Ethical economists

By Colin Campbell - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 4:40 PM - 2 Comments

In the wake of the Great Recession, economists were accused of missing the obvious warning signs of the financial meltdown. More recently, critics have suggested an even more sinister failure—that conflicts of interest clouded many economists’ forecasts. A study of 19 economists by the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that the majority failed to disclose paid affiliations with financial organizations while offering expert advice to the media and in their research. It concluded that the profession should establish a code of ethics.

This month, 300 economists signed a letter to the American Economic Association calling on the group to adopt such a code, requiring members to disclose “relevant sources of financial support and relevant personal or professional relationships.” Last week the AEA agreed to raise the issue at its annual meeting. While there is still reluctance to police the profession, the debate is a small step toward rehabilitating the dismal science.

A wider Web

By Colin Campbell - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 1:20 PM - 0 Comments

In early 2013, a small company called O3b Networks plans to launch eight satellites capable of offering low-cost Internet and cellphone service to much of the developing world. O3b, which refers to the “other three billion” people in the world without reliable broadband access, said last week that it has raised US$1.2 billion, enough to put its first satellites into orbit. Google is one of the firm’s chief backers, along with several investment firms and banks.

The satellites, which will orbit four times closer to Earth than traditional satellites, will be able to quickly transmit data to local Internet service providers and telecom companies in as many as 150 countries (or 70 per cent of the world’s population), says O3b. While the company maintains it will turn a profit, it has more virtuous aims too: by connecting developing countries to telecom systems in the rest of the world, it hopes to provide a big boost to business and investment in emerging markets.

In demand economists

By Colin Campbell - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 8:40 AM - 0 Comments

Ralph Orlowski/Getty Images

The job most in demand in Silicon Valley lately is not in social networking or marketing, but something slightly less trendy. Major technology firms are on the hunt for economists. Yahoo, Facebook, Amazon.com and eBay are all currently recruiting economists, reports the San Jose Mercury News. Those companies are following the likes of Google and Microsoft, which in recent years have added big-name academics to their staffs, including Hal Varian from University of California, Berkeley and Susan Athey from Harvard University, respectively.

Economists have proven adept at helping tech firms tweak everything from search methods to online advertising platforms—intricate systems that can be manipulated to produce better results, or studied to predict outcomes from different strategies. Tech firms also tend to be creating entirely new businesses, and sometimes the best person to help explain how traditional markets will react to them is a good old-fashioned economist.

Pitchmen gone wild

By Colin Campbell - Thursday, December 2, 2010 at 10:40 AM - 1 Comment

Lori Moffett/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The scandals that hit athletes Tiger Woods and more recently Wayne Rooney sent a loud warning to companies that pay millions of dollars for big-name endorsements: no pitchman is immune to embarrassing and costly meltdowns. For many firms anxious to avoid a marketing black eye, the answer is “disgrace insurance.” Insurance brokers say in the past few years there has been a marked rise in the number of firms seeking to guard against losses stemming from misbehaving spokespeople, reports the Independent.

Disgrace insurance can cover lost sales and lost ad campaign expenses (Rooney was dumped from Coca-Cola ads this year following reports that he cheated on his pregnant wife with a prostitute). It can also cover crisis management fees incurred from the fallout of Woods-like marketing messes. The policies cost as much as one per cent of the amount being insured. But with tens of millions of dollars on the line, firms are finding there is such a thing as bad publicity.

Losing Civic pride

By Colin Campbell - Thursday, December 2, 2010 at 9:20 AM - 1 Comment

Vijay Mathur/Reuters

In 1972, Honda Motor Co. launched the Civic, a small, rust-prone hatchback that would eventually help define the company and launch it into the ranks of major global automakers. But after more than three decades that saw millions of Civics put on the road, Honda will stop selling the sedan in its home market this month as demand for the iconic car has all but dried up in Japan.

In the mid-1970s, the Civic accounted for over 70 per cent of all Honda sales in Japan, or over 175,000 vehicles annually. Last year, the company sold just 9,000 Civics as Japanese buyers turned to smaller vehicles. Despite plummeting sales in its home market, however, North American sales of the Civic—a car that now resembles more of a beefy, mid-size sedan than the original three-door econobox—remain strong. The car is still built in 13 factories around the world.

Jet set on the cheap

By Colin Campbell - Thursday, November 18, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 1 Comment

JetSuite

The discount airline model has transformed the air travel industry. Now can it do the same for the private jet business? A California company called JetSuite is offering use of charter jets for one-way, low-cost (relatively speaking) fares. For instance, for US$999, passengers can travel from Van Nuys, Calif., to Las Vegas. And that doesn’t just buy a seat, it gets you the entire plane.

To keep costs down, JetSuite flies four-seat, fuel-efficient Embraer jets. And it keeps routes short (fares go up based on hours in the air). The airline is one of several moving to offer lower cost private jet services. Lufthansa Private Jet recently offered 30 per cent discounts for Canadian travellers.

During the financial crisis, executives were sharply criticized for their use of private jets, which became symbols of Wall Street excess. Steep discounts may be the surest way to revive, and rehabilitate, the industry.

Marijuana dot-com

By Colin Campbell - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 3 Comments

ISTOCK

With California voting this week on whether or not to legalize marijuana, some entrepreneurs have been anticipating a lucrative payoff. It’s not about selling drugs, but rather website addresses that contain the word “marijuana.” One Californian told the New York Times he has registered over 1,000 Internet domain names, including marijuana­pastry.com and icecreammarijuana.com.

Buying and selling domain names has emerged as a big business in recent years (some sought-after addresses, like sex.com, can fetch millions of dollars). It’s also competitive, with domain name firms buying and selling thousands of addresses at auctions. The result of the California vote wasn’t known by press time, but regardless of the outcome, investing in pot-related domain names may prove to be more a long-term investment than a get-rich-quick scheme—a bet that interest in marijuana will keep growing over time, driving demand for pot-related businesses in need of websites.

China's wealthy women

By Colin Campbell - Thursday, October 28, 2010 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

Mike Clarke/AFP/Getty Images

Zhang Yin is known in China as the Queen of Trash. The owner of Nine Dragons Paper, a recycling business, her fortune is estimated to be worth US$5.3 billion, up almost $1 billion from a year ago. That makes Yin, a 53-year-old former accountant, the richest self-made woman in the world, according to the Hurun Report, which ranks the wealthiest people in China.

Of the world’s richest women, the number two and three spots are also held by Chinese entrepreneurs. In fact, Chinese women dominate the list, holding 11 of the top 20 spots, with an average wealth of US$2.6 billion. Experts say Chinese women have found greater success in large part because they have fewer children and are less likely to stay at home. “There is no other country that comes even close to touching the number of self-made women in China,” notes the report.

A wrap on shipping costs

By Colin Campbell - Thursday, October 21, 2010 at 8:40 AM - 0 Comments

Walter Hodges/Getty Images

In advance of the all-important holiday shopping season, dozens of major U.S. retailers are joining together to launch a service they believe will help win over big-spending consumers. For US$79, shoppers can sign on to a program called Shop­Runner, which offers free, unlimited online shipping (and free returns) at partner stores like Barnes & Noble and Shop.NHL.com.

Online commerce is worth US$140 billion and growing in the U.S. But it has been dominated by the e-commerce giant, Amazon.com. Other retailers hope Shop­Runner will help them take on Amazon and its own unlimited shipping program, Amazon Prime, which has an estimated five million members globally, notes the Wall Street Journal.

These shipping services are seen as a simple way to entice new shoppers and encourage repeat purchases. Once they’ve paid for Shop­Runner, consumers have an added incentive to keep shopping in order to get their money’s worth in free shipping.

A place for pitches

By Colin Campbell - Thursday, October 14, 2010 at 9:40 AM - 0 Comments

CP Images

On the popular CBC show Dragon’s Den, inventors are given a chance to pitch their ideas to wealthy investors. P2P Financial Inc. wants to replicate that online, with a market it launched last month to link independent lenders with entrepreneurs seeking investments ranging from $25,000 to $1 million.

While small businesses can turn to banks and venture capitalists for funds, there are still billions of dollars loaned each year by informal, or “angel” investors, says Matthew McGrath, the president and CEO of Toronto-based P2P. But it’s an “opaque and fragmented arena” that has lacked a formal market, he adds. The venture capital market has also slowed considerably since the recession, creating pent-up demand for financing. P2P’s Online Financing Market (which charges entrepreneurs a percentage of the money they raise) so far has a handful of listings, including a green energy firm offering an equity stake and a yoga studio seeking a start-up loan.

Tuning in to Twitter

By Colin Campbell - Thursday, October 7, 2010 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

Mario Anzuoni/Reuters

Hotels and airlines were among the first industries to recognize the value of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, monitoring them to respond to angry customers. Increasingly, companies are taking the tactic to a new level, trying to listen in on every mention of their brands—tracking as many as 150 million sources—for a real-time gauge of what people think of their offerings, competitors and industry trends.

This month, Nielsen and the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. launched a tracking service in Canada called NM Incite. (In a recent analysis of the film industry, for instance, it identified the Toronto International Film Festival as the most talked about this summer, with 14,000 social media mentions compared to 9,000 for the rival Venice festival). ComScore recently introduced a rival service called Social Analytix. A lot is at stake for firms in this domain. According to eMarketer, ad spending on social media is growing 20 per cent year over year, and is expected to hit US$1.7 billion this year.

Everyday inventors

By Colin Campbell - Thursday, September 30, 2010 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

Courtesy Ernest C. Manning Awards Foundation

The Ernest C. Manning Innovation Awards aren’t your typical scientific hardware. While they recognize trail-blazing scientists (last week, a pair of physicists from the University of Manitoba took the $100,000 top prize for their developments in mass spectrometry), each year they also honour entrepreneurs, in some cases working without research facilities or even academic expertise in the field of their invention.

Ray Roussy was awarded one of two $10,000 innovation awards for developing and commercializing sonic drilling technology, which can cut through rock three to five times faster than conventional drill rigs. The drills (an early model once sat in his backyard) are now used around the world in mining and geothermal industries. The second award went to Geoff Gosling, the lead engineer at DIRTT Environmental Solutions, which developed an environmentally friendly, Lego-inspired modular wall system that can be installed without dust or construction waste.

For the love of cardboard

By Colin Campbell - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments

Two years ago, online retailer Amazon.com vowed to do away with annoying, hard-to-open packaging. It didn’t succeed. Only a fraction of its suppliers adopted the effort to scrap those impossible-to-crack plastic bubble cases entombing many consumer goods (from toothbrushes to electronics).

But Amazon is back on the offensive again, this time using the power of angry consumers to try to convince manufacturers to change their ways and offer what it calls “frustration-free packaging.”

There are clear benefits to simple cardboard boxes. They’re cheap and environmentally friendly, for starters. But more importantly, consumers like them better than plastic—a lot better, it turns out. Companies that have switched to frustration-free boxing through Amazon have seen a 73 per cent drop in negative feedback on the site, reports the New York Times. Amazon is now taking those numbers to its suppliers to make its case against plastic, and it’s working. A number of big brands, from Duracell to Polaroid, have recently switched over to cardboard—no scissors required.

The joy of napping

By Colin Campbell - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments

ISTOCK

Sleeping on the job? At some companies, it’s not such a sin anymore. Increasingly, firms are finding that it can be productive—even beneficial to the bottom line—to let their employees catch a brief midday nap. Corporate nap rooms, once associated with laid-back Silicon Valley firms, are popping up in unexpected places. MetroNaps, a company that makes chairs designed for napping, counts Google, Procter & Gamble and Cisco Systems as clients, reports Bloom­berg Businessweek. (The chairs, called the Energy­Pod, can also be rented for US$795 per month.) Napping spas in New York are also luring big-name corporate clients.

Scientists have long understood the benefits of rest, like alertness and reduced stress. So it shouldn’t be dismissed as something reserved for the lazy, say advocates, who note that most companies have no qualms about paying for gyms offering the same kind of health benefits to employees. Ultimately, stealing a few minutes of rest can really pay off.

Listening for liars

By Colin Campbell - Thursday, August 26, 2010 at 4:00 PM - 0 Comments

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There’s a good reason for investors to pay extra close attention to those quarterly-earnings conference calls. Researchers at Stanford University have developed a model that can help determine when company executives are lying. By studying the question and answer section of conference calls from firms that later substantially restated their earnings, researchers uncovered some tell-tale cues of deceitful behavior.

When lying, CEOs tend to speak with less hesitation (because they have more prepared answers or are answering planted questions), avoid using the word “I” and use more words expressing extreme emotion, like “fantastic.” They also avoid the phrase “shareholder value” and swear words. Lying CFOs, on the other hand, speak much more tentatively and avoid words that express extreme emotion. Both CFOs and CEOs share one trait: they often use phrases that reference general knowledge, like “you know.” So now, you know what they’re really saying.

Self-service flying

By Colin Campbell - Thursday, August 19, 2010 at 2:40 PM - 0 Comments

IATA

Air travel at any major airport involves running a gauntlet of security checks and lineups—none more frustrating than the final chaotic scramble at the gate when an attendant announces general boarding. To help ease the bottleneck, Continental Airlines is experimenting with turnstiles at one of its gates at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport where passengers can scan their tickets on their own as they pass through subway-style turnstiles. The big advantage of the system, says the airline, is that it frees attendants to help passengers who need assistance with things like ticket changes or seat upgrades.

Transportation officials say the system isn’t a security concern, since passengers are already screened at checkpoints before they reach the gate. (Similar systems are already used in Europe.) As airlines continue to push Internet check-in and smartphone boarding passes, so-called self-boarding may just be the next inevitable step in the electronic age of flying.

How to kill a patent troll

By Colin Campbell - Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments

After wrangling a $600-million settlement from Research in Motion in 2006, the patent-holding firm NTP filed lawsuits last week against six other big tech firms, including Apple, Motorola and Google, arguing the companies infringed on its wireless email patents. Critics say NTP is a “patent troll”—a firm that collects patents but doesn’t actually produce anything. Paul Kedrosky, a venture capitalist and blogger, argues the time has come to abolish these software and business method patents altogether.

Continue…

Why we don't watch soccer

By Colin Campbell - Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 20 Comments

Getty Images

In 1988 the United States won the right to host the 1994 World Cup. For soccer fans, this was to be the beginning of the end of their sport’s struggle for relevance in North America. But nearly 25 years later, little has changed. Aside from the once-every-four-years hoopla surrounding the World Cup, soccer remains a third-rank pro sport in the U.S. and Canada.

America’s World Cup playoff match against Ghana last month drew 19.4 million viewers in the U.S. Significant, but far less than the 27.6 million who watched the U.S.-Canada Olympic hockey final. In Canada, the World Cup was the most watched program in the last week of June, with about two million viewers—about the same number who watched Global TV’s police drama Rookie Blue. Neither the arrival of Major League Soccer in 1996 nor its luring of stars like David Beckham stateside have been able to propel the game into the big leagues of North American pro sport.

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The truth can make you rich

By Colin Campbell - Thursday, June 3, 2010 at 12:20 PM - 0 Comments

David McGlynn / Getty Images

In the search for ever more obscure and potentially lucrative investment opportunities, hedge funds are turning to a new source: whistle-blowers. In the U.S., payouts that informants receive from the government in white-collar cases like corporate tax evasion can reach into the tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars.

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Newsmakers '09: Wheels of fortune

By Colin Campbell - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 1:45 PM - 0 Comments

