Our Logo

CPF Solutions Inc is an IT startup company established in 2016. We provide creative business solutions to our customers through establishments of trusted partnerships yielding results that are not only in a better way, but also the right way. Our mission is to provide reliable and complete solutions emphasizing on Effectiveness, Efficiencies, and Results. At its roots, our core values and philosophies have been inherited from our predecessor company, Calgary Programming Factory Inc, also known as CPF. Since the birth of CPF in 1996, it emphasized on empowering and encouraging people to maximize their effectiveness. It found ways to discover their organic strength and continuing to cultivate their potentials by providing a microenvironment for its people to grow. Although not everyone can withstand the rigorous tests of such challenging conditions, for those that thrive will find themselves a journey full of joy and excitement where they could establish true success.

There are no better shapes to embed this message than the hexagonal shape which is synonymous to bees building a honeycomb. Hexagonal patterns are prevalent in nature due to their efficiency as it has been proven by the honeycomb conjecture in 1999 by mathematician Thomas C. Hales, which states that a regular hexagonal grid or honeycomb is the best way to divide a surface into regions of equal area with the least total perimeter. CPF recognizes and provides equal opportunities for individuals to grow together. When the hexagons are placed together to form a grid, it becomes a plot of land where organicity and uniqueness of individuals could be found and a place where they could continue to grow. The efficiency with this arrangement also reflects our team who utilizes effective communication to adapt and complement the natural skills of each of its members. At the same time, hexagons convey a sense of unity, simplification, and modernization in which these are crucial elements that CPF has identified when it connects with people, process, and technology.

Although the three hexagons in the logo are arranged in such a way that would normally considered as having three rotational symmetries, the logo is purposefully asymmetric due to the black hand drawn borders around the hexagons as no portion of the black border is the same. The asymmetric nature reflects the organicity and uniqueness of the individuals where we've placed a heavy emphasis on. Conversely, symmetry implies a mechanical and identical nature where most well-established enterprise brands are usually found. Within each cell represents individualism along with their talents while cells coming together reflects co-competition and team work. The three colors represent Creative, Professional, and Fun aspects of our company and the color scheme is chosen to express the young, vibrant, and energetic spirits which would shine and exert a positive influence on adjacent cells or individuals.

Our Creative Process

Project Discovery

Project Discovery became the 7th project in CPF 2.0 Cinematic Universe. Roland Lau has been the mastermind behind CPF for the past 20 years and his entrepreneurial spirits have fueled CPF’s uniqueness and defined CPF’s competitive identity. Project Discovery is to uncover a sustainable process so that CPF will continue to be a Creative Solution Provider and fulfill its mission to deliver reliable solutions emphasizing on effectiveness, efficiencies, and results. The reasoning behind why and how we do things differently than the norm will be revealed and its outcomes serve 2 purposes: 1) to uncover the process and practice behind CPF and provide a connection to the outside world and external parties, 2) to articulate a formulated process as a reference and foundation for all CPF team members to leverage and expand on. Therefore, the blueprint for the core engine behind CPF will be drafted out and Project Discovery will solidify CPF’s creative and agile practice through formulation and articulation of the “CPF – Our Creative Process”.

Fostering a Creative Culture

Since the birth of CPF in 1996, we emphasized on empowering and encourage people to maximize their effectiveness. We find ways to discover their organic strength and continue to cultivate their potentials by providing a microenvironment for them to grow. Although not everyone can withstand the rigorous tests of such challenging conditions, for those that thrive will find themselves a journey full of joy and excitement where they could establish success.

Fostering a creative culture is not a trivial task nor could be created by coincidence. People’s mentality has to be transformed and whatever is behind has to be practiced. From where we were as Calgary Programming Factory Inc. for the past 20 years, we have formed our core values and philosophies as a foundation for this transformation where our core values could be described in 5 simple words: Aptitude, Attitude, Spirit, Trust, and Focus and 1 iterative process: Endorse, Transform, and Pursue. These ingredients serve as the prerequisites for any individuals within the team to thrive and for the company as a whole to establish a positive culture.

