Still can't make the big show

The recent sale of Xantrex Technology is an indication that the B.C. clean technology scene is finally reaching a maturity level that has eluded it until recently.

Unfortunately, it's also an indication that the scene still has some way to go before it becomes a player.

Xantrex, along with Ballard Power, the big kahuna of the cleantech and powertech cluster in B.C., agreed in late July to being acquired by French electrical engineering group Schneider Electric SA, in a deal worth close to $500 million.

The deal certainly showed that the B.C.'s emerging cleantech cluster is getting on to the world's radar as almost every industry in every country struggles to realign its energy supplies and usage. Schneider is a global specialist in energy management, and clearly sees Xantrex's leadership in advanced power electronics for the delivery of electricity, especially electricity generated from renewable sources, as a much needed addition to its service and product lineup. This in turn will help it fend off bigger fish who are intent on gobbling it up.

But amid all the congratulatory blather over the deal – and growing a company from $10 million to $500 million is quite a feat – was an interesting commentary about the B.C. situation.

Xantrex chairman Mossadiq Umedaly, who's also chairman of BC Hydro, said his company had to find a buyer to take advantage of opportunities in the global market. Xantrex helped create the renewable power industry and certainly knows it, he explained. But it needed to increase to global weight its supply chain and its sales and service network.

In other words, it was still too small to really make it in a marketplace that's huge and getting much bigger as energy becomes top of mind among the world's big companies.

So while B.C. spawned what we thought was a major league power company, we're really still just minor leaguers.

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A knight goes into the night

A few years ago, I was working with Dr. Geoffrey Ballard on a couple of books that would help explain why he was such a visionary with a magnificent obsession to make the world a better place.

Ballard, who is best known for starting Ballard Power Systems, which introduced a working fuel cell to the world, died recently at 75.

When we talked, we mostly discussed the operation of a science business that earned him these accolades. But we also talked about what made Ballard into a scientific rebel who went against established research methodology and created breakthrough, game-changing innovation.

Ballard was a dreamer who grew up as an only child with aging relatives in Southwestern Ontario. A lonely boy, he spent many hours wandering the fields, imagining himself as an ancient knight duty bound by God to make the world a better place.

It was a mental model he nurtured while performing routine oil exploration tasks around the world and which he held on to during subsequent attempts and failures at starting his own alternative energy companies.

Ballard was a gentle soul who loved to talk to all and sundry about how science and society should work together. But he was was no tilter at windmills: he was a tough, driving man who dragged naysayers along the innovation curve when they (and even he) didn't really know where they'd end up.

In his later years, much of the world forgot about Geoff Ballard's dreams. Due to ill health, he had to retire from the company he started and, after a brief period as a stock market darling, it eventually crashed back to earth. Even Ballard's automotive fuel cell division has now been sold off.

Our discussions became part of a book, Everything I needed to know about business...I learned from a Canadian, by local tech investors Leonard Brody and David Raffa Another book went nowhere. All the agents and publishers who were so interested in the visionary energy hero, had moved on to other trendy subjects.

But, while you might not yet see the results of his dreams in your everyday life, you will. In about 20 years, the old knight's vision of a world without polluting internal combustion engines will become real.

And we'll all be the better for it.

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Managing vs. thinking at ICBC

An investigation has revealed some dirty goings on at ICBC. Specifically, it targets the corporation's research facility which was fixing up smashed cars and reselling them to unknowing buyers.

Apparently, to please a government bent on cost cutting, the ICBC board formed a policy to boost revenues from the research facility and other ICBC divisions that had previously been seen as cost centres, not revenue generators.

But a policy is one thing; strategy is another. And there doesn't appear to have been one here. Instead there was a lot of “management” and, apparently, not much of a plan.

And so, isn't this a colossal failure by an organization to direct its management properly? Further isn't it an inevitable result of the quarter-to-quarter, short term, bottom-line-all-the-time mind set that seems to grip too many managers these days?

