This September's Vancouver Enterprise Forum took place at Science World on September 24th, 1996 and showcased a Richmond based company called Xillix. Xillix uses research spun off from the British Columbia Cancer Agency as the foundation of it's product, LIFE-Lung. Xillix specializes in Cancer imaging using the natural flouresence of human cells. They are currently in a stragetic partner relationship with Olympus Optical of Tokyo, who currently has 70% of the North American cancer detection market using white light.

LIFE-Lung has an average detection rate 200% greater then the industry standard, White-light and is being transfered into another product called the LIFE-GI which localizes cancer in the intestional tract.

One large step in the success of Xillix is getting the US regulatory committee, FDA, to approve the use of LIFE-Lung in the localization of cancer. This step required approximately 6 million dollars and the shipment of 14 boxes of documents to the US and was completed successfully on September 20th.

Prospective jobs? None, they are in a tough stage where the product is developed and are now trying to save nickles and dimes to survive until they have enough money to start R&D on the next product. Maybe give them a call in a few years, they project they will be making a profit by the end of 1998.

October 21st, 1996

The Vancouver Enterprise Forum held on the fourth tuesday of every month, had a session on October 21st, 1996 on 'Marketing Follies'. Presenting on behalf of their companies were; Bill Mottram for Epic Data Inc., Simon Drake for Solutions For Government (SFG) and Linda Fawcas for Vertigo 3D.

Presenting first, was Mottram, who talked about Epic. The company was founded in 1975 in Vancouver in the business of bar code and card reader technologies. Epic's 'marketing folly' was their customer weren't buying what they were selling. After some reflection they shifted their focus and predict great sales. Points learned from Epic: 1. Step back every year to evaluate the what and why of your products. 2. Sell not with the idea of what is the minimum price I have to get, but what is the maximum price I can get.

2.1 "Sell the solution" not "Buy the business".

Second to present was SFG, who have been based in Burnaby since 1984 and currently have about 100 employees. Notes learned from Drake's presentation: 1. Separate strategic alliance from funding vehicles 2. techincal support vs technical reality.

And the final presentation, which I think was the best out of the three was from Vertigo. Vertigo was founded in 1986 in Vancouver and it's vision is to "Bring 3D to the desktop". Their unofficial goal is to make their software powerful yet user friendly enough, to have 'Moms' of the world use it. A market, Vertigo 3D feels has potential, is business communications and they have recently entered a strategic alliance with Apple to take better advantage of this opportunity. Their competitors, all of which use to be Canadian (clapping all around) are SoftImage, now owned by Microsoft, and Alias/Wavefront, recently bought by Sun Graphic Inc (SGI). Lessons learned: 1. Look through the eyes of your user and walk in their shoes 2. Always be accessible 3. Use people as information filters 4. Embrace new technology.

Interesting buzzwords; 'Get on the bleeding edge', 'customer hero'(which I think means listening to demanding users in that market sector).

That's all from the business world, signing off to make my first billion, it's Sean Donovan, Free Lance Reporter.