Dan MacDonald is a big picture kind of guy, but he’s not afraid to get his hands dirty working out the details. The President and CEO of Halifax’s InNOVAcorp, MacDonald thinks globally and strategizes locally, overseeing that company’s incubation infrastructure, mentoring services, and venture capital investment.

Working in the high tech industry over 19 years and over 20 countries, MacDonald returned to Halifax in 2004 and joined InNOVAcorp in 2005. Since then, he has applied his plentiful list of skills – global marketing, product management, engineering, customer operations, venturing, mergers and acquisitions – to the development of Nova Scotia’s information technology, clean-tech, and life-sciences sectors. Community involvement is also clearly important to MacDonald. He sits on the boards of Coemergence Inc., the Discovery Centre, and the Nova Scotia Alzheimer’s Society, and is part of the National Research Council's Institute for Marine Biosciences Advisory Council. In February 2008, Dan was asked by the Globe and Mail - Report on Business to join an expert “Incubation” panel made up of six prominent CEOs, successful entrepreneurs, and business specialists from across Canada.

On June 5, 2009, MacDonald will participate in a panel at the East Coast Connected Atlantic Business Summit. Alongside George Armoyan (Chairman, Clarke Inc.), Paul Dube (CEO, Newfoundland & Labrador Association of Technology Industries), Denyse LeBlanc (Partner, McInnes Cooper), and moderator Gordon Fullerton (Associate Dean, Sobey School of Business), MacDonald will tackle the question, “How can we make Atlantic Canada the place from which to conduct business internationally?”

ECC’s Alex Willis had a chance to speak with MacDonald in May 2009.

Alex Willis: You’re someone who has returned to Atlantic Canada from a successful career abroad. What were your reasons for coming back?

Dan MacDonald: Family commitments. My family had left Atlantic Canada in 1990 or so, and I worked in Ontario, California, and some lengthy stints in Europe. Around the 2004 mark, we were reflecting and wondering what we were going to do next, and we decided that it would be time to reconnect and come back. We came back here without jobs, so it was a risk, but the rest is history.

We’ve always loved Halifax. We did of course ask ourselves, “How the hell are we going to find the jobs, roles, and conversation that we’ve found and enjoyed elsewhere?” We were very sober about all of that stuff. Our reasons were hard to quantify, but we decided to give it a shot.

AW: That’s interesting that your personal reasons preceded the professional ones, but that the latter really fell into place once you got to Halifax.

DM: Yeah. If you weren’t a risk-taker you wouldn’t have done what we did. We did enjoy living abroad, and our family was benefiting from all of that. When we decided to come back, we knew we would have to make the professional side work.

AW: In a recent Globe and Mail “Incubation” commentary you mentioned the need for early stage companies to “validate the market...and have an objective view of the competitive landscape”. Thinking generally, what is the current “competitive landscape” for Atlantic Canadian entrepreneurs?

DM: When I talk about “competitive landscape” and validating that, it’s because, often, entrepreneurs can fall in love with their “thing.” Most commonly they look for “direct competition.” So if you’re building a one-meter long arrow, and you think you have the only one-meter long arrow in the business, therefore you have no competition. Well, it doesn’t really work like that. Competition could be “status quo,” or it could be, “who the hell wants an arrow anyways?” “Competitive landscapes” are way more complicated and diverse than direct competition. One thing that entrepreneurs often do, no matter where they are – it’s not just an Atlantic Canadian thing – is encounter difficulties in mapping out, objectively, their own competitive landscapes. It’s our job to spar with them a little bit, to make sure they’re looking at a 360-degree map of the competition.

AW: On 11 May, Donald Savoie of the University of Moncton remarked that “Regional economic development, it seems, is no longer the whipping boy of bad public policy...This is good news indeed and no one should cheer louder than Atlantic Canadians.” As someone who works with a crown corporation, do you agree that a rigorous, specific regional economic development is now possible?

DM: In Atlantic Canada there is a regional player, ACOA (Atlantic Canadian Opportunities Agency). In Western Canada, there is something called the Western Economic Diversification fund. One of the rubs in Canada in the last little while has been that there’s no such organization in Ontario. Recently of course the federal government announced a Southern Ontario regional economic development organization.

Economic development is something that is in some ways unfortunately required. But in some areas that aren’t at their “full potential,” it’s something that can help. Still, whatever it is that’s being developed, it has to be relevant. One thing we work extremely hard at here is being relevant. We’re an organization that is part of the economic development landscape of Nova Scotia. We act and network globally. We constantly check and measure ourselves to make sure we’re relevant, and when we don’t measure up, we change it up. Relevancy and credibility with the private sector is extremely important for an economic development agency to do its job well.

