Business - barlowbooks

Business leaders who are new to blockchain can quickly find themselves overwhelmed or bewildered by the innovative digital assets, peer-to-peer marketplaces, and open economic systems that blockchain pioneers are creating. In this book, the authors intend to remedy that. In each chapter, they ask executives and investors to step back and witness the grand transformation underway. Financial services, foundational to all industries and economic activity, is undergoing a big shake-up. Every aspect of the sector is changing, from how we move and store value to how we access credit, invest, trade, transact, and insure against risk. This is an eminently [...]

In this collection of articles, Norman Webster takes readers on a journey through his 50 years of newspapering—in Canada, China in the early 1970s, the UK of Maggie Thatcher, and around the world. Webster, a distinguished international journalist, worked at a time when you couldn’t rely on Google for your basic facts. You had to go there, look, ask questions. It’s old-style reporting from a journalist with a sharp eye for the absurd, as the title (from a reporting trip to Tibet) suggests. As a renowned editor, Webster writes about some of the big issues in Canada, such as the [...]

Scott Fraser was a shrewd Montreal money manager who defied traditional wisdom to deliver stellar results for his clients year after year. One of the most unusual investors in Canada, Fraser founded a legendary investment firm with Stephen Jarislowsky and then, 20 years later, walked away without receiving a dollar for his equity. When the business was eventually sold to a big chartered bank for $950 million, Fraser was left with nothing ... yet he never complained. Instead, he used his quiet, back-to-basics investment strategy to deliver a 19.5 per cent annual compounded return every year since 1990, an astonishing [...]

An Anthology of CIO/CISO Enterprise-level Perspectives A dozen of Canada’s top players in cybersecurity offer their insights into this white-hot issue for companies and individuals. Canadian Cybersecurity 2020 is written in clear, non-technical language that any executive can understand. And understanding the issues is paramount for making the big decisions that protect enterprises from devastating cyberattacks. “What makes this book special, and targeted, is its strict focus on Canadian cybersecurity,” says Ajay K. Sood, who wrote the Foreword. “My hope and my goal in putting this publication together is to give Canadian readers information and actionable advice that is directly relevant to [...]

Can game theory illuminate the options in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict? The author, a former neurosurgeon, examines the most intractable conflict in the world through the lens of game theory, a mathematical approach to decision-making. The Zionist dream, to create a Jewish state with a Jewish majority in the whole Palestine, is no longer tenable. But neither is two states for two peoples. What options are left, then? The only thing that’s for certain is that both sides must find a way to live together.

Think first. Design later. It takes way more than just being really good at what you do to start and run a successful business. To be seen, to be heard, and to be successful, you need to get clear on who you are, why you do what you do, what’s in it for your customers, and why they should hire you over the other guy. In Brand Chemistry, Laura Beauparlant shares her proven Brand Camp formula for achieving clarity and focus. No matter where you’re at now, you can build a brand that allows you to become a happier, more [...]

Edited and Foreword by Don Tapscott, Co-Founder, Blockchain Research Institue This is the first book in the Blockchain Research Institute Enterprise Series. This series also includes: Financial Services Revolution and Platform Revolution. This groundbreaking book, distributed to members of the Blockchain Research Institute, provides a glimpse of the future of global supply chains. Distributed ledgers—combined with the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, a suite of sensors, and the global positioning system—will transform the practices of operations, logistics, procurement and purchasing, transportation, customs and border control, trade finance and insurance, manufacturing, and inventory management. This wide-ranging book will help readers decide how best [...]

This is the memoir of the man who was the strategic Mr. No to Canada’s foremost entrepreneur, Ted Rogers. As the ultimate right-hand man for over 40 years, Phil Lind tells how he helped Rogers choose the best ideas and make them work. He also tells the inside story of how Rogers made the big move into live sports, with the purchase of the Blue Jays and the start of the cable sports channel, Sportsnet. The book includes a forward by Toronto Mayor John Tory, who worked closely with the author at Rogers.

This important new book for businesswomen looks at the 10 key characteristics of today’s winning leaders. These characteristics — like compassion, honesty, and authenticity — were once seen as feminine weaknesses in business. But today they define the leader who strengthens organizations rather than undermines them. This book comes from the voices of experience, powerful executives such as Kathleen Taylor, the Royal Bank’s chair of the board; Shelly Lazarus, chair emeritus of Ogilvy and Mather; and Annette Verschuren, former president of Home Depot Canada. They’re among the 70 women who tell compelling, first-person stories about ambition, courage, and the [...]

The Zero Dollar Car explores the deep changes that Big Data will make to our lives in the very near future. A car is a perfect example. Right now cars are outfitted with sensors that gather valuable information about the driver and road conditions. What if the driver could trade that information for money? That information could be so valuable that it could pay for the car. Cars are only the beginning. Imagine the Zero Dollar House — would you be willing to trade the information sensors gather in your fridge, your bathroom, and elsewhere? Big technology companies like Apple and [...]

​Heenan Blaikie was one of Canada’s leading law firms that boasted 1,100 employees and once had two former prime ministers on its staff—Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chrétien. When it collapsed in February 2014, lawyers across Canada and the business community were stunned. What went wrong? Why did so many lawyers run for the exit? How did it implode? What is it that holds professional partnerships together? This is the story of the rise and fall of a great company by the ultimate insider, Norman Bacal, who served as managing partner until a year before the firm’s demise. Breakdown takes readers [...]

Unstoppable tells the previously untold story of a business that has grown to be the largest source of debt financing to Canadian consumers outside of the traditional bank loan. This book covers the rollercoaster ride of asset-based finance, now a $300 billion business, through interviews with business trailblazers such as Jim Pattison and Steve Hudson, who led the industry for the past half century. It is an entertaining and personal business history that will inspire both students of business history and entrepreneurs alike. Unstoppable shows how this form of finance helped to grow Canada’s former industrial economy. It chronicles the rise and [...]

In 1989 Vicki Saunders was travelling in Europe with her brother, considering the pros and cons of jumping into a PhD, when the news hit that the Berlin Wall had fallen. They hustled themselves to Prague to take in a slice of history. There, surrounded by people declaring different versions of “now that I’m free,” it hit her: she was free too, free to follow whatever path she chose and to create the life she desired. It was a total shift in mindset. And so a consummate entrepreneur was born. Over the years Saunders has started five companies all over [...]

If you are living on an average Canadian income of $80,000, how can you afford to buy a home and start saving for retirement, even in a city like Vancouver with the richest real estate in the country? This is the question that every average Canadian is asking these days, especially in Vancouver where the most homely bungalow is selling for well over $1 million. Vancouver-based financial planner Christine Conway shows you how to do it. Speaking from her own experience living in Vancouver and with the expertise of a certified financial planner, Conway lays out a plan that an [...]

When you have to make big changes at work, really big changes, where do you turn? Organizations usually bring in the high-priced consultants, but the trouble begins when these outsiders try to implement the changes they recommend. Management consultant Steve Pinkus, a 20-year veteran in the business of change management and project management, explains how you can implement the pros’ advice yourself, if you follow his step-by-step plan.

Jim Beqaj, a former president of a Bay Street investment firm, offers blunt advice to readers looking for a job: Before you start looking for a job, think about who you really are. What do you like to do? What are you good at, and what are you not so good at? Who do you like to hang out with? Then, and only then, look for a job that actually suits your skills and your personality. This book is written for people who are in their 20s, fresh out of college, or in their 40s, fresh out of a corporate [...]