About

Enabling ideas® parent company, Azure Corporation, was founded on a vision for a new type of service model that could deliver more robust, more integrated and more complete solutions, than currently available and provided by your typical management consultancy.

Azure started in 2004 with a small group of best-in-class partnering service providers, brought together to form collaborative solution teams. Propelled by our early success, we expanded our Partner network in 2011 and formed the enabling ideas® Community of experts membership organization.

True to the saying necessity breeds invention, our story starts with a couple of Corporate Executives dissatisfied with how the professional services industry was serving their requirements. Blair Severn and Marlene Bonigut, the husband and wife dynamic duo and co-founders of Azure Corporation and enabling ideas®, began trading observations over the dinner table about how frequently wasteful and ineffective were the millions upon millions of dollars being spent by their organizations on consultants and other professional service providers.

They found it curious that they each experienced the same disconnections and in many cases direct conflicts among providers to their initiatives. And how the majority of consulting engagements never materialized beyond exploration, analysis and recommendations into real in market advances and ROI returns. Both MBA’s by education, their curiosity became a pet project to understand how common their experiences were and if this was reflective of only their companies or was this a wider phenomenon.

They began to research why. Why does the work of the management consultancy, more often than not, remain as a binder on the shelf, never materializing into real in-market results? Why is it no matter what your objective, the silver bullet to success is always primarily about the services the particular provider you ask for counsel performs? It’s all about better branding and communications said the marketing agency. It’s all about better systems said the technology firm. It’s all about the people said the culture consultancy. And when it’s not all about just one thing, as it never is, then why are these equally important inputs customarily so poorly aligned with each other in execution?

They searched throughout the globe for a consultancy that interlaced strategy with implementation and effectively aligned multi-disciplinary functional, technical and sector experts. And there wasn’t one to be found, until now.

Welcome to enabling ideas® and our Community of experts.

Milestones

  • Strategy consultancy and parent company of enabling ideas®, Azure Corporation is founded in 2004.
  • The enabling ideas® Community of experts collaborative provider organization is launched in 2011.
  • enabling ideas® goes international with our first U.S. Expert Partner joining the Community in 2014.
  • Subscribers and Followers to our insights and information publishing breaks past 10,000 in 2018.
  • enabling ideas® jumps the pond with our first Europe Expert Partner joining the Community in 2018.
  • Mobilizing Results™, an innovative service model of modular and stackable solution building blocks is introduced in 2019.
  • An advanced web-portal of online tools and resources for companies and organizations to conveniently curate solutions is launched in 2019.

COMMUNITY OF EXPERTS

Our Community of experts is an exclusive fellowship of carefully curated independent firms. Assembled from both large-scale and small-scale providers, our Partners are from varying fields of expertise. Hand picked on a selective basis, Expert Partners are admitted for being best-in-class in what they each do.

Expert Partners must meet stringent criteria for suitability including a commitment to excellence and a passion for collaboration. Partners have been validated through one or more of the following activities:

  1. Evaluation of the provider’s work.
  2. Interviews with company owners and executive.
  3. Performance reviews with client references.
  4. Testimonials and nominations from a current Expert Partner.
Blair

BLAIR SEVERN BA, HBAS, MBA

Blair is Chairman of enabling ideas® and best known for designing and building strategic growth for businesses. With an innate ability to fuse design thinking with financial rigor, Blair not only sees strategic break-throughs where others don’t, but is the best there is to devise, validate, design and operationalize a business strategy into a sustainable advantage.

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Marlene

MARLENE BONIGUT HBES, MBA

Marlene is Co-creator and Chief Innovation and Investment Officer of enabling ideas® and best known for planning and managing complex asset strategies. Having directed the national requirements for design and architecture projects for Corporate real estate portfolios in excess of 25 million sq. ft., Marlene is the best there is at effective capital investment and strategic planning and implementation management.

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Team Members

Z

Zak Baird

Interpreting each client’s individual vision into a streamlined web presence, Zak Baird is intensely focused on creating intuitive design elements with responsive applications that enhance his client’s digital marketing strategy, including web server management via Zak’s full-service studio.

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Norm Clare

Norm Clare leads The UnMarketing Group and approaches marketing through the use of purposeful storytelling, data science and marketing technology to create “joined-up” customer experience.

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M

Mike Friskney

Mike Friskney is the expert you require if your goal is to produce content that will connect with your audience and reinforce your brand.

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CAREERS AT ENABLING IDEAS®

Are you a quality human being? Are you looking to make a difference for people and planet? Are you talented in your own unique way? We’re interested, let’s talk!

We team up with people first and foremost for character and quality, then for passion and purpose, followed by talent, capabilities and potential. Only then do we care about your expertise and experience.

To join us we have 3 fundamental questions for you.

  1. How can you make us better?
  2. How can we make you better?
  3. How can we be better together?

 

We have positions for Executive, Director and Associate levels. We operate with an agile workforce model that allows for your home base to be your home base for many of our roles. Please send all resumes and applications to communityofexperts@enablingideas.com.

HEADQUARTERS

Various roles in management, growth and workflow to support serving Clients and Partners are stationed at our North American Headquarters in the Village of Kleinburg, Ontario, Canada.

SOLUTION MAKERS [CANADA] – Help companies and organizations do better!

Solution Makers are strategic thinkers, creative problem solvers, sector or regional experts that can help companies and organizations reveal critical issues, design solutions and curate their in-market success.

SOLUTION MAKERS [UNITED STATES] – Help companies and organizations do better!

Solution Makers are strategic thinkers, creative problem solvers, sector or regional experts that can help companies and organizations reveal critical issues, design solutions and curate their in-market success.

RAIN MAKERS [CANADA] – Help enabling ideas® make a difference!

Rain Makers are analytical thinkers, explorers, hunters, networkers and relationship builders that can get things rolling with companies and organizations that will benefit from how we can help them do better.

RAIN MAKERS [UNITED STATES] – Help enabling ideas® make a difference!

Rain Makers are analytical thinkers, explorers, hunters, networkers and relationship builders that can get things rolling with companies and organizations that will benefit from how we can help them do better.

PARTNER SUCCESS MAKERS [CANADA] – Help enabling ideas® Partners prosper!

Partner Success Makers are collaborative thinkers, talent scouts, organizers and nurturers that can source and discover talented Providers deserving of enabling ideas® recognition and then help them to engage and prosper as an Expert Partner with our Community of experts.

PARTNER SUCCESS MAKERS [UNITED STATES] – Help enabling ideas® Partners prosper!

Partner Success Makers are collaborative thinkers, talent scouts, organizers and nurturers that can source and discover talented Providers deserving of enabling ideas® recognition and then help them to engage and prosper as an Expert Partner with our Community of experts.

Think Tank