Things I Wonder About–”Make Believe” Surveillance Oversight, Porn Extortion and Other Stuff

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than the one where they sprang up. – Oliver Wendell Holmes

Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean. – Ryunosuke Satoro

By popular demand, I offer round 2 of “Things I Wonder About” (continued from Things I Wonder About).

In between selling a large tech company and starting up a Foundation that will “help NPO’s “do good better” through fact-based decision-making and evidence-based outcome assessments” (quoting friend and colleague, Doug P.), I often have other distractions that cross my mind that I feel merit some attention.

As a long-time Wall St. strategy guy, unsolved problems are always a conundrum for me, especially when the problems are significant in impact and are far / wide reaching in society.  Problems in society affect us all at some point, even if we don’t feel the affect directly (or believe we don’t).

However, I can’t tackle all these thoughts, nor should I (no individual is tagged as the “savior” of the world).  That being said, they are worthy of thought and action and so, with the encouragement of very nice colleagues who kindly never lose patience with me when I muse about other concerns in the world, I’m going to occasionally toss some ideas out with the idea that someone else may feel inspired to own some of them.

This is not a typical blog post for me such as can be found in the #1206 series, the Abigail / Gabriel series or any general post.  It is a grab bag of thoughts that pass through my brain in the course of leading a busy Life.

If you want to own one, I would be glad to help!

A subset of my random thoughts this week:

1. Winning (Losing) on Principle: How do we help people such as the person who contacted me this week, telling me an unfortunate story of how she has had compromising video / audio taken of her but she can’t report it to police?  The information is such that her personal and professional reputation would be destroyed if it was made public but she has been informed that any action by the police against the miscreant will cause the information to be released to the public.  After contacting the police, I was told that she needed to come forward and file official charges (of course).  But the moment she does so, her Life is destroyed.  The police say “but we will still arrest him”.  The counter, that her Life is still destroyed while she “wins on principle”, doesn’t seem to matter much.
2. Bureaucrats Who Don’t Think Things Through:  The Liberal Government in Canada is planning sweeping legislative changes to curtail the surveillance authority of various law enforcement groups as provided by the previous government.  Unfortunately, all of the laws can be circumvented, providing unlimited power to surveillance authorities.  For information on how that is accomplished, observe how the NSA has dealt with similar “restrictions”.
3. Our Over-Spend on Anti-Terror: Over dinner with Gwynne Dyer last week, I explained to him how billions of dollars spent annually on surveillance and decryption technology can be undermined using $100 worth of technology (I wrote about it in National Security – Arming Both Sides).  He just shook his head.  Why are we still pretending (outside of the fact that it keeps people “fat, dumb and happy”)?  The money spent on this could be better spent on …. just about anything.
4. Our Overstated Fear of ISIS: While random attacks using vehicles as weapons draw great press and create fear that can be used as leverage for various purposes, consider this the next time a “”frightening event” occurs.  You are:
• 6 times more likely to die from a shark attack (one of the rarest forms of death on Earth)
• 29 times more likely to die from a regional asteroid strike
• 260 times more likely to be struck and killed by lightning
• 4,700 times more likely to die in an airplane or spaceship accident
• 129,000 times more likely to die in a gun assault
• 407,000 times more likely to die in a motor vehicle incident
• 6.9 million times more likely to die from cancer or heart disease (source).
5. The Disabling Effect of a Good Story: Someone used the story of the fisherman and the starfish on the beach (where the fisherman insists he can’t save all of them but he saves one by throwing it back into the ocean) to explain how every little bit helps.  Many of these feel-good stories can also be used to justify minimal effort under the guise of making a difference when much more could be done.
6. The Lack of Strategy In People’s Lives: Most people would never set out on a long drive wearing a blindfold, without a working gas gauge, without knowing how much gas they have in the tank and not knowing where they were going.  However, if you look at how much effort goes into planning their Life, they don’t follow the same safety guidelines for their own Life.  It matters – we all reap the reward and pay the penalty for each person’s brilliance, greed and ignorance.  If you don’t believe me, ask your insurance company how your premium is calculated or how many stupid people it takes to get all of us to take our shoes off in airport security (the answer to the latter question is one).
7. Realistic Use of Strategy: While many people generally accept the importance of strategy, many of those same people prefer to build plans in ignorance of where they are at the moment because where they are reminds them of some failure or shortcoming.  This myopic, over-optimistic view causes them to not realize that knowing where you are going depends entirely on where you are starting from.  If I call you and ask for directions to Penn Station in NYC because I need to be there in an hour, it matters if I am calling you from Chinatown (NYC), Seattle or Moscow.
8. Failure to Use Data: Many people make choices regarding important things that involve risk (e.g. in investment, buying insurance, extended warranties, implementing new business strategies and the like) based on how they feel at the moment.  Unfortunately, doing so using “your gut” instead of using data may cause you to be too risk averse if you just experienced a bad moment or not risk averse enough if Life is going swimmingly at the moment.  Data doesn’t care how you feel, is not so easily biased and can prevent you from over/under reacting to a specific risk mitigation requirement or being coerced / influenced by someone else who tells you to do something “just because”.
9. Be Proactive: Stephen Covey was right when he said Habit 1 is to be proactive.  Look around you and ask yourself how often we apply this rule.  Do you?  Don’t forget – we all reap the reward and pay the penalty for compliance / non-compliance.
10. Awareness of Psychology: Why do so many people have the ability to explain every nuance about how Facebook works but can’t explain the psychology of how people use emotion (particularly anger, fear, envy or greed) to manipulate them or how someone can debate them repeatedly into no-win choices that always benefit the other person?
11. Multidirectional Respect: Why do people who insist that we all be respectful of one other tend to be the ones who least like counter ideas and opinions and shout the loudest to diminish the ideas of others?  When the Voice of Fire was purchased by the National Art Gallery in Ottawa some years ago (containing three equally sized vertical stripes, with the outer two painted blue and the center painted red), many people stood in front of it and marveled at its insight, brilliance and creativity. I observed to the person next to me, quietly, that it looked like the artist had run out of paint.  Apparently I wasn’t quiet enough because a security guard who had been marveling with the others came over and told me to keep my uninformed opinion to myself or I would be asked to leave the Gallery.
12. Hyper-Analysis of Zer, Zim et al:  If you don’t know what these mean, you have learned how to tune out the news (which can be a good thing) or you are living under a rock.  We must be careful that we don’t get so distracted by the tail wagging the dog that other things in society (appropriate governance, health care, education, infrastructure, safety and security of society, etc.) are not forgotten.  We thrive or die together.  Focus and priorities will determine which way we are going.  When politicians tell you that they are balancing everything well, ask them about unsustainable budgets, infrastructure security, health care waiting lines, failing grades for education performance …. well …. you get it.  I find that when I use social media to ask (not accuse) a politician how things are going, they block me without trying to answer. Some in the meantime, will then tweet all day about someone’s cat that looks very cute.
13. Airport Security: A cell phone battery and a glass of water can create a potentially dangerous situation on an aircraft (I won’t say how).  People examining this situation are considering bans of laptops, tablets and potentially cell phones as well as potentially requiring you to submit them for safe transport (and obviously, examination).  Don’t act surprised if this happens …. soon.
14. And More Airport Security: I explained to someone today how a $60 drone purchased at Walmart can imperil everyone on a large aircraft at an airport.  Bureaucrats who legislate against drone use close to airports ignore the reality that those of us with common sense don’t need to be told this and people who don’t care won’t be told this, so the legislation impacts very few people.  We have avoided a disaster because people have chosen not to do something stupid but unfortunately, hope is not a strategy.  And if something happens, we will still have excellent laws to charge the miscreant but as in the first point in this list, we will win in principle only.

Do these things matter or am I just over-sensitive?

Should we care that these represent symptoms of a society that is not ticking over as well as claimed by politicians or do we ignore them, saving our complaints and intention for action only when we are directly affected as opposed to when our neighbor is being pummeled instead of us?

If they matter, what can we do about them?

The Bottom Line

I’m a big believer in sharing thoughts and encouraging people to dialog about things with an eye towards taking measurable action.  Good intentions and thoughts are worthless without measurable results.

However, we can’t own everything that comes before us, even when it impacts us deeply.  Some of us who work hard to make a difference in the world need others to share the responsibility, especially when many who put little into society want to reap the harvest that comes from a better world.

It’s time for more people to be concerned about society and where it’s going …

… while it’s still a going concern.

In service and servanthood, create a great day because merely having one is too passive an experience.

Harry

We’re Protecting Syrian Refugees–How About Protecting Canadian Children?

Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph. - Haile Selassie

There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts. - Mahatma Gandhi

A story has come to my attention in recent days that I need your help in understanding.

I’m not a stupid guy, having IPOd a company while being blessed to count all but one of the Fortune 25 as clients of mine as well as innumerable government agencies, not-for-profits, etc., in multiple countries.

But I am asking for your help to help me understand a story that my mind simply can’t figure out.

Over the course of the past 6 months, the Canadian government has bent over backward to bring 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada.  This is a noble and essential effort and one that Canada has excelled at for years – bringing hope and love to those who lost sight of both in a life of despair, violence and complexity.

Even with the threat that some of these refugees may be terrorists imbedded within a stream of humanity desperately looking for hope, we accept the refugees anyway. We do so because we believe that it is better to accept such a risk – that we will deal with any miscreants should they surface while simultaneously helping the majority of the people who are floundering.

The reality is that if we always insisted that helping someone must always produce a positive result with absolutely no risk, then we would never help anyone at all.

What kind of world would we have then?

How would you feel if you needed help but were rejected because there was a risk involved in helping you?

Exactly.

So help me to understand something.

Some years ago, a Canadian citizen by the name of Alison Azer (her married name) fell in love with and married a man by the name of Saren Nazer.  He was an immigrant himself, coming from Iran.

His story is complex and is best told in a National Post article that I will reveal in a moment.

The long and short of the story is that this man, a man who raised so many flags with CSIS that his permanent resident status was constantly held up, married a Canadian citizen and had four kids with her.

This is also a man who was charged by the RCMP for uttering threats against his wife, causing her to seek shelter with her children in a woman’s shelter in Victoria.

He also became more and more radicalized regarding Kurdish independence and was tied by CSIS to potential Kurdish terrorist groups.

In other words, this person sounds like trouble.

It is the 21st century, a time when we allegedly defend battered women and children and protect the safety of Canadians against such people.

And despite all of this, in the custody battle that ensued as their marriage fell apart, this man was granted the right to take the four children out of the country for “a vacation”.

He never came back.

That was over 7 months ago.

Their heart breaking story can be found in the following links:

• ‘There are four Canadian kids being held captive in a war zone and no one seems to be doing anything about it’ (National Post)
• Editorial: The government can save these children (Ottawa Citizen)
• Canadian mom Alison Azer fears abducted kids in Iraq with their dad (CBC – The Current)
• Find Azer Kids Now (public awareness website)

Here is where I need your help.

We are told that our government will go to the ends of the earth to protect us and to help us in times of need.

We have watched our government go to the ends of the earth to bring 25,000 Syrians here to experience real living in a nation built upon peace, love and opportunity.

Meanwhile ….

Four Canadian children somewhere in the world are crying to their mom for help.

A Canadian woman weeps for her children who have been taken illegally from her, with the courts subsequently having given her sole custody of them.

The government knows where the children are.

And yet our government does nothing to help them or her. Maybe it's because many of our elected officials seem to prefer to tackle the easy stuff that generates great PR / feel-good for their own needs rather than take on the important things for their constituents that is also more difficult to solve.

The media does little to carry the message into the light of day, preferring to pontificate ad nauseum about matters more sensationalist but no more important than the safety of Canadian children.

Mayors of major Canadian cities have no comment but tell them that a puppy is lost in their city and they are all over it.

And so my question is ….. why?

Why do we allow this to happen?

If we are a so-called great nation extending a hand of love and understanding to those who are lost in the world, why can’t we do the same to one of our own who merely wants her children back?

Wouldn’t you want your children back if this happened to you?

Exactly.

So why aren’t we doing more to help this woman and her children?

Can you answer that one question for me …..

…. please?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Politics and the Mutability of Human Values

(aka Bad Government – It’s Your Fault)

The foundation stones for a balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love and loyalty. - Zig Ziglar

Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it. - Mark Twain

Honesty is the fastest way to prevent a mistake from turning into a failure. - James Altucher

My recent exploration of the by-election in Calgary-Foothills and the potential embellishment of education credentials by one of the candidates in the blog post PC Party and Blair Houston–Isn’t Honesty Still the Best Policy? has generated thousands of emails, private messages and texts to me (not all kind, professional and positive, may I add) and the reaction caused me to think about the general election currently underway in Canada.

In regards to the afore-mentioned by-election and my expression of concern regarding the potentially dishonest representation of education credentials by a candidate, I was told by Party execs and some MLAs that the resume embellishment is known but that it is important that the candidate stay in the race anyway without a public correction since officially addressing the issue may damage his chances.

This suggests to me that the human value of honesty is mutable and wavering within these individuals, being something that can be paraded around when convenient / useful but which can be modified or ignored when required.

But when one explores the larger political scene, is it any different for any political campaign on a municipal, provincial / state or federal level?

We have national politicians in Canada espousing the importance of legalizing pot, sending blankets to refugees in Syria and the like but I don’t hear many voters demanding specific, explicit, measurable, verifiable details regarding the economy, climate change, ever-escalating healthcare / education costs, privacy versus protection (anti-terror) legislation and the like.

And even when a candidate rolls out a half-baked answer or solution to something, it is often full of holes, has no data to back it up and oftentimes has nothing to it at all.

And yet we blindly accept everything without asking the candidate “What are the real issues?  Why do they matter?  What is your solution?  How do you know?”

And so political parties, politicians and their blind, Kool-Aid drinking minions continue to send us meaningless distractions which divert our attention away from the truth that most (not all) politicians are either ignorant, indifferent or incapable when it comes to serving the populace or creating solutions to the ever-growing list of “stuff” that needs to be addressed while it still can be addressed.

What does this say about politicians and political parties?

What does this say about us when, not if, we accept it?

Does such a stand on our part remove our right to complain when politicians let us down later, when we suddenly learn all over again that their values and ours, that our needs and their intentions, aren’t in alignment?

Why do we care more when the politician lets us down after being elected instead of caring more about the details regarding the candidates and their solutions / intentions before we elect them?

Why would we rather spend more time complaining after the fact instead of using our time productively during an election to produce the best government possible?

Why indeed.

The likely reason is that it is easier to blame someone else for the failures around us rather than take proactive steps to prevent them in the first place.

In other words, we are running short of personal responsibility when it comes to the issues that we face collectively and so it is easier to wait for the failure of someone else to manifest so that we can point a finger elsewhere instead of at ourselves.

The Bottom Line

Politicians rely on the apathy, indifference and ignorance of the electorate.

What does this say about them?

What does this say about us?

At what point will our apathy, indifference and ignorance produce a government that is actually incapable of solving our problems despite its best intentions because the problems are too large, varied, complex and interwoven?

Why do we tempt fate by potentially allowing such a scenario to be created?

Maybe we have already reached (or passed) that point and politicians have merely become feel-good, “the future is always bright” mouthpieces to serve their own needs and intentions, knowing that our needs are already unsolvable but selling us a bright future can satisfy their own desires.

Would you know the difference between promised solutions and realistic ones?

Would you bet your family’s security and well-being on your answer?

Do you care?

Are you sure?

How do you know?

It takes more than a vote to create a positive future.

It takes an intelligent, informed vote.

And last time I checked, there seems to be a significant shortage of those,

Because in the end, when ineffective, incompetent or dishonest politicians and governments are elected, it’s not their fault.

It’s ours.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

More Anti-Terrorism Laws

A guest post by Gwynne Dyer on May 11, 2015.  Shared here with explicit written permission of the author.

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Left-wing, right-wing, it makes no difference. Almost every elected government, confronted with even the slightest “terrorist threat”, responds by attacking the civil liberties of its own citizens. And the citizens often cheer them on.

Last week, the French government passed a new bill through the National Assembly that vastly expanded the powers of the country’s intelligence services. French intelligence agents will now be free to plant cameras and recording devices in private homes and cars, intercept phone conversations without judicial oversight, even  install “keylogger” devices that record every key stroke on a targeted computer in real time.

It was allegedly a response to the “Charlie Hebdo” attacks that killed 17 people in Paris last January, but the security services were just waiting for an excuse. Indeed, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said that the law was needed to give a legal framework to intelligence agents who are already pursuing some of these practices illegally. France, he explained, has never “had to face this kind of terrorism in our history.”

Meanwhile, over in Canada, Defence Minister Jason Kenney was justifying a similar over-reaction in by saying that “the threat of terrorism has never been greater.” Really?

In all the time since 9/11 there had never been a terrorist attack in Canada until last October, when two Canadian soldiers were killed in separate incidents. Both were low-tech, “lone wolf” attacks by Canadian converts to Islam – in one, the murder weapon was simply a car – but the public (or at least the media) got so excited that the government felt the need to “do something.”

The Anti-Terror Act, which has just passed the Canadian House of Commons, gives the Canadian Security Intelligence Service the right to make “preventive” arrests in Canada. It lets police arrest and detain individuals without charge for up to seven days. The bill’s prohibitions on speech that “promotes or glorifies terrorism” are so broad and vague that any extreme political opinion can be criminalised.

In short, it’s the usual smorgasbord of crowd-pleasing measures that politicians throw out when they want to look tough. It won’t do much to stop terrorist attacks, but that doesn’t matter as the threat is pretty small anyway.

France has 65,000,000 million people, and it lost 17 of them to terrorism in the past year. Canada has 36,000,000 million people, and it has lost precisely 2 of them to domestic terrorism in the past twenty years. In what way were those lives more valuable than those of the hundreds of people who die each year in France and Canada from less newsworthy crimes of violence like murder?

Why haven’t they changed the law to stop more of those crimes? If you monitored everybody’s electronic communications all the time, and bugged their homes and cars, you could probably cut the murder rate in half. The price, of course, would be that you have to live in an Orwellian surveillance state, and we’re not willing to pay that price. Not just to cut the murder rate.

The cruel truth is that we put a higher value on the lives of those killed in terrorist attacks because they get more publicity. That’s why, in an opinion poll last month, nearly two-thirds of French people were in favor of restricting freedoms in the name of fighting extremism – and the French parliament passed the new security law by 438 votes to 86.

The government in France is Socialist, but the opposition centre-right supported the new law too. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government in Canada is seriously right-wing, but the centre-right Liberals were equally unwilling to risk unpopularity by opposing it. On the other hand, the centre-left New Democrats and the Greens voted against, and the vote was closer in Canada: 183 to 96.

And the Canadian public, at the start 82 percent in favour of the new law, had a rethink during the course of the debate. By the time the Anti-Terror Act was passed in the House of Commons, 56 percent of Canadians were against it. Among Canadians between 18 and 34 years old, fully three-quarters opposed it.

Maybe the difference just reflects the smaller scale of the attacks in Canada, but full credit to Canadians for getting past the knee-jerk phase of their response to terrorism. Nevertheless, their parliament still passed the bill. So should we chalk all this up as two more victories for the terrorists, with an honourable mention for the Canadian public?

No, not really. Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and all the other jihadis don’t give a damn if Western democracies mutilate their own freedoms, as it doesn’t significantly restrict their own operations. The only real winners are the security forces.

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Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

Canadian Senate: Choosing Solutions Poorly

You must never underestimate your opposition. - John Scarlett

Do not underestimate the determination of a quiet man. - Iain Duncan Smith

A few years ago, I was having a problem with my vehicle transmission where it was shifting sluggishly and making unusual noises.  Since it was still under warranty, I brought it into the dealership and explained my concern.  They said they could see nothing wrong and returned the vehicle.

As the problem got worse (and louder), I brought it into the dealership twice more and twice the vehicle was returned with an “all good” designation.

When the vehicle was 90 miles past the warranty, the transmission failed completely.

As a dedicated customer of more than 20 years, I complained to no avail to the dealer and corporate HQ and was informed that my only options were to buy a refurbished transmission for $2500 or a new one for $4000.  Not wanting to take a chance on a refurbished one, I paid $4000 for a new one.

It lasted a single day before failing.  When the dealership took it apart, they discovered that it had failed because an extra washer (a part costing a few pennies) had been added incorrectly at the factory. They took the transmission apart, repaired it and reassembled it.

Meanwhile, I now protested that I was in fact getting a refurbished one since it had only lasted one day before having to be rebuilt by the dealership and I should be refunded the difference.

It didn’t matter to the dealership or the national brand and I was left with a decision.

I could sue somebody for $4000.

Or I could do something much more expensive to the brand.

When I had purchased this vehicle, more than 40 other people had purchased the same vehicle on my recommendation, to the tune of more than $1.6 million.  As a matter of fact, every time I buy a new vehicle, many people follow my lead and buy the same vehicle on my exuberant recommendation.