	American muscle Forget the hybrid. This year, the American auto industry went back to doing what it does best: making affordable sports cars with big, throaty engines. The Ford Mustang, Chevrolet Camaro (above) and Dodge Challenger were all surprise hits for the Detroit Three. While overall car sales saw double-digit declines, muscle car sales jumped over seven per cent. Perfect for the driver who wants to get where he’s going fast—and preferably in a straight line.
	Detour ahead A Swedish couple travelling in Italy planned to visit the idyllic Isle of Capri. Instead, they drove 650 km off course to the industrial city of Carpi. They had mistyped the destination into their car’s GPS device. “Capri is an island,” noted a local official in Carpi, in northern Italy. “They did not even wonder why they didn’t cross any bridge or take any boat.”
	Roadside assistance For the auto industry, the month of August stood out like a gleaming new Ferrari in a junkyard. That was when the U.S. government’s US$3-billion cash for clunkers program kicked into high gear and Americans were offered as much as US$4,500 to trade in their old cars for new ones. Car sales spiked and the entire North American economy was given a brief boost.
	Dream machines Toyota, perhaps best known for making reliable, if bland, family sedans, launched a US$375,000 supercar, the 552-hp Lexus LFA. Not to be outdone, Porsche introduced its first four-door sedan, the Panamera, which costs US$133,000 for the turbo version. Audi has a new version of its R8 supercar (above), the V10—a US$146,000 car that auto critic Jeremy Clarkson called “spectacularly good. It’s like Scarlett  Johansson’s lips.”
	Liftoff Car doors have been an overlooked design element. But the doors of the new Mercedes SLS, which swing straight up, are a thing of beauty. This latest take on an old idea gives the car its moniker, the Gullwing. Swedish manufacturer Koenigsegg is also taking door design to a new level with what it calls the dihedral synchro-helix actuation system. The doors on its cars slide forward and away from the car, then pivot up. Somewhere, an engineer earned his keep.
	Got a boost? Chrysler disbanded the group of engineers working on its electric-car program. The world’s most hyped electric car, GM’s Volt (above), is still a prototype. Canada’s Zenn Motor Company said it was getting out of the electric-car-making business to focus on battery technology. The only real electric carmaker in North America is Tesla, with its $100,000 Roadster. Are electric cars the future? We’re still waiting.
	Exit ramp The meltdown that industry watchers have taken to calling the Carpocalypse saw the demise of some much-loved brands. Saturn was dropped by GM, as was the storied Pontiac nameplate, despite its loyal following and a critically acclaimed new model, the G8 GXP. Rick Wagoner, GM’s long-time chief executive officer, also didn’t last (he was forced aside by the Obama administration). Car dealers felt the sting, too—GM is shuttering 42 per cent of its Canadian dealerships.
	Autopilot The new BMW 760 Li (below) is a fortress on wheels. It is big, comes with a V12 engine, and features a host of high-tech features: night-vision technology, radar sensors to detect cars in its blind spot, and cameras on the front fenders to help drivers see what’s coming at intersections. Mercedes has a comparable monster, the S63 AMG. One advantage it has over the Bimmer: front and rear massaging seats. Both sell for about US$135,000 (chauffeurs not included).
	Formula Won It was a tough year for Formula One racing. Toyota announced that it would pull out of the circuit. Renault was found guilty of race-fixing. The good news: Jenson Button. The British driver came out of nowhere to win the world championship while driving for a brand-new team, Brawn GP. Asked to describe in three words what it’s like to be an F1 driver, he told the BBC, “Wow, wow, and wow.”
	Roadside Distraction A driver crashed his $2-million Bugatti Veyron into a saltwater marsh near Galveston, Texas, after he said he became distracted by a low-flying pelican. In Peterborough, England, the driver of a $125,000 Lamborghini Gallardo (above) noticed smoke billowing from his car. He stopped to search for a fire extinguisher, but the vehicle burned to a blackened crisp. Both incidents ended up on YouTube. Lovers of fine sports cars quietly wept.
	Cruise control Ford’s new sonar-based parallel parking system can guide your big SUV into the tightest spots. It automatically steers; you simply work the gas and brake. Not to be outdone, Volvo has a system on its new XC60 in which the vehicle will automatically brake if you’re about to hit the car in front of you. Future young drivers rejoice—with cars like these, driver’s licence tests will be a snap.

How Microsoft got hip

By Colin Campbell - Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 1:00 PM - 8 Comments

For the past 18 months, the future of the world’s largest and most powerful computer company has been lugged around in the backpack of a 14-year-old schoolboy in Seattle, Wash. His laptop is loaded with a new piece of software, and he’s been told to use it and abuse it and then give his impressions to one very important person-—his dad, the CEO of Microsoft Corp., Steve Ballmer. Ballmer says his son has been his toughest critic—someone who has been helping find bugs in the company’s new operating system and pointing out the kinds of flaws and errors that made the previous version of the software, Vista, such a monumental failure. A lot is riding on his small shoulders.