From Calgary Programming Factory Inc. in which we referred to as “CPF 1.0”, we have formed an open and positive culture based on our core values and philosophies. That became our foundation and we transformed that into “CPF 2.0” where the “CPF” originally stands for “Calgary Programming Factory” now becomes “Creative, Professional, and Fun” which represents the culture that we embrace. We undertake challenges every day and we are transforming from individuals, the team, the culture, and to the company as a whole. Where once was a primitive I.T. consultant company now a sophisticated Creative Solution Provider. Where once called Calgary Programming Factory Inc. now became CPF Solutions Inc.

As we progress, we realize this open positive culture is the beginning of something bigger that we had anticipated and it’s the beginning of a sustainable creative culture that we want to form. Although this is just the beginning and this sustainable process still needs to be carved out. What we do know is that we can’t simply stop here and we have to keep moving. As Samuel Lee, aka the General, our Creative Development Manager, once presented the iterative process for CPF 2.0 is “Cherish. Perform. Flourish” which is also another abbreviation for CPF! So as a company, we always provide our best. We don’t just focus on revenues and profits. We don’t focus on the business plan and procedures before embarking on new ideas and projects. Every members of our team contributes. We define who we are and we are the ones who build our own future. We even define our own job titles based on our projections of our roles within the company and our organic strength. We set no boundaries between each other so that everyone could grow at their own will. We emphasize to establish trusted partnerships and provide the best service and complete solutions. As Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Animation Studios, said in his book titled “Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration”, “if you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better.” I believe CPF has to be that brilliant team and this is what makes CPF who we are.

Our Vision

Our Mission

Creativity & Innovation

As many organizations have already known, in today’s challenging and competitive world, innovation is often needed to drive any companies forward. Innovation is what drives companies ahead and allows one to anticipate market changes and even to define new markets. But what exactly is innovation? Most corporate marketers assume that innovation comes from the linear process of defining the market, researching customer needs, and then creating products or services to fulfill those needs. Innovation requires more than that. Innovation actually requires creativity and both go hand-in-hand. Creativity is the ability of creating new ideas and innovative thoughts while innovation is application of new ideas from cited creativity and innovation can be a new product, new service, or new way of doing something. In other words, creativity is about formulating new ideas while innovation is about executing the idea and translating that idea into a successful business.

Many companies are better at generating ideas than they are at commercializing or executing them. How many times one hears yet another company’s 5-year plan or roadmap and how many actually succeed in executing the plan? Thomas Edison, the greatest innovator of all time, stated that “innovation (genius) is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” This reflects that innovation is by no means an accident and it requires the amount of time and effort one has to spend on perspiration versus inspiration. So how can any organizations who try to innovate overcome the barriers provided the limited amount of time, effort, resources, in addition to other constraints? Perhaps a shift in mentality or a shift in priorities? Perhaps an innovation strategy needs to be in place as a commitment to support the business strategy? Or a focus on scalable opportunities on top of its business model? Innovation by itself is extremely difficult to achieve. Whether you are an entrepreneur or corporate executive, “giving ideas life” is much like giving birth to a child. As such, a process is necessary to encourage creativity and innovation so that we could bring ideas to life from conception to creation. Before anything else, we also have to learn how to dream and imagine and stretch ourselves through new experiences so that we know how to be inspired.

Connecting the Dots

Creativity is a craft and art, yet Teresa M. Amabile was able to articulate and formulate this in her “Componential Theory of Creativity” based on many years of research. So creativity is not magic and creative individuals do not establish creative thinking skills by chance nor they are born that way. There is a sound process and reasoning behind how this works and it’s a matter of putting the process into practice that allows any individuals to gain insights into creativity. As Steve Jobs have described his perspective on creativity in the following excerpt from an interview with Wired Magazine:

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.” ~ Wired, February, 1996

For CPF, we encourage our team members to write journals and personal reflections to reflect upon themselves and help them to digest knowledge and experience. This articulation process helps the individuals to connect the dots. A common example is writing minutes during meetings where minutes only serves the purpose of documenting the dots while an written articulation of the meeting is a representation of the connected dots which involves digestion and synthesizing of information and that makes the difference between mediocre documentations and effective articulations. Therefore, creativity could be seen as managing random knowledge into connections at the personal experience level.

This is the first attempt to discover what’s behind CPF and to redefine our identity as a Creative Solution Provider. There’s no magic or mystery behind and creativity could be encouraged at all levels from an individual, to the team, and to the company as a whole. Let us start making connections with the dots that we have and bring ideas into fruition!