ICBC isn't unique in this, of course. Managers in many organizations today, private and public, think only in the short term and in only one way – make the numbers work. They're constantly trying to please their bosses, who are in turn trying to please investors, or in this case, governments who are getting a little tired of bureaucratic waste.

A “good” manager reads the organizational wind well: And if the organizational culture emphasizes execution and implementation, and not strategy, well that's what they do.

Truth is, any fool can cut spending – and right now as we enter a downturn, a lot of fools, big and small, are thinking of doing just that – but strategies are what really drive organizations toward the future. Add innovative thinking to that strategizing, and you have a solid plan in place for how to do that.

But because they're geared to producing long-term value, strategies don't have immediate impact. So most short-sighted managers don't want to go near them.

Their job is to manage, not to think.

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On wood and alliances

I note with interest that a First Nations group is currently at odds with environmentalists over logging in the Clayoquot Sound area. Of course, this has ricocheted around the BC business community, usually accompanied by some glee because the Clayoquot forests were considered the ultimate in environmental groups-First Nations alliances that were going to block any kind of business development.

But to everyone's surprise, it's the First Nations group that wants to do the development. Their main economy, fishing, has been decimated and they have to make a living too. So they’re going to log on their own land.

This doesn’t surprise me. In the past few months, I've run into or been involved with a half dozen companies who are working closely with BC First Nations to develop various businesses, usually resource based.

This is interesting, because it wasn't so long ago that it seemed that First Nations groups were the last people anyone thought about when it came to business development. Sure, sometimes, there would be a token involvement or hiring of locals for some work. But generally, First Nations were shut out of most economic development.

And the extreme fringe of the environmental movement treated them the same way – great for the TV cameras at protests, but not really involved.

But that was then. This is now. Today, First Nations are a force to be reckoned with in the BC economy. In recent years, they have grown considerably in business smarts and learned how to take advantages of their main strengths – title to lands which contain many resources that a power hungry, resource hungry world needs.

And even those self-same environmentalists who cynically brought them on board for public relations purposes now have to take note.

Hey folks, there’s a new dynamic in the old wars that have riven this province for so long. Get used to it.

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A bookish balance

BCB editor Matt O’Grady made an interesting point in his June blog when he spoke to a new generation of readers and writers addicted to the immediacy and interactivity of the Internet. Though I read my fair share of books, I’m of this Internet generation; my entire post secondary and employment history has been Google-dependent. The leagues of writers that relied on reference libraries (the kind with steps and rooms and Dewey Decimal-savvy librarians) is boggling. I can barely fathom the long hours of digging for some little quote that must have made the turnaround time for each story Paleolithic.

It’s not impossible that the new generation of computer savvy readers will be hybrids of both genres. It is because of my long days on a computer that I appreciate the smell, feel, and weight of a magazine or book and it is because of quiet afternoons with a hardcopy that the zip of the Internet is appealing. I am not torn between the two; I lean to one or the other naturally when my body and mind tell me it’s time for something new.

Research shows that the onslaught of accessible information, ads and links distract today’s online readers to the point that we’ve become skimmers, never reading anything in entirety. Magazines have thus changed their layout and content to keep up with the increasingly roving human mind, but it could be argued that this opens the world of hard copy reading to readers who aren’t intimidated by the traditional academic approach to magazine publishing. Some of the snobbery has been reduced, or at the very least is now more fun for a wider demographic.

As for me, I’m constantly making notes to find the hard-copy version of stuff I find online – whether a literary reference or philosophy, the Internet always opens more doors. To what degree is dependent on my level of dedication to collecting my bedside reading material, but such things aren’t a problem - after a long day at the computer the last thing I feel like doing is reading from another screen in my living room and I usually spend days off in used book stores, scouring for titles I’ve come across online. So is the Internet really bad for readers? I’m going to trust I’m not the only one who has found a comfortable balance between the old and the new and say no.

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