From first to worst

Oh, how quickly a country can become a laggard in the Digital Age. more...

Talent grab

Today, for the first time in generations, there are more jobs than there are people. more...

B.C.'s bad carbon tactics

B.C.’s carbon tax is simply the latest of many pollution-discharge fees the province has charged industry for more than 20 years. The fee system was originally touted as a way to reward industrial plant owners who voluntarily cut any taxed pollutants. But plant operators have rarely seen sustained reductions in their tax bills, even after they cut discharges.

That is because the province’s environmental protection costs must be “self-financed” through the pollution-fee system. more...

10 power moves

How many times have you inwardly seethed while a colleague glibly speaks up at a meeting, passing off your brilliant idea as her own? Or felt that inner alarm bell jangle when your boss spells out a plan that you know is doomed to failure?

They don’t teach you how to handle these everyday dilemmas in business school, but knowing how to field them smoothly might just save your bacon if the going gets rough. more...

Web-friendly fraud

They may be yawn-inspiring, but regulators are alert to these groups. more...

Net volley

On the Internet, dot­-com reigns supreme. But expansion of the information superhighway has necessitated the construction of other domain suffixes, or top-level domains, such as dot-ca, dot-biz, dot-info and, more recently, dot-mobi (for mobile devices). Now comes dot-asia, a regional domain for Asia and the Pacific that opened to the general public in March.

“Anybody who has a business and who wants to get in on the Asian market . . . is jumping on now,” says Cybele Negris, co-founder and chief operating officer of local domain registry Webnames.ca Inc. more...

Watts for wood chips

BC Hydro is calling on yet another alt-energy sector to add its weight to the B.C. power grid with a recent call for bioenergy. It’s a good signal for the B.C. tech companies coaxing megawatts from wood chips and other organic waste, but it’s a fairly minor boost for a sector already doing big things outside the country.

For example, Nexterra Energy Corp. president and CEO Jonathan Rhone says he’s happy about BC Hydro’s interest, but he’s far more excited about Nexterra’s latest partner: U.S. auto parts and building giant Johnson Controls Inc. more...

Is bigger worse?

Canada’s economic growth rate is up, and that’s good; Canada’s economic growth rate is down, and that’s bad. Ever since the invention of national accounts in the 1930s, the prevailing world view has been that the higher the gross domestic product, the better off we are as a nation.

Any faltering in the continued increase in this economic measure is perceived as a cause for concern, a threat of a recession and diminished opportunities for citizens. more...

A berth in the majors

Every year hundreds of new B.C. companies start up with a hope of someday building a list of major-league clients. But for many, especially in B.C., that A-list never happens. It’s a small-business province, and many businesses remain stuck on the small-business-client track.

Occasionally, though, a company does break out of this trap and becomes a market leader. One such company is Verrus Mobile Technologies Inc. more...

Corporate climb

When Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) dropped more than a quarter-million dollars to help turn a popular rock-climbing site into a provincial park, the obvious question was: why?
The iconic retailer will surely score some goodwill through the donation, but there are also some less karmic business reasons for this kind of generosity. This may well be a stellar example of just the kind of corporate community involvement more and more companies are struggling to do right. more...