With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1388249
JULY/AUGUST 2021 BCBUSINESS 93 BCBUSINESS.CA tice in Entrepreneurship and Innovation with SFU's Beedie School of Business, pointing to Aritzia. The clothing retailer saw in-store sales drop in 2020 compared to the previous year, but it reaped the rewards of an online sales platform whose business surged 90 percent. "Some have gotten really good at that," Harries says. "And some haven't inno- vated. They're the ones we read about that are closing down." While retailers were the poster child for the shift, Harries expects consum- ers to return to pre- COVID habits when they're allowed. But the pandemic con- firmed the wisdom of embracing technol- ogy. "Despite the challenges, we benefited from earlier investments in our digital capabilities," heavy equipment dealer Finning International noted in its annual report. "We improved our execution in South America, reduced our cost base in Canada, built a strong backlog of projects in the U.K. and significantly lowered our finance costs." AbCellera Biologics, whose market capitalization stood at more than US$6 billion in mid-June, is using data science and machine learning to speed up the discovery of drug treatments for COVID and other diseases. Cymax Group Tech- nologies, an e-commerce platform pro- vider 71-percent-owned by Plenty of Fish founder Markus Frind, has the kind of backing that bodes well for success. Legal software maker Themis Solutions, which operates as Clio, and bricks-and-clicks care specialist Well Health Technologies Corp. are other examples of rising stars. Clio recently achieved unicorn status, with a billion-dollar valuation on revenue of $103 million. Harries, co-founder of Sierra Wireless, hopes Clio will be one of the companies that stay in Vancouver and become bea- cons for the local tech industry. Just as Intrawest Resorts Holdings did for real estate and Lululemon did for apparel, larger tech firms help smaller outfits by setting the tone for the sector. They also incubate new businesses. Scaling up the industry requires more than cultivating a pool of talented engi- neers; it also means building executive smarts, Harries explains. During the dot- com boom, much hand-wringing took