2014 Dobson Cup participant on how winning changed her
Montreal-based Lantinga Vita is all about merging functionality, a chic design and sustainability. The company’s Tempus bag is an Italian-made, multi-functional bag that boasts a compartment for a 15” laptop and a thermal pocket for food. The company’s founder and CEO, Nina Lantinga, recently spoke with The Dobson Chronicles about the entrepreneurial life, growing her business and winning the Grit Prize at the McGill Dobson Cup 2014.
Winning Dobson Cup team on entrepreneurship, plans for the future and head movement as disease indicator
Startup Saccade Analytics was the first place winner of the 2017 McGill Dobson Cup Health Sciences Track. The team’s pitch involved analyzing eye and head movement to help diagnose neural diseases. The team sat down with the Dobson Chronicles to talk about what made them dive into the entrepreneurial life, and eye-head movement as an indicator of disease — including, but not limited to, concussion.
Is Bombardier too big to fail? A TV panel discusses the seminal Quebec company
Desautels Associate Professor Karl Moore appeared on an April 7th Breakfast Television panel to address the question of whether or not Bombardier is too big to fail. Professor Moore stated that, in some ways, this is definitely true, just because of the role it plays in the Canadian economy and the fact that it is “Canada’s greatest global competitor, in terms of size and in terms of where the exports go.”
McGill lands on Corporate Knights’ Future 40 list
Now in its fourth edition, Corporate Knights’ Future 40 ranking is a yearly roundup of companies and organizations that are transitioning towards a low-carbon future. The list heavily reflects Ontario-based companies and utilities, but there is also a lot of representation from Canada’s mining sector and medium-sized oil and gas producers, all of which are pivoting towards greater sustainability in their production processes.
Imran Amed honoured with Vanguard Award
“I’m not looking at fashion through a Canadian lens, or even a Western lens, but a global lens,” says Imran Amed (BCom'97). Indeed, he doesn’t even look at it through the eyes of someone who grew up steeped in fashion. Mr. Amed started Business of Fashion as a personal blog while he was working as a management consultant with zero fashion training. Today, his London-based site is the go-to source for news-hungry glitterati.
Montreal team nets $50,000 for its green housing design
A joint McGill-Concordia effort has won a $50,000 federal grant to bring its innovative row-house design to the International Solar Decathlon in China next year. TeamMTL’s design takes aim at the growing affordable-urban-housing crisis, successfully marrying energy efficiency and sustainability with comfort and affordability.
Marijuana sector likely to constrict as it matures
Desautels Professor Ken Lester was interviewed on BNN about the commodification of marijuana post-legalization. He discussed product choice, the question of how branding might be constrained by the impending legislation, and the tricky taxation line that the governments will have to trace in order to not send consumers back to the black market.
Future food now: how insects will solve world hunger
In an interview on Fox Business Network, Aspire CEO and former MBA student Mohammed Ashour makes the case for eating bugs as a way to meet the world’s growing protein requirements. His company, the Aspire Group, runs a cricket farm in Texas and a palm weevil larvae operation in Ghana, both aimed at creating a sustainable insect-based food industry. Mr.
A refreshing take on healthcare
Dr. Anoop Kumar (IMHL’15) has published a new book, Michelanglo’s Medicine: how redefining the human body will transform health and healthcare. The book offers a refreshing look at the human body not just as a bunch of organs, but rather as “a masterpiece, waiting to be discovered.” Dr. Kumar proposes a new approach based on his experiences as an ER doctor, as well as the eastern philosophies he grew up with.
Desautels alumnus named Exec VP at PNG Gold
West Vancouver-based PNG Gold has announced the appointment of Wesley Marstaller (BCom'05) as Executive Vice President of the corporation. Before coming on board at PNG Gold, Mr. Marstaller served in several capacities at the Macquarie Group, then as COO of the Rennie Group. PNG Gold CEO Greg Clarkes praises Mr. Marstaller, saying that his expertise will help with “building the management group necessary to achieve the Company’s near and long term goals.”
Public outrage over executive pay raises forces Bombardier into damage control
Bombardier’s recent executive pay raises have caused heavy public criticism in the face of recent cash injections from the federal and Quebec governments. In an interview on BNN, Desautels Professor Karl Moore states that some of the outrage is misguided, since so many of the execs joined Bombardier partway through the year, which skews the numbers.
James Rickards and the end of the economy
A recent Forbes book review delves into James Rickards’ The Road to Ruin: The Global Elites’ Secret Plan For The Next Financial Crisis, which makes the case that there is a big-ticket financial collapse coming, one that dwarfs the 2008 recession. Rickards lays much of the blame on macroeconomics, drawing a parallel between it and astrology.
Mintzberg on why the US can’t be run like a business
In a recent piece for the Harvard Business Review, Desautels Professor Henry Mintzberg takes aim at US President Trump’s attempts to run the United States like a business, then demolishes them. Professor Mintzberg questions the wisdom of trying to marry such disparate systems — after all, business has a very simple, measureable yardstick in the form of profit, which makes it a poor model for governing.
Dobson Cup winners announced
The McGill Dobson Cup 2017 powered by National Bank is over, and the winners have been announced. From the initial 136 applications, 121 teams pitched their startups in the run-up to the semi-finals. Then, 40 of those teams moved on to the finals on March 22. All in all, $106,000 of seed funding was divided among the top entries across four categories: Social Enterprise, Health Sciences, Small & Medium Enterprise and Innovation Driven Enterprise.
Desautels alumnus bets on bugs to solve world hunger
As the world’s population increases, the pressure to find an ecologically-feasible protein source is mounting, so former MBA student Mohammed Ashour of the Aspire Food Group is bringing a foreign concept to the US: eating insects. Long a staple protein source in many countries, bugs offer a bigger protein hit, and require fewer resources than traditional livestock does.
