Last night's attendants of the MIT Enterprise Forum got to see what makes a company stand out. Touted as Canada's IPO success of 2006, Evertz Technologies went public with a $67 million offering in June of this year. They now boast a market cap of one billion dollars. How did they do it when every other IPO of the season seemed to stall from a lack of interest? The big answer is through exceptional execution by a talented management team. But as we all know, big answers are made up of hundreds of smaller, critical details.

Brian Campbell, the EVP of Business Development for Evertz, is a details guy. Trained as an engineer, he has an MBA and years of experience in Toronto's financial community. More than that, he has the ability to understand the numerous functions that come together to create success. He shared his insight with the audience last night. Campbell explained how Evertz took a $2 million dollar a year company to $150 million in eight short years. It was not luck. The team executed with clinical efficiency on the key factors behind their growth: Engineering, self-financiing, innovation, and team-building.

I'll write more about this remarkable story later in the day.

Update: Let's take a brief look at how the management at Evertz took a series of small steps over time that resulted in building a very successful company. Campbell explained that in 1997 two former Leitch Technology employees identified an opportunity to buy a stable, 30 plus year old tech company with about 17 employees. At the time, they surveyed the market horizon and decided that high-definition television - HDTV - was going to be a big industry once governments settled on regulatory standards. Thus they began focusing their company's products towards HDTV. Smart move.

WIth support from the BMO tech bank in Waterloo, the founders "bootstrapped" the company's growth by keeping overhead costs low and growing production capability in-line with customer demand. In an era where manufacturing companies in north america outsource production to the Celestica's of the world, Evertz made the decision to keep its production in-house. But they were smart about it. They went out and hired a Celestica production manager who could keep the company's production costs low and yields high.

That turns out to be important because Evertz tends to do small production runs of its components. Still, the company's product catalogue is a thick 400 plus pages so efficient production is a critical success factor. Why small production runs? The digital video and audio component industry moves fast. Components have to be mixed and matched with a myriad of other systems and technologies. Moreover, Evertz is an early player in the IPTV market where standards are in a constant state of flux. Big production runs take time and risk being near obsolete at the end of the outsourced production cycle. So, responding effectively to rapid market changes gives Evertz a tactical advantage over its bigger, slower moving competitors.

Innovation is the life blood of the company. Even as Canada's rising dollar struck down other manufacturing companies, Evertz has the enviable record of increasing its gross margins over the last few years. They managed this by servicing the broadcast value chain all the way from content producers to consumers. This is a big task for a 470 employee company. How do they do it? When asked about their internal approach to managing innovation, Campbell said they respond to unique customer needs identified by sales engineers in the field. There is no established innovation methodology per se, says Campbell, but I doubt that is true. This is a company that breaths innovative techniques but they remain experience based and have not been broken down into an algorithm - yet.

Strong teams are critical to the company's survival. That is why employees hold the largest proportion of company shares. In some ways this is reminiscent of how engineering service firms structure their compensation and it is an interesting modernization of a traditional model. The result is that company attracts exceptional people who stay. Turnover at Evertz is low.

Given the company's eight year performance history, the quality of its personnel, and its market strategy, it is no wonder that their IPO was successful. As I said in a brief conversation with Brian Campbell last night, it is heartening to see how Ontario can produce competitive, world-leading companies. Evertz is a case study on how to do it right.