Executive Speak: Upside Potential
Forget the professional athletes and the astronauts. It’s time for kids to admire entrepreneurs like Ashif Mawji >
Entrepreneur
Upstarts: Edmonton-based Inkdit in early stages
Web app for electronically managing contracts started by experienced entrepreneur >
Birth of a Boom: Lives & Legacies of Saskatchewan Entrepreneurs
Businesswoman and author Suzanne Paschall’s eloquently declares that Saskatchewan’s time is now >
Second Time Around
We asked three serial entrepreneurs what they learned from their first startup and what they’re doing differently today >
Old Country Ties
Not only are immigrants inclined to become entrepreneurs, they bring an innate selling proposition: the flavour of home >
The Joy of Cooking for a Living
Judy Wood’s culinary career started in her mother’s Montreal kitchen. From there, she graduated to the famed L’École de Cuisine La Varenne in Paris, earning a Grand Diplome. The executive chef then went to work at several popular restaurants across Canada: the David Wood Food Shop in Toronto, the Four Seasons Hotel in Calgary and Buchanan’s Chop House in Calgary, to name a few.
>
Let’s Do Launch
It’s an inspirational scene. A couple of friends are sitting around a kitchen table, sleeves rolled up, slurping coffee and furiously scribbling million-dollar ideas onto a napkin. This, at least in Hollywood, is how business plans are born. Chances are, however, that most schemes conceived at midnight eureka sessions no longer exist. Some impulsive entrepreneurial ideas lead short lives. Others evolve into reconstructed business models – possibly successful, possibly not. >
Fashion Forward
Sadru Peerani used to sell cowboy hats for his dad during Stampede Week when he was a teenager in the early 1980s. Now he’s managing his family-run business, Formans Fashion Group, selling high-end clothing to Calgary’s well heeled. In 2003, Formans bought the CIBC heritage building on First Street and uprooted the 46-year-old business to Victoria Crossing. One of the first upscale retailers to move to the now uber-trendy neighbourhood, the store invigorated the street’s retail mix. Last year the company and its clients donated coats to those less fortunate in the area, proving that while fashion may come and go, corporate responsibility is never out of style. >
The Importance of Having Earnings
It isn’t often a company will turn away money. But in the mid-1990s, as head of what was then called Alberta Microelectronic Corporation, Chris Lumb did just that. >
Follow Alberta Venture On: