A slightly different take occurred to me as I was reading this — bad software changes culture too. It just changes it for the worse.

Think about it: what happens to companies that implement heavy, old school, enterprise apps? They tend to have heavy, old school processes. It's a bit chicken and egg, except that it's like a self-reinforcing cycle that never really ends. A downward spiral of the worst kind: their cultures dictate the type of software they buy, and the type of software they buy dictates that their culture can't change.

Breaking out of that cycle would either mean new culture or new software. Sometimes you get new blood into a company and they bring new culture. Less often someone gets brave and introduces new software that shatters it. Looks like the flood of Gen Ys into the workforce might end up being the wave that crashes over the wall and their tendency to bring their own tools makes them part of both sides of the equation (thinking specifically of Josh Bernoff's HERO stuff). The question is: will they be enough?

Gabriel — thanks for the comment!

Wellness is definitely part of the formula for happiness. I think Chip touches on this with his references to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Physiological and safety — the bottom two levels that make the foundation of the pyramid — really address the wellness you're referring to. You can't move up and attain happiness until those things are taken care of!

I like your realization that being among the smartest people does not automatically unlock the mysteries of life. There's a certain peace that comes in letting go of the idea that we can understand and control everything and realizing that life is going to hand you unexpected lemons. You can analyze them carefully, or you can make lemonade.

Of course! One of our favorite startups — and not just because you're Rypple users. Added to the list! Thanks 'Bec.

An excellent point April (as aways!).

To be clear: we're not suggesting abandoning marketing at all. Apologies if that wasn't clear. What we were trying to say is that the way you do sales and marketing has changed considerably, and what it's changed into is very well suited to the 'Canadian' character. Although I'm generalizing to make the point, Canadians largely sucked at doing the old style, which required a brash aggressiveness that made us uncomfortable (e.g.: first place is a new Cadillac, second place is a set of steak knives, third place is... you're fired).

Rypple is, after all, a business. It's fun writing posts like this and getting engaged in the community, but we are ultimately driven to get people using (and paying for) Rypple. So, yes, this post and our engagement on Twitter (and Facebook, etc.) is marketing in the purest 'demand generation' sense. The difference, as you put it, is that the way we're doing it has fundamentally shifted. Our goal is to provide as much value to our community of prospective users as we possibly can, in the very firm belief that it will 'convert' them into actual Rypple users at a much higher rate than trade show booths and tchockes. That desire to provide value is an absolutely sincere, core value of our company and a big part of our DNA (which, of course, is Canadian too :) ).

Thanks George. Link has been updated.

Hey Alex! Has been a while. Glad to hear Infotriever is still going!

Added Waterloo in! Thanks for reminding us. We've got some Waterloo companies on the list (what up PostRank?), just missed the city itself.

Lori — Kinaxis link and the Suitemates link seem to be working for me. Can you double-check?

Eric —

Great post! Lots of food for thought.

As a cloud vendor ourselves (http://rypple.com is a SaaS platform), we get involved in a lot of conversations about outsourcing core IT competencies. I think your point about transitioning the role of your IT staff to technology initiatives should not be understated.

Although you can definitely move your email to Google Apps, shift your invoicing and billing to Freshbooks, and move your team performance and management to Rypple, you won't become entirely free of the need to administer those various services (think onboarding, offboarding, upgrading capabilities, etc.). You'll also want to make sure that you keep a technically competent staff around to assess new tools as they emerge, deciding when and how they make sense to work into your IT mix.

Check out Choose the Cloud, a great new resource from box.net, GetSatisfaction, SocialText, and others (Rypple will soon be listed too!) covering why you might choose to outsource IT to the cloud.

Keep up the great work!