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/1508543
Follow the Leaders T he framing around our annual Leader- ship Issue started off with what seems like a simple prompt: What's the best leadership advice you've ever received? We sent that question to a handful of local execu- tives and entrepreneurs, and I wasn't sure what kind of answers we'd get back. What we did get ("Leading Question," p.39), of course, was everything: from undeniable one-liners to whole stanzas of quotes from famous phi- losophers. Taken as a whole, the response we received is something of a microcosm of B.C.'s business scene—an unorthodox but robust mixture of small and big, featuring industries as diverse as natural resources and health, all intersecting and playing off each other. And who better to feature as our cover sub- jects for an issue tackling these themes than the three heads of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade? I met Bridgitte Anderson, Radha Curpen and Juggy Sihota downtown at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver for a round- table interview ("Secrets of the Trade," p.26), where I was immediately impressed by the collective passion they have for the province's business com- munity. It's clear that all three leaders believe there are turbu- lent times ahead for businesses in this province, and have grave concerns about where we could be headed as a result. But they also succeed in highlighting some of the incredible things B.C. companies are achieving right now. I hope you'll find this conversation as entertaining and enlightening as I did. And I don't have to hope you'll be equally engaged by Matt Coté's feature on Vancouver-based outerwear manufacturer Intuition Liners ("Gold Lining," p.48)—it would be impossible not to be. Coté expertly documents how the company overcame some, uh, not-exactly-legal- at-the-time past decisions to become a globally recognized ski boot liner brand. Intuition is currently celebrating its 30th anniversary and is living proof that leadership isn't always a straight line, to say the least. My personal answer to the question that we posed to all those business leaders isn't neces- sarily exciting or innovative—but I suppose, since fair's fair, that I should offer it as well. I've always liked a quote I once read from famed Chicago magazine publisher (of course, come on) Arnold Glasow: "A good leader takes a little more than their share of the blame, a little less than their share of the credit." If you have your own insightful advice about leadership to share with us, feel free to drop me a line. My inbox is always open. Nathan Caddell, Editor-in-Chief bcb@canadawide.com / @BCBusiness ( editor's desk ) N E X T I S S U E Watch for profiles of the impressive EY Pacific Region Entrepreneur of the Year winners and finalists C ON T R I B U T OR S Comox Valley-based journalist Andrew Findlay has been a BCBusiness contributor for almost 20 years. His inspiration behind "Mushroom Kingdom" (p.11) can be traced back to a Grow Up cannabis conference he attended in Victoria in 2021, where he met Branden Walle, head of biology at Kapoose Creek Bio. "I've always been interested in wild mushrooms," says Findlay, "but after hitting the field for this story I had newfound appreciation for the untapped biochemical potential of fungi." Tokyo-born photographer Kyoko Fierro moved to Vancouver with plans of becoming an engineer. But she disliked science courses and preferred Langara College's professional photography program instead. "That was a decent improvisation saving myself out of academic misery," she says. Fierro photographed Weekend Warrior Delaram Hajipour for "Funny Business" (p.71) and says she left the shoot with the realization that "life is nothing but improv." PORTRAIT: ALAINA MICHELLE; TOP RIGHT: LISA HALLSTROM 8 BCBUSINESS.CA OCTOBER 2023