| | | | Welcome to Rainforest Alberta - yeg's Monthly Newsletter | | Hi Guest, Rainforest Pulse goes out once per month to keep you up-to-date on the progress made towards supporting the growth of Alberta's innovation-based economy! | | | | - Recap of August's events
- Upcoming Events in September
- What is the Rainforest?
- Core Value focus: Honesty
| | | | | | LWOL #1 featured entrepreneur Michael Taschuk with G2V Optics, another serial entrepreneur who had an exciting story to share about his experience taking a software company international. "Think BIG - you can do it in Edmonton." - Michael Taschuk Lunch without #2 featured inspiring entrepreneur Myrna Bittner of RUNWITHIT Synthetics. Myrna shared with us her experience failing fast and iterating her way to success.
"Resilience and determination takes you to your goal!" - Myrna Bittner | | Upcoming Events in September | | Every month, Rainforest brings entrepreneurs, investors, service providers and other innovators and changemakers together. These events are a core principle of the Rainforest - creating trust through connections and conversation.
Who should attend a Rainforest event? - Anyone interested in starting or growing an innovation-based business in Alberta
- Former entrepreneurs and business owners looking to share their experience and give back to the community that helped make them successful
- Anyone exploring entrepreneurship as a potential career path
- Individuals or companies who provide services to entrepreneurs at any stage of growth, from pre-start to growth to succession
- Anyone interested in improving the culture of innovation and trust in Alberta, making a meaningful impact on the growth of the emerging innovation economy, or individuals who want to be part of the solution
- Researchers, inventors, or makers who are looking for help in making their idea a reality
| | September Rainforest Events | | | | | | | | Rainforest Alberta is a grassroots, community-based initiative of people working together to improve the invisible infrastructure that empowers Alberta's innovation-based economy. We want Albertans to know that they don’t have to move away to invent, prosper, and move their ideas forward. To that end, our goal is grow the same invisible infrastructure that underlies successful, innovative communities like Silicon Valley, Denver, Boston, or Israel, right here in Alberta. The Rainforest is based on simple social principles contained in our social contract, which guides the way that individuals interact within the ecosystem. | | | | | | Core Value Focus: Honesty | | The importance of Honesty in the Innovation Process | | Technology has created a more global, connected world. This has lead to ever shrinking geographical distances, increasing the opportunity for innovation. At the same time, humans have not developed the skills necessary to deal with the vast social distances between communities and cultures. Innovators, though more connected, have a more difficult time building trust and collaborating.
Rainforest focuses on bringing together people who are different, unlike traditional clusters that focus on bringing together people who are similar. This is necessary to bridge these social distances, by encouraging interactions of diverse thoughts and disciplines. This is built upon trust that can only happen when all individuals are open and honest. After all, a business person and an academic might be the perfect fit "on paper", able to bring more value to a partnership than either could accomplish alone, but without honest dialogue, trust, and transparency, neither can achieve these benefits.
"If I make deposits into an Emotional Bank Account with you through courtesy, kindness, honesty, and keeping my commitments to you, I build up a reserve. Your trust toward me becomes higher, and I can call upon that trust many times if I need to. I can even make mistakes and that trust level, that emotional reserve, will compensate for it. My communication may not be clear, but you'll get my meaning anyway. You won't make me "an offender for a word." When the trust account is high, communication is easy, instant, and effective." - Stephen Covey
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