Co-founder and Chairman of venture investment firm Gibralter & Company , Joe Mimran a one time dragon on CBC's Dragons Den, is the original influencer and innovator in Canadian fashion , design and retail having built the Alfred Sung brand before going on to create Caban, Club Monaco and Joe Fresh
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Style Guru Joe Mimran Loves to Read Ahead
Orwell's novel 1984 is a favourite, and he can’t wait to read Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow / BY Athena McKenzie / December 1st, 2020
Co-founder and chairman of venture investment firm Gibraltar & Company, Joe Mimran is the original influencer and innovator in Canadian fashion, design and retail. A former judge on CBC’s Dragon’s Den, he built the Alfred Sung brand before going on to create Caban, Club Monaco and Joe Fresh.
What’s the best book you’ve read this year and why?
I used to read far more books than I do now. It seems that I am inundated with emails and just generally keeping up with the amount of information pouring out of my mobile device, which I am required to absorb on a daily basis, not to mention the quality and quantity of streaming content now available.
Long-haul flights were a wonderful respite from being always connected and particularly good for catching up on the backlog of must-reads, but now, with COVID, travel is not an option.
What book can’t you wait to dive into and why?
Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind has been sitting by my bedside for a while and I have just recently finished it. I enjoyed the all-encompassing history lesson that covered 75,000 years of humankind and the key moments that contributed to our evolution. Harari describes with great clarity how many of life’s basic tenets came about. The explanation of the 500-year scientific revolution is particularly interesting and is key to the next big change we’ll go through as humans. It also points in a disturbing direction and that is the subject of his next book, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, which is now by my bedside and which I am looking forward to reading. I just need to turn off my devices!
What’s your favourite book of all time?
I would say that George Orwell’s 1984 is my favourite book. I read it in high school and it stayed with me all these years. To think that the book was written in the 1940s and could be so prescient is what is so fascinating.
What book completely changed your perspective?
I don’t think any one book has completely changed my perspective, but rather it is the accumulation of all the books I’ve read that has helped shape my thinking.
If you could have dinner with any author, living or dead, who would it be?
If I could have dinner with any author it would be Steven Jobs. He created a brand and line of products that was the perfect blend of beautiful, simplistic and intuitive design, cutting-edge technology, and a virtual ecosystem that catapulted it into the most valuable company in the world. Apple has maintained its vaunted status beyond its founder’s death, which in today’s world of constant change is a truly incredible achievement.