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Livestream: Gordon Pitts on "Unicorn in the Woods: How East Coast Geeks and Dreamers Are Changing the Game"

5:00pm sharp to 6:00pm EST livestream

Event Details

Speaker Series

Unicorn in the Woods Book Cover
Date: Monday January 18, 2021 | 05:00 PM - 06:00 PM
Speaker(s): Gordon Pitts, Contributor and Former Staff Writer, The Globe and Mail; Author of 8 books

In Conversation With: James McLeod, Manager of Content and Communications, Council of Canadian Innovators

Introduction by: Dr. Dimitry Anastakis, L.R. Wilson/R.J. Currie Chair in Canadian Business History, Department of History and Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto
Topic: "Unicorn in the Woods: How East Coast Geeks and Dreamers Are Changing the Game" (by G. Pitts for Goose Lane, September 22, 2020)
Venue:

On January 11, Rotman Events will email registrants the link to the page where you can watch the livestream of the book talk on January 18 from 5:00pm sharp to 6:00pm EST.

Location: Online
Cost: $29.95 + HST per person (includes the link for the livestream and 1 hardcover copy of "Unicorn in the Woods")
Register Now

Book Mailing: Starting January 19, unsigned hardcover copies of Unicorn in the Woods will be shipped to paid registrants.

Book Synopsis: As tech investors the world over search for elusive unicorns (start-ups valued at over $1 billion), acclaimed business journalist Gordon Pitts asks whether there can be a place for high-tech innovation and unicorn-like value creation outside of major urban centres, whether in Atlantic Canada, rust-belt New York, or Northern Ontario.

Journeying back to the origins of Radian6 and Q1 Labs — two New Brunswick companies that sold for a combined $1 billion — in the basements and offices of a group of geeks and dreamers, Pitts tells a story of two remarkable companies and the legacies that continue to this day. But theirs was not a simple tale of overnight success; there were sellouts and firings, comebacks and vindication, and still unfulfilled promise.

This is a story of high-tech value creation far from Silicon Valley, a story of the mythical unicorn in the woods. Are the stories of Radian6 and Q1 Labs outliers, rogue datapoints that should be discarded, or the foundation for a new knowledge economy outside of the mainstream?

About Our Speaker: Gordon Pitts is an author, public speaker, and business journalist with more than forty years of experience writing about management, strategy, and leadership.

Unicorn in the Woods is the eighth book he has published. They include the national bestseller The Codfathers: Lessons from the Atlantic Business Elite; Fire in the Belly: How Purdy Crawford Saved Canada and Inspired a Legacy of Leadership, which won the 2015 Dartmouth Book Award for Non-Fiction; and Stampede: The Rise of the West and Canada’s New Power Elite, winner of the 2009 National Business Book Award.

Described as “the dean of Canadian business storytelling,” Gordon has also written Kings of Convergence: The Fight for Control of Canada's Media; In the Blood: Battles to Succeed in Canada's Family Businesses; and The Last Canadian Knight: The Unintended Business Adventures of Sir Graham Day. His first book, Storming the Fortress: How Canadian Companies Can Conquer Europe in 1992, was published in 1990. Five of his books have been National Business Book Award finalists.

He is a former senior writer in The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business section. For years, he wrote the “At the Top” interview feature in the Monday Report on Business and the “Exit Interview” in the monthly Report on Business Magazine.

Since 2014, Gordon has been the Business Writer-in-Residence at the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University.

Questions: events@rotman.utoronto.ca, Daniel Ellul, (416) 978-6119 


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