N America News April 2017

16 NORTH AMERICA NEWS / APRIL 2017 , Walkie-Talkie and more than 56 other patents. He received the Member of the British Empire award after World War II and the Order of Canada in 2001. I worked with him for six years as his assistant and he taught me how to innovate. I absorbed his stories and his life experiences which provided me with a huge advantage at a young age. “In 2003, I meet another mentor, Lt. Col. Timothy R. O’Neill, Ph.D. (US Army, Retired), the world expert on camouflage. We discovered early on that his research and guidance, along with my advancements in the field, would allow us to make better, more effective patterns than both of us working independently. Again I listened and relied on his teaching and this has happened numerous times to me with other very experienced people in their areas of expertise. It is these relationships that have allowed me to gain so much understanding that without them I would not be the success that I’ve become. It really is the sum of all parts (mentors and advisors) that makes this work. “I get so tired of the comment ‘If you just put your mind to it you can do anything you want!’ This comment routinely comes from the .0001% of the population that just had the right opportunity at the right time or knew the right person that elevated them to that stunning achievement. In their minds, if they could do it, anyone can do it. The reality is that most people that attempt this will only be disappointed. We are not all radio quality singers or actors or authors, often success comes from a lot of persistence and hard work but the formula is much more difficult to pin down. More often than not, it is who you know, not what you know that puts you on that road. “Success is also fleeting, how many award winning actors continue to always have similar performances in the future? Because of the award they are offered better roles but this doesn’t always translate into a cookie cutter performance. It is one thing to be successful at some point and another thing entirely to be described in the same way two or five years down the road. My motivation is not the success but doing the best job I can with the talents I have and in the end that may be why I’ve become successful.” Guy claims that he is constantly problem-solving and he loves a challenges, this is one of the attributes he possesses which have helped to make him the successful CEO he is today. “I enjoy coming up with new solutions that have not been tried before, which makes me a disruptor in this industry!” he states. “You can model other company business models or technology but that usually doesn’t put you at the top. You must do the extraordinary, the unexpected, the impossible, in order to stand out from the crowd. “I capitalize on new ways of developing, designing, interacting with technology and finding hybrid solutions that don’t require huge investments. I utilize those developments quietly before anyone realizes change is coming and by the time I release something that looks new to the world, I’m already busy working on the next generation, always staying at least one step ahead of any other company. “It is not the one game that creates a championship team but a whole season of games that makes them the best. In business, one good contract should not reflect on the CEO but all the contracts, programs and projects together over the years reveal the attributes which truly separate the average from the above average success rate. “I can say that Hyperstealth is associated with many hugely successful outcomes and many more are in the works.” With regards to the current industry, Guy has seen many new companies starting up in the last ten years, with only a limited number of them in the military market enjoying any success. Indeed, most of these new companies are now struggling to survive as countries are deciding to develop on their own, or simply to do what everyone else is doing. “The problem with wearing the same thing as everyone else is ‘operational security’,” explains Guy. “Can someone easily infiltrate your defenses wearing something that almost anyone can acquire? One of the biggest complaints from the public about Hyperstealth is that they can’t seem to acquire our patterns, even on Ebay, whereas our competitors are easily obtained. The reason is that most countries we work with get an exclusive pattern to provide them with the operational security they need and should have. In the hunting industry there are a few companies that have recently made a name for themselves – WL Gore is one of those companies that recognized that hunting patterns were,for the most part, a mimicry of natural settings and that there didn’t seem to be any science behind them. W.L. Gore tasked Guy, Lt Col Timothy R O’Neill and brought in Dr Jay Neitz (an Animal Vision Expert) to work together to come up with a camouflage based on the science of how animals see and not how humans see. It took us some time but in the end, we came up with a number of patterns under the Optifade camouflage clothing line. “These patterns have been proven to be very effective in the industry and hunters swear by the Optifade brand as the animals or birds that they are hunting do not see them the same way the other hunting brands allowed them to. You have to do something very different to break into this well established market and WL Gore did just that.” It is clear that in Guy’s line of work, technology is of critical importance and provides him with the innovation he requires to continue succeeding. He tells us in more detail about some of his greatest creations. “In 2010 I developed a color-changing cloth, called Smartcamo, which I didn’t realize at the time, far surpassed anything the US Military was developing. “In 2011 I developed Quantum Stealth (Light Bending Technology) and discovered a way to completely hide a target by bending the entire visual light spectrum around the target. This technology also works in the near ultraviolet, near infrared and thermal spectrum. Many physicists claim what I’ve done is impossible, which is actually beneficial to me as it provides more time to develop and improve it to the next generation (version 2) before they have even figured out what version 1 is. I’ve done numerous demonstrations of the technology to a number of high- level military and government groups and it is progressing, but that is all I can say without giving something away. “I can, however, tell you that this technology makes many aspects of traditional camouflage