Who is Larry Cooper, Really?

In Brief: Larry is a lifelong learner, strategist, and advisor to senior executives in the public and private sectors. He has also run his own small businesses, including a boutique corporate education firm for a couple of years, and a consulting practice he established in 1997 (which continues to fund his retirement). He knows business from the inside, not just from the sidelines.

Larry Cooper has spent more than 40 years working at the intersection of strategy, finance, technology, and people. But titles and project lists don’t fully explain why he created Built to Thrive.

Making Complicated Things Understandable

A consistent theme defines Larry’s