AW: Thinking of “relevancy,” how do you develop synergies between “top-down” funding and the kinds of “ground-up” investment and entrepreneurship that you at InNOVAcorp try to focus on?

DM: A portion of our funding comes from the province of Nova Scotia, and a portion comes from our own revenue-generation. That split is about 65-35. But when we wake up every day, we try and spend at least 85% of our energy working with start-up companies. We try not to allow our energies to be spent on inter-agency meetings or bureaucracy.

We’re fortunate in that we’re pretty narrowly focused. I think some economic development organizations have mandates that are so wide, so it’s easier for us to remain relevant and work at the depth we do. We work with ACOA, though we are far smaller than they are according to every possible metric. We’re a peer organization, not a subservient supplier.

AW: Your work at InNOVAcorp stresses the development of early stage companies. At recent roundtable talks in Toronto sponsored by East Coast Connected, New Brunswick business leaders stressed the need for technological innovation and niche market entrepreneurship – particularly around the energy sector – in developing that province’s economy. Is there a similar story in Nova Scotia’s economic future?

DM: If one end of the extreme is a focus on a “niche” area, the other end would be “a mile wide and an inch deep.” Somewhere in the middle is a diversified economy, with success and growth in several different areas. Nova Scotia’s in that middle ground. The community and the markets have given us three main categories of companies: information technology, life sciences, and now, recently, clean-tech. The world out there is looking for products and services in these “mega-categories,” which are very high growth categories. Locally, the community has expertise, research and businesses within those categories. From a Nova Scotia point of view we look at these and say, “Let’s make as much hay as we can in those areas where have assets.” We’re always challenging ourselves – aerospace and defence, for example, has a lot going on – but we’re not sitting around saying, “what niche can we find,” or pick a single winner. I personally don’t believe in that philosophy. We’re looking at world markets, at our current assets, at high-growth areas, and trying to diversify enough that all our eggs aren’t in one big basket.

AW: “Identifying global markets” brings up my next question. You’re attending the Atlantic Business Summit 2009 in June, and speaking on a panel whose topic is “How can we make Atlantic Canada the place from which to conduct business internationally?” Care to give us some insight into your approach to this subject?

DM: I’m happy to be speaking on this panel. A couple of things: if you’re building any kind of business, like it or not, there’s going to be some kind of global competition coming at you. At one time this might only have mattered to an export-oriented company, but I’m not sure that’s the case anymore. It doesn’t really matter who you are or what you do, there’s always going to be somebody trying to eat your lunch in the short-medium term. Atlantic Canada has both strengths and weaknesses in this area. One of the weaknesses is that there’s not much of a market here. If you’re any kind of an export-oriented company you need to be focusing on much higher-density populations – cities, countries, zip-codes, etc – than we have available. We need to be very conscious of this when we’re doing our market validation – thinking as globally as we can. You can’t get caught listening and adhering to only local signals. There’s nothing wrong with local signals but you can’t just listen to them. On the strength side, Canada has a phenomenal brand, globally, we’re in a great time zone. Thinking of Atlantic Canada, the emphasis needs to be much more on a go-to-market strategy – business development, marketing and sales in the global context.

AW: This is your second year attending the Atlantic Business summit. How do you see events such as this one helping Atlantic Canadian business?

DM: As an Atlantic Canada-based businessman, I love the networking and the connections that I can make at the ABS. Leading up to the summit, we’re already clarifying and verifying whether so-and-so will be there so we can meet face-to-face. A successful ABS to me is not one where everyone from Atlantic Canada goes to Toronto for one day, but a combination of some of those people coming and, even more, younger people from the Greater Toronto Area coming in and asking, “I wonder what’s happening back home?” We’re definitely looking to connect and get on the radar screen of those types of people. They are our future customers, buyers, employees, and partners.

AW: Is there something in particular you’re looking forward to seeing or doing at this year’s Summit?

DM: Don Tapscott. I’ve heard him speak maybe three times in my career and every time was a different angle on a topic, and I always learn a ton from him. I’m always eager to hear what John Risley has to say. And I’m looking forward to the panel I’m speaking on. You know, the Atlantic Business Summit is small and intimate enough that you can meet 90% of the people there – it’s great.

AW: You’re from just outside of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. Do you get back often?

DM: Basically every summer, for a long time. Even just a year ago, my teenagers, who are 14, 16, and 19, we told them “We don’t think we’re going to go to PEI this summer – we’re going to go somewhere out West or something.” They were pissed! [laughs] Even when we lived afar, we always went for a week or two. There’s just something about it!

For more information or to register for the Atlantic Business Summit, visit abs2009.eventbrite.com.