A crucial component of a functioning tax system is that it should establish a level playing field, and should not arbitrarily pick "winners and losers". I happen to believe that the tax system should rarely be used to drive policy,…
If you want to move the needle with economic development, it is services that matter the most. Manufacturing and resource extraction may be easy, but they are not the core of a first world economy. The challenge - and it…
In the spirit of the season, a Rant and best wishes. Happy Festivus, and All the Best for 2015. Neil
Zero to One by Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel was one of the co-founders of PayPal (along with a ridiculous number of other very successful folks including Elon Musk of Telsa and SpaceX fame, and Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn). Much of…
Investing is a low-barrier to entry, poorly-regulated business so it should come as no surprise that many fund managers say crazy things when talking about their historic returns. Similarly, retain and angel investors prefer to glorify their returns even if…
Patent trolls are here to stay Here are some fundamental truths: Patents are not self-enforcing, nor does the state enforce your patent rights; A patent is nothing more than a call option to sue, and unless the patent owner enforces…
Moneyball by Michael Lewis is an excellent piece of financial journalism, vastly better and more insightful than you would glean from the movie starring Brad Pitt. The premise of Moneyball is that the Oakland As revolutionized baseball by abandoning heuristics…
We face a crisis of ignorance about intellectual property - seriously, more people know less about IP than any other core business discipline. IP is not the be-all or end-all of business. Lots of other disciplines like marketing, sales, finance…
One of the key challenges for entrepreneurship and innovation in Canada is that so much of the economy is dominated by de facto oligopolies, often regulated ones. For instance, banking and telecom, are dominated by a few titans protected from…
One of the key challenges for innovation and entrepreneurship in Canada is that so much of the economy is 'derivative', and especially dependent on innovation and entrepreneurship that took place elsewhere and has now been imported into Canada. Many Canadians…