prepare for a client meeting by learning every possible thing about his or her business, their challenges, their market share if available and just what’s happening with their business that might cause them to want to do business with me. Walking into a meeting armed with that knowledge provides a vast advantage over the competition. Believe it or not, we see some entrepreneurs who are after a specific client and haven’t even taken the time to read the target client’s website!

Well known writer of the subject of entrepreneurism, Michael Gerber (the E-Myth) says that people only buy a product or service if they have a pain or a need.  Use your natural curiosity to find out how people satisfy that pain or need in today’s market, then figure out a way to do it better and you have a great business model.

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We accept that Kevin is playing the role of the bad guy – but if he truly believed that – and some business owners unfortunately do – someone should tell him that saving the whales… or the environment … or helping the homeless … or whatever, is simply good business. A 2007 Forester Research report noted that some 70% of consumers said that they would prefer to do business with a company that had demonstrated a social conscience.

For the entrepreneur that has a business-to-business (B2B) model this has special significance since the large firm that you may be supplying with goods or services is well aware of their public image and they want to be able to demonstrate that they in turn buy from companies that are ethical with a stated goal of helping to address some of the world’s challenges. If your business model is a B2C (business-to-consumer), then you need to be even more aware of making your social commitment as part of your branding message.

I was in an independent (small business) coffee shop the other day and they had a chalk board that listed all of the aspects of their environmental commitment, including such things as buying beans from countries where the workers are not exploited, recycling their paper cups and plastic waste and providing their coffee grounds to local farmers to be mixed with fertilizer. What a great way to educate your customers without preaching.

Greenwashing

Care must be take however to avoid any view that you are just ‘talking the talk’.

Some have called it ‘Greenwashing’ (like whitewashing). If you are making a declaration of social and environmental commitment – you’d better be prepared to follow it up. And there are all kinds of ways to make it happen without taking a lot of your time away from the business. Find an agency whose mission is in harmony with your feelings and ask to partner with them. That could mean you make a small but regular donation to their organization, it might mean putting their poster in your store, or sponsoring some of their other supporters in such things as a 10K run for the cause.

Find the cause, support it, believe in it and don’t be shy about letting your customers and clients know about it – so long as you are doing the public part to help the cause and you must never be seen as simply self-serving.

Ignore the Kevin O’Leary types. By example, you can do good and sleep a little better at night.

The post Doing Well By Doing Good appeared first on Business Victoria.

What they are about to face as they build their business means hours and days of dedicated work. To keep going they must have a vision of a positive future. Without that they have little hope of success. Just ask any athlete. They know that they must picture themselves winning the race, going over the bar or standing on the podium.

Here in Victoria, we have a highly educated population with most people able to envision their personal future, but we suffer from a glaring lack of visioning as a community and little hope of harnessing the passion of our citizens toward exciting change, rather than simply working to stop what we don’t like or what we figure is prejudicial to the culture of the region.

It wasn’t always this way. Well over a hundred years ago we had a famous resident by the name of Armor De Cosmos, a moniker he adopted given what he considered to be a boring birth name which was Bill Smith (apologies to all the Bill Smith’s out there). De Cosmos wore many hats over the years including political activist, editor of the Colonist newspaper and visionary.

Among his many claims to fame he envisioned the establishment of a steamship ferry connection between Victoria and the Mainland, laying out the concept for what eventually would emerge in another century as BC Ferries. In Colonist editorials he also spoke of Victoria becoming a gathering place for great minds to discuss the enormous events under way on the pacific coast of North America. He could see the future and equally see the need to bring others along with him.

What would be your vision for a positive future? How about a place where homelessness was a thing of the past, or where affordable housing for all becomes a reality?

I support those goals but would love to see us lift our eyes even higher, so that we might fulfill De Cosmos dream of a gathering place for great discussions around Pacific Development. How about a dramatic plan to address the challenges of climate change incubating hundreds of scientists and companies in that critical field while at the same time-creating thousands of highly paid jobs as they develop new generations of alternative energy sources? If tiny Davos Switzerland can do it, surely we can. How about a dream of new streetscapes filled with exciting and visionary new buildings (all to LEED environmental standard of course)? Vancouver has led the way with such buildings as the Pan Pacific and the Coliseum-like library. Where is our comparable model that is not just a rehash of Victorian – don’t rock the boat – architecture?

So what’s your personal vision for us? And remember, always dream big dreams – for nothing much was ever achieved by little ones.

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Whichever camp you fall into, there’s something to  learn from the Academy Awards in that it gives us a rare glimpse into the complex world of making a film, as tributes are paid to the hundreds of people behind the scenes that make it possible.

Most of us understandably think only of the actors since they’re the ones we get to look at for two hours as the movie unfolds. After the movie is launched there is usually recognition of the Director and Producer but recognition seldom goes beyond that.

I live in a town that has the opportunity to host a fair number of movie makers each year and therefore we become more aware of the support systems as we step over those snaking lines of cables and curse at the road closures or the massive support trucks that take up too much road space – forgetting for that moment the cash that these productions bring to our local economy.

Next time you watch a good movie don’t hit the OFF button as the credits start to roll, but take a minute to see the dozens of categories of support from hairdressers, to post production to catering, location producers and on and on…

It’s easy to think of a micro enterprise – the one or two person business – as if the principals are all alone in the world and sometimes it may seem like that to the entrepreneur. In fact just as with show business there’s a small army of support people that help to make a successful business get launched and stay successful. For example, much as we love to slam government, without reasonable tax structures (including exemptions) and the services of the bureaucracy, small business dies. Becoming a sole proprietor takes a matter of a few days in BC; while in many other parts of the world it can take months to get approval.

Once launched, your support system becomes you accountant or bookkeeper, perhaps a lawyer, maybe the commercial realtor who found your warehouse or store, your business coach or training program, and of course your customers, since without them, nothing happens. Your friends and your family often have made sacrifices to get your dream launched and they certainly deserve recognition too.

Launching a company might not have the same scale of support (or the budget) of making a movie but the principle is the same. No one can make it happen without a wide range of other resources and the skills of other people. As entrepreneurs we need to consider those resources and support systems, letting them constantly know that they are appreciated and they share in your success.

Here’s an idea, maybe should all put our ‘list of credits’ on our websites, just like the movies do. It might help to let our customers know that we don’t do this all on our own.

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