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You don't have to be an Einstein to see how energy is going to fundamentally change the economy of Saint John in the next few years. Simply put, Saint John is an emerging diversified energy hub, and it will be an economic driver for the Atlantica region. Our cover story by Alec Bruce explains how this theory of interconnectivity works.
Last fall when I first met with Gordon Mouland and Tim Curry at the Atlantica Centre for Energy, they walked me through the math for the capital-intensive projects planned or underway. The long and the short of it is that by 2009, the area will have seen investments in petroleum, natural gas, nuclear, hydro, and traditional thermal power to the tune of several billion dollars. The multiplier effect will be significant, resulting in the creation of new industry clusters. Take the LNG plant, for example. Tim maintains that it's all about using these diverse energy assets to propel next-generation industries such as plastics, which in turn create more jobs in services, transportation, and construction.
Of particular interest to me is J.D. Irving Ltd.'s model plan to design North America's first green-certified industrial park at the former site of the Saint John shipyard, which will be fuelled by the available supply of natural gas. Its first tenant will be a wallboard-manufacturing facility that uses a type of synthetic gypsum produced as a byproduct from N.B. Power's Coleson Cove generating station. As Wayne Power explains, “We're using waste products that would otherwise end up in a landfill.” These ventures should all add up to long-term, sustainable economic prosperity for the Greater Saint John Area. To understand what the formula E=sj2 means, turn to page 40.
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At Progress we're also interested in the theory of innovation. Former editor and regular contributor David Holt is pursuing an independent study of this ethereal discipline. In his “Golden Age” report on page 48, he files a readers' digest of his head-busting encounter with the world's leading innovators, who gathered in New York City recently at Fortune magazine's second annual Innovation Forum. You will recognize that the essential qualities of true innovators exist in us all, but only true leaders have the rare courage to “let go to let grow.”
David's other contribution to this issue is on “blue ocean” strategy. He recounts last year's Face to Face conference, where Frank O'Dea inspired and entertained us with the story of his Second Cup coffee chain, founded decades before Starbucks was bedazzling us with pricey talls and grandes. Second Cup invented the coffee experience, for which customers would willingly pay a premium. This is a profitable growth innovation, where you break away from your competitors by creating new value and lowering costs at the same time. That's a blue ocean. If your current quest for market share has you competing on price in a shrinking profit pool, you've become a commodity drowning in a bloody red ocean.
Joe Randell could tell you what that's like. If there ever was a red ocean sector, it's the airline industry. Yet, remarkably, he has managed to steer Air Canada Jazz and its thousands of employees through a complex merger and ugly restructuring process to a recent oversubscribed public offering. As Robert Martin reports, Joe Randell's approach was to throw the textbooks away and hunker down, letting his instincts for honesty and interest-based team building guide his conduct. To learn more about a leaderhip style for challenging times, turn to page 37.
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