Sometimes, you wake up with certain expectations as to how the world turns. You expect to spend the day in your pajamas with a nice top at the ready for video meetings. You expect to grudgingly share the bandwidth with kids who have school work. And, you expect Cisco to acquire a company. Probably, you have come to expect, a stand-alone tool that supports collaboration between teams while working remotely. They’ve been building out WebEx’s functionality that way and, as far as strategies go, who’s to say it isn’t money-saving and time-saving. No one has to innovate everything themselves.

And then, your expectations are shaken when you realize the Cisco has not acquired a company for an entire month. While they took a break for about 6 weeks at the end of August, a European-style vacation is to be expected every once in a while, but this is completely unexpected. Does this mean WebEx now has everything a video conferencing tool can have? Will the company shop again? What future feature will inspire them to get the charge cards out? Keep tuning in to follow this story.

Catch up on the Cisco acquisitions list: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/about/corporate-strategy-office/acquisitions/acquisitions-list-years.html

They were young, they were restless, they we always at home. If you’re “supervising online learning” while working remotely in the B2B mines, there is a good chance your kids are only pretending to be doing quadratic equations while hogging the bandwidth to play Minecraft or the Sims. Apparently, though, there might be some professional benefits to our current situation.

According to a study conducted at the University of Georgia that was published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, having positive interactions with your child when you’re not working can make you a better leader.

“I think we focus so much on the negative things about work-family balance or the demands of a family—people need to meet these family demands, so that’s why sometimes they couldn’t perform well at work,” said Szu Han Lin, lead author of the study. “But one thing I think is important to know is that leaders could be more effective because of their family life.”

Press release: https://www.newswise.com/articles/family-life-can-make-you-a-better-boss?

For years and years we’ve been saying “change is the only constant.” It’s been the zeitgeist of the days of our lives since about 1996 when the soap opera of the Internet went mainstream. One recent change was the re-branding of the Ontario Centres for Excellence as 2020 flipped into 2021. Now known as the Ontario Centre of Innovation (OCI).

The OCI is mandated to continue to accelerate “the commercialization and adoption of emerging technologies in Ontario.” Their programs are open to B2B enterprises. Supply chain technologies and logistics support are given special mention in new COVID-19 response programs.

More information: https://www.oc-innovation.ca/

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Kate Baggott is the Managing Editor of B2BNN. Her technology and business journalism has appeared in the Technology Review, the Globe and Mail, Canada Computes, the Vancouver Sun and the Bay Street Bull. She is the author of the short story collections Love from Planet Wine Cooler and Dry Stories. Links to recently published pieces can be found at www.katebaggott.com