Who Are We?

Michael Kay

Author, video producer, global award-winning games designer, international marketing and leadership consultant and executive coach, I am a serial entrepreneur who has created many businesses. My passionate interest has been helping organizations and now individuals prosper in the fragmenting markets of the digital age. Before my enforced retirement from traditional business consulting following a stroke, I authored books, videos, and award-winning business games that were used globally by students and top executive teams to explore the implications of the emerging world and to transform their organizations. My consulting clients included some of the world's top corporations. I created HBB Research with Hugh Munro, because the existence of a 'democratic, open platform' for mass entrepreneurial activity was too fascinating to ignore. The Web allows the entire global population to participate economically; in direct wealth creation. The cultural implications of that are quite mind-blowing. The economic implications are equally huge. Suddenly the entire planet's entrepreneurial imagination is channelled economically and 'traditional' employment measures may soon become less meaningful... the subject is too huge for a biography. Welcome to the web business world... as Spock put it "Live long and prosper"....the tools are now in your hands

Prof. Hugh Munro

Professor of Marketing at Wilfrid Laurier Business School in Canada, former head of the MBA program, with research interests in the creation and marketing of information-rich consumer products, I work with students and clients on the key issues of attaining market acceptance and driving sales growth. Conversions are wrenching experiences. I had been wrestling with marketing issues in the traditional offline world for decades when my old friend Michael invited me to be part of the HBB Research program. Although I had dealt often with online marketing issues, my view of entrepreneurial activity was - I fast discovered to my great surprise - bounded by the traditional model of factories and fixed assets. As I started to look around, I noticed that more and more of my students were opening businesses that were driven out of the virtual world.  It was a revelation how far individual entrepreneurship has advanced and the growing maturity in tools and techniques. There is nothing like the 'zeal of the converted' and now I can "see"all of this activity, the more fascinating it is. Yet it's a field almost totally ignored by the traditional academic establishment. This clearly is about to change. Web home based business is about to boom, when it does the academic world will take notice and in a few years or sooner you will be able to take "web micro-entrepreneurship" courses at your local community college.  This will mean the creation of a formal "body of knowledge" capturing the insights of the early gurus and bringing them together. HBB Research intends to be at the forefront of this trend...see you there!