Almost everything we experience in life has some kind of design. Determining if it is good or not is complicated. Where one object or process may function well under one set of conditions, it may fail under another. From a business standpoint, three factors separate the winners from the losers: the design’s utility, its appeal to a particular demographic, and its staying power.

When developing or improving a product, service or technology, the most successful companies employ professional designers from the very start. Most do it too late, and some not at all. Instead they apply outmoded

A student recruitment survey from Equals6 has revealed interesting views from the Millennial Generation, including that 91 per cent of respondents would relocate for a new job, that 42 per cent seek professional mentorship and that just 13 per cent wish to run their own business. 

Halifax-based Equals6 is an online community of 75,000 students who use the site to make connections with each other and employers. The company surveyed nearly 6,000 high school, college and university students across the country and across a variety of disciplines about their career choices. The report focuses

SwiftRadius, the Fredericton-based IT consulting firm, is launching a new initiative to help large North American companies develop innovation.

The company has struck a partnership with Forth Innovation, a Dutch business consultancy, to roll out the European firm’s innovation program in the North American market. They will launch the initiative in late May when Forth Innovation founder Gijs van Wulfen, one of linkedIn’s top 100 influencers, comes to the region to host a series of workshops in Fredericton, and possibly in Moncton and Halifax.

This initiative addresses a common problem at

Cloud-A, a Halifax provider of cloud delivery solutions, released the following press release:

Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada – April 16th, 2014, Cloud-A, a Canadian leader in cloud delivery solutions for high performance software applications, announced today that it has developed a new automation technology for cloud providers called “Bricks”.    

This advancement solves the problem that developers and system administrators have where they are spending far too much time setting up, patching and updating server side services that add little value to their end customer. The new service

The first Entrevestor Dinner will be held in the Fredericton area May 12, and we hope it will offer members of the startup community a chance to plan lasting improvements to the regional startup ecosystem.

Held with the assistance of the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation, the discussion-and-dinner event will feature working sessions in which participants will discuss ways to enhance the startup ecosystem. We didn’t think the community needed another dinner with a speaker, but there are serious issues facing the startup industry in the region. The Entrevestor Dinners seek to identify and

After 14 years in startup wilderness, Halifax biotech company Immunovaccine (IMV) and its Chief Operating Officer Dr. Marc Mansour are exactly where they need to be. With data from clinical trials demonstrating the effectiveness of the IMV patented vaccine-delivery system, the company may soon see its technology lessening everyday scourges like flu and cancer as well as uncommon diseases, such

The Pond-Deshpande Centre has issued a press release announcing its Social Enterprise Development Dialogue this week: 

Second Social Enterprise Development Dialogue attracts talent from Toronto to Boston

April 15, 2014

Fredericton, NB - The Pond-Deshpande Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the Saint John Community Loan Fund are proud to present ecosystem2enterprise; ideas for a new economy, the 2nd Annual Social Enterprise Development Dialogue, April 24 and 25, 2014, Saint John, New Brunswick.

The Dialogue is for community-minded citizens from all sectors, the general

Entrevestor, Volta and PropelICT are pleased to announce we will soon produce the first directory for the Atlantic Canadian startup community.

Modeled on the directory put out by Communitech in Kitchener-Waterloo, the Atlantic Canadian Startup Directory will provide the names and contact details of all the participating startups in the region. It will also provide similar information on tech service companies and support organizations.

Our goal is to have a single resource where we can find the names and details of all members of the community, broken down by both province and sector.

Three young tech companies – two of them from Halifax – are working with the Capital District Health Authority to commercialize their products while accelerating the treatment of patients with mobility issues.

On Wednesday, the Halifax area’s district health authority launched Mobility at Capital Health, a $2.6 million project that will use existing and developing technology to assess whether people need orthopaedic surgery and help them to heal regardless of the treatment. (Mobility at Capital Health is abbreviated as “M@ch”, pronounced “Mach”, as in a measurement of speed.)

The

Oris4, the Halifax software company that has developed a cloud-based document-organization system, has raised $1.3 million in funding from Nova Scotia Business Inc. and GrowthWorks Atlantic.

NSBI announced Wednesday it would make its first investment of $1 million in the company, whose corporate name is 2nd Act Innovations. GrowthWorks invested in the company previously and has added to its stake with a $300,000 investment.

The funding comes as the company is increasing its reach in the U.S. with the opening of its first New York office. The firm already has a presence in Silicon