Tony Wanless

Thinking you'll kick up your business’s marketing with a flashy new online or mobile campaign? You may want to think again. A new study of consumer communication habits shows that only about 3 per cent of consumers in both Canada and the U.S. bother with QR codes. That’s barely a ripple in the communication world. Not only that, a large majority of both Canadians and Americans admit to never opening much of the email they get.

Last summer, a new television show called Continuum debuted on Shaw Media’s Showcase channel. A sci-fi thriller set in a future Vancouver, it’s a show like none other before it. Not only is it broadcast on TV, but it also...

With all the recent games being played over who should get transit upgrades, it looks like a provincial election issue is forming. I found it interesting when the City of Vancouver announced it wanted TransLink to build a $2.8-billion subway line along the Broadway corridor. It’s been waiting for such transit for more than a decade. Interesting because I thought Surrey, the second biggest city after Vancouver, is vastly underserved by transit and was up next for any transit spending.

The federal government should stop dithering and invoke the “net benefits” rule to block takeovers of oil and gas companies operating in Alberta’s oilsands. Why is the Canadian government trying so hard to ignore the groundswell of anger that’s growing around the Chinese state-owned oil company CNOOC’s proposed takeover of Alberta’s Nexen Inc. oil company?

Rapid technological change and a bet on the wrong platform brought down Vancouver game developer Tiny Speck’s game Glitch. The shutdown game was another blow to the city’s once-thriving gaming industry. I was sad to see recently that Vancouver game developer Tiny Speck will shut down Glitch, its “massive multiplayer online” game, next month.

If you’re a compulsive saver of digital information of all kinds, you’re costing your company or yourself lost productivity, time and money.   Recently while viewing a very dry announcement of an equally dry conference that’s coming up in the U.S. in March, I discovered the term “digital hoarder.” A “digital hoarder” is the modern version of that ferocious office paper-piler or amateur librarian of 10 years ago.

Cubicles aren’t the solution to office inefficiency. They’re the problem. Once, in San Francisco, I visited the offices of the social media tracker Klout. The first thing I noticed was that they had a huge space so big you could play floor hockey in it. Scattered around were clumps of desks where workers would happily do whatever they did to keep the business running. Not a cubicle to be seen.

The Washington State vote to essentially legalize marijuana will have a large impact on the illegal marijuana-growing industry in B.C. Is this the beginning of the end for our famed B.C. Bud? Tuesday’s historic election in the U.S. was certainly interesting to us British Columbians, but not in terms of the Obama-Romney presidential fight. In our case, the most interesting contest was in Washington State where they were voting on whether to legalize marijuana. Astonishingly, they did.

Canada is becoming more entrepreneurial and B.C. is leading the charge. Nearly half of  businesses in B.C. now are soloist, or self-employment, operations. Well, glory be. It seems Canada is finally becoming a country of entrepreneurs. This is according to a recent study from CIBC which discovered this summer that half a million Canadians said they had begun their own businesses in the month of June.

Buying condos to rent isn’t always the road to riches. In fact, it can lead to near ruin. Ever wonder about those long lines at new condo development sales offices, or curious as to how condo developments can be sold out within hours? Most of us have. One clue is that more than half the buyers are wearing suits and seem to spend all their time chatting furiously into their smartphones.

Business can be much more fascinating than the dry numbers and deals that often dominate the business pages. This is especially so in the “Village of Vancouver,” where networks are so important (and entrenched). Yesterday there was an announcement that Sotheby’s International Realty Canada has been acquired by 360 VOX Corp., which is 24-per-cent owned by Ned Goodman, the chief executive of Dundee Capital Markets Inc. and a legendary investor in Toronto.

Handing the business over to a child can be a wrenching adjustment. The sometimes-thorny question of business succession is looming large in hundreds of B.C. businesses as baby boomer owners begin thinking about retirement. A lot of entrepreneurs would like to pass on their business to a child or relative, but as one B.C. family learned, that often requires adjustment by all involved. The Problem