And so when I shared across my network what had happened, these same people chose another brand when they bought their next car.

Cost to me – $4000.

Cost to the brand – A couple of million within my immediate network, plus the cost within my 2nd degree network, etc.

They thought that forcing me to pay $4000 was a smart solution on their part.

They had underestimated the power and reach of the customer they were ignoring

Meanwhile at the Senate …….

For the sake of a couple of hundred thousand dollars in allegedly inappropriate spending, Canada now has a Senate and a Parliament spending an inordinate number of cycles, paying an inordinate number of consultants and auditors and everything else to “make it go away”.

I’m willing to bet that the cost of the solution has already far outstripped the cost of the problem – at least the problem that we are aware of. <<Case in point – CBC Report: Senate expense audits cost taxpayers $528K>>

Equally as important, the impact on the perception of the Senate, the impact on the PMO and the impact on Prime Minister Harper himself remains unknown but potentially very expensive since it appears that we haven’t seen the last of the bombshell revelations.

The issues with the Senators are a symptom of a larger problem in the Canadian Senate – problems that will not get solved in the theatrics, diplomatic time wasting, obfuscation and evasion that is currently in progress in the Senate and Parliament.

The Government of Canada needs to get on top of these issues in a manner that appeals to the public – with transparency, with haste and with a long-term solutions that makes sense to “the customer” – the electorate.

The “transmission” of the Canadian Government is not shifting well and is making a lot more noise than it should be.

I think someone needs to fix it soon before the customer seeks another brand that offers a better solution.  The other brand may not actually be able to deliver a better solution – but we won’t discover that until we buy their product.

What do you think?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

ACOA and the Dirty Secrets of Government Investment

Investing without research is like playing stud poker and never looking at the cards.

Go for a business that any idiot can run - because sooner or later, any idiot probably is going to run it.

Peter Lynch

I was intrigued to see today that the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) is suing Cathexis Innovations  for $4.4 million as a result of alleged loan payment defaults.  The story can be found here.

It’s not the first such court case nor will it be the last.  Here’s an example – ACOA suing Consilient for $7.7 million.  It is intriguing to see how some people behind these failed ACOA investments parlay their ACOA-enabled“success” into great careers.  This is how Trevor Adey, former head of Consilient, is described in his Ericson bio.

While the notion of a federal agency investing in seed or growth capital is a noble gesture, there are many dirty secrets that people have discovered that allow those who know how to play the system to gain millions in funding, redirect much of it towards their own pockets and then allow the companies to go down the drain.  As Sunny Marche, formerly a management professor at Dalhousie University (now deceased) once said:

They know how to write the application so that it gets some kind of positive review.  They know what the right language is ... and they've cracked the code around the relationship with ACOA.

To be clear, I am not implying or inferring that Cathexis is one of those companies nor am I suggesting that ACOA is without some successes.

However, when many companies have milked the ACOA teat to the fullest extent possible and go down the drain anyway, they cite “poor market conditions” or some other excuse while those of us “in the know” shake our heads at another rip-off.

As someone who has been asked many times to explore companies who are on the ACOA teat to see if they are “real or just smoke and mirrors”, I have become very disenchanted with the government investment program as a result and I wonder if it’s more of a vote-buying engine than an investment engine.

But before I get into why I think this, some advice from my mother comes to mind:

If you can’t say something good about something then don’t say anything at all.

Hmmmmm …. good advice.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Addendum

Some readers have asked for examples and I will provide one.

A leadership team of an ACOA client had for years spent approximately 60% of its time applying for various government investment and incentive programs.  For some of the leadership, that’s all they did year round.

At one point, they had an opportunity to score a potentially large partner investment with a globally known brand that had revenue in excess of $20 billion per year.

The potential partner offered an initial sum of approximately $2.4 million in order to partner with this company and to build extensions to this company’s product offerings.  This would have amounted to more money than this company earned cumulatively (i.e. non grant / investment / loan capital) in the history of the 10-year old company.

Most of us entrepreneurs see such opportunity as turning the corner on the way to success.

However, this company turned down the offer.

Why?  Because they were afraid that they would fail to deliver for this important partner whereas “other sources of income” were more guaranteed and easier to get.

I was in the room when the decision was made … and have never forgotten it.