Michael Mullarkey

Ottawa high-tech entrepreneurs could be forgoing lucrative opportunities due to a deficit of true entrepreneurship and a flagging ability to think outside the box, says Michael Mullarkey.

The chief executive and chairman of Kanata-based Workstream Inc. will present "Opportunity doesn't knock" to members of Ottawa's high-tech community at the Corel Centre Thursday during the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation's technology executive breakfast.

Mullarkey spoke to the OBJ prior to his presentation.

There is a climate of complacency affecting even the most creative entrepreneurs, which means high-tech players are revisiting "the same banker, lawyer, accountant, deal guys, and venture capitalists who all provide the same terms, the same results and the same relationships," he said.

Further illustrating a lack of variation within high-tech is the tendency of companies to follow the leads of "the guys across the street," even when it's not necessarily the best move for your own shop, he said.

"Why did Nortel have 105,000 employees and now they have 36,000? Did they lose two companies somewhere? Did they accidentally hire 70,000 extra people one day? The reality is, they can't tell you why they did it. They might say 'Well, JDS did it, Cisco did it, so we had to do it.' Did they have their blinders on or did they do what the (other guy did)?" he said.

To drive his point home, Mullarkey suggested that if 12 people walked into a room and there was a door straight in front of them, they would all walk through it.

"But why didn't they turn around and walk out the door they just came through?" he asked.

Mullarkey looks to his own experience to provide possible solutions. When the Chicago native came to Ottawa some years ago to take over E-Cruiter.com Inc. (now Workstream Inc.), he saw an opportunity in disguise.

"And I've done it to several other companies in the last two years. When everyone else saw a company that was failing and was going to get de-listed and didn't have enough revenues to support its cost structure ... I saw it as an opportunity."

Often, when people look at a startup, many tend to look exclusively at the balance sheet and immediately say "I don't want to invest in that company," or "Look at that technology, I don't know whether it has another life to live," he said.

But there is an urgent need to "look at things a little differently" and "try to figure out if there is an opportunity for you personally," he said. "So while it may not be good for someone else it might be good for you."

"When you look at business, look at it differently, whether it's a business problem, acquisition opportunity, capital constraint problem, human resources, look at it a little differently, and that can be innovation. Those things just don't pop up and happen, you have to create that opportunity."

Mullarkey also stressed that people must be aware of how to create opportunities through mergers and acquisitions, capital raising, combinations of companies, rollups, consolidations, or product innovation.

"Innovation doesn't always have to be created as far as I created this product set or new optical technology. Sometimes innovation can be putting the right optical technology together with the right company that knows how to sell it, all the way to the point of how to take it to market. Sony Electronics didn't create the CD, but they sure knew how to market it."