The new operating system, called Windows 7, is the one thing that could finally shake the company from a nightmare of embarrassing flops and image problems under Ballmer’s tenure. Vista was not only sluggish and bug-filled, it drove many users to distraction and into the arms of rival computer companies, like Apple. And that was not the company’s only problem. Its MP3 player—the brickish-looking Zune—was a poor copy of the iPod, and its XBox 360 gaming system was plagued with technical problems in its early days-—troubles that cost the company an estimated US$1 billion in warranty repairs. And as consumers began a critical shift to mobile computing, Microsoft missed the boat completely on smart phones, handing the market to Apple and Research In Motion. Having fallen well off technology’s cutting edge, this year the Redmond, Wash.-based company suffered its first drop in revenue since going public in 1986. It also announced it will lay off 5,000 workers, another company first. Continue…

Too hot for iPhone

By Colin Campbell - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 10:30 AM - 14 Comments

Apple has drawn a lot of attention lately for banning applications from its iPhone. There was the Me So Holy app (which let users paste their face on a picture of Jesus), the Hottest Girls app (featuring nude photos) and the disturbing Baby Shaker app (shake your phone to quiet a crying baby). But the latest app to get the boot has been the most controversial rejection yet: Google Voice. The decision, made last month, immediately drew the attention of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which demanded that Apple explain why the app was rejected. There were even whispers that iPhone’s exclusive U.S. carrier, AT&T, was behind the ban.

Why such a backlash? Because there’s a lot at stake. Google Voice is more than just another fun iPhone add-on. It could rock the very foundation of the traditional telecommunications landscape. By offering consumers the promise of a “Google number” for life, which replaces their existing home, business and cellphone numbers, Google Voice is a bold attempt by the Internet giant to wedge itself between consumers and their cellphone carriers. Once you subscribe, all your calls are routed through Google’s servers before they even reach the phone company, and you control which calls can reach you where. On top of that, the service offers free voice mail, a free voice mail transcription service—even free long distance. Letting Google park this app on the iPhone’s home screen, says Carmi Levy, an independent technology analyst, would be like “renting space in your business to someone else who then uses that opportunity to cut the legs out from under your business.” Continue…

Sending the media a message

By Colin Campbell - Friday, September 4, 2009 at 3:36 PM - 1 Comment

Bob Garfield is an editor-at-large at Advertising Age and a co-host of NPR’s On The Media. In his new book, The Chaos Scenario, he describes how the centuries-old traditional media landscape has been reduced to ruins in the digital era. We now live in a world, argues Garfield, where mass marketers, the mass media‚ even once-mighty network television are powerless. Online crowds now rule the day, with devastating, cruel and, occasionally, powerful results.

Q: You outline a number of problems facing the media industry. How much of the trouble is of the industry’s own making? Did it shoot itself in the foot by giving away everything for free online?
A: Yeah, I think so. Mass media companies, particularly newspapers, made a gigantic blunder a dozen years ago when they decided that the business model for the online world would be the same as the one that served it so well for 350 years, namely advertising supported. They decided that the name of the game was audience, and if they built the audience, they’d be able to sell advertising against it. Two problems: advertisers aren’t interested in all the eyeballs. There might be 10,000 New York Times readers in Indonesia, but it’s not going to do Bloomingdale’s any good. The greater issue is the problem of supply and demand. The glut of ad inventory is nearly infinite now because of the 200 million web pages around the world. That has depressed prices for ads. Continue…

Small but smart

By Colin Campbell - Thursday, September 3, 2009 at 3:40 PM - 2 Comments

The University of Waterloo has emerged as one of the leading research centres in quantum computing and digital media. Its computer science and mathematics faculty is the largest in the world. In terms of the number of grants and funding it attracts per faculty member, it is among the most research-intensive universities in the country. But Waterloo is not one of the so-called Big Five universities, who recently proposed in an interview with Maclean’s a radical rethinking of the higher education system: boosting government research funding and resources to the biggest universities—i.e., them—while having other schools shift focus toward under­graduate education.

The proposal of the Big Five—British Columbia, Alberta, Toronto, McGill and Montreal—understandably doesn’t sit well with Waterloo’s president, David Johnston. “How sad it would be to say, ‘We don’t see Waterloo being of high priority for funding because you don’t happen to be in the Top Five universities,’ ” he says. “Simply because you’re big doesn’t mean you’re great.” Continue…