Last week Bauer went public, a huge move for the iconic company and an exciting opportunity for High Road to work on the IPO. IR was handled by BarnesMcInerney Inc., while High Road was retained to drive media coverage around the launch event celebrating the start of trading.

The event was held at the TSX, a versatile venue space with just the right gravitas for such an announcement. While the IR story was strong – the only real non-resource IPO of significance – the IPO story still needed to be built out for broader media. By focusing on the heritage of the company and the fact that so many people have early memories of hockey that include Bauer, media were more open to also talking about the strong performance of the company and the IPO news.

Bauer CEO Kevin Davis handled interviews with aplomb, especially considering the big news of the day – Air Canada threatening the NHL with removing their sponsorship of the league – meant lots of off-topic questions around hockey safety from media. It underscored the importance of having a solid prep session and thorough Q&As thought out around any issues or questions that could possibly arise.

While this type of crisis communications approach to a celebratory event might seem over-cautious, if (and when) it does come into play it is absolutely invaluable to keep media interviews on topic and positive. You just never know what can happen on the day of your event or media tour!

“Mistakes are important. If your best people are always succeeding, fire them because they are not pushing their limits yet.”

You can’t get much more provocative than that.

Those were the stimulating words of one Bill Buxton, the celebrated Canadian researcher and an IT visionary when it comes to thinking about the power of innovation and turning ideas into action.

The always passionate and animated Buxton recently spoke at the Microsoft Innovate Plus  event in front of more than 100 Canadian IT decision makers at the swanky TIFF Lightbox facility (the official headquarters of the Toronto International Film Festival), and High Road was on site to hear what he had to say.

As principal researcher for Microsoft, he takes a vendor-agnostic view to technology and is a persistent advocate from innovation and design. Buxton notes that good UI design is as much an expression of culture and history rather than tied to a single company.  No slouch in the futurist department, the Queen’s University grad is primarily known as the father of multi-touch interface, having pioneered working systems that leveraged the technologies more than two decades before touch devices such as the iPhone arrived on the scene.  

“Any technology that is going to have significant impact over the next 10 years is already at least 10 years old,” Buxton explained. He also recalled using computer mouse back in 1980 – well before it became synonymous to the computing experience.

He termed these as textbook examples of “the long nose of innovation” – the idea that “new” technologies do not grow out of a vacuum and that the bulk of innovation behind any overnight success-type technologies actually occurred well before the product reached the tipping point and critical mass.

He referred to upcoming iterations of the Microsoft Surface multi-touch interface platform designed to transform how people interact with digital content – and should be ubiquitous within homes in the next few years.

For the IT executives in attendance, Buxton dispensed bon mots of wisdom. The important takeaway was his position that the innovation process is as much a journey as it is a destination. Even in tight economic times, IT decision makers need to speak the language of innovation, says Buxton, adding the firms that succeed will be the ones that continue to invest in innovation while growing the bottom line. 

When thinking about innovation and implementing new ways of doing things, never be afraid to fail, he offered.

“Success comes through repeated failures,” says Buxton. “We always study the successes, but it’s far more important to learn from our failures.”

Mia’s last two columns were very different, but both featured some great communications insights.  

The first – Art that appeals to the masses – featured Lisa Diamond and Shira Wood, co-owners of Toronto Gallery Art Interiors.

Diamond and Wood started their small business out of a basement in their early 20s, and now, 17 years later, it is still going strong. 

“When these two women opened their gallery they wanted to do something different: make art appeal to the masses,” Mia writes. “Their goal was to make artwork more accessible to homeowners – they believed there were many up-and-coming, talented artists with nowhere to exhibit other than coffee houses and community centres, but also that there was no place for the average person to buy original work.”

The tactic they’ve been using to drive their business forward is pretty simple: in exchange for public acknowledgment, Art Interiors lends its artwork to home and décor magazine shoots and television shows.

“Most art galleries were for people who already knew something about art – and that is a small percentage of people,” Wood said. “We wanted to try and get outside of that and be much more practical. We wanted people to be able to visualize the art in their homes … so we worked with designers and stylists.”

For the gallery, having its art featured in the pages of Style at Home or on Citytv’s CityLine delivered what Diamond called “third-party validation” from the influencers. But it also introduced their target audience to accessible, original art.

“Art Interiors works closely with a range of well-known design icons, including Kimberley Seldon, host of HGTV’s Design for Living, and Suzanne Dimma, editor-in-chief of Canadian House & Home. They’ve also jumped on social media, host an active online store, and engage online influencers and their audiences by providing free art for blog giveaways,” Mia writes. “Their success has been about much more than just a good marketing decision at the outset – Art Interiors continues to effectively and creatively manage its relationships over time.”

Mia’s second column – Give first impressions the royal treatment – was about how in business, and in life, you only have one chance to make a first impression.

Drawing on the buzz surrounding Prince William and his fiancée Kate Middleton’s first official outing, Mia talked about what it takes to ensure you leave a good first impression.

“The impression [Middleton] left with the media and the general public was a statement about whether or not she could be expected to succeed in her new, very public, role as princess,” writes Mia. “That’s got to be a lot of pressure.”

“Though you almost certainly don’t have the same number of eyes on you when you make official appearances on behalf of your business, the pressure to leave a good first impression is very similar,” she writes. “The confidence with which you handle yourself in public will translate into the confidence that people will have in your leadership abilities and your personal brand. Depending on how you do, the public and the media will either love or hate you – or, almost worse, not have an opinion about you at all.”

With that in mind, Mia offers up four tips on how to ensure you leave a good first impression:

1. Do your research
2. Establish your key messages
3. Connect with people
4. Be yourself

To read the full details on each tip, click here.

Check out Mia’s column every Thursday in the Globe and Mail’s Report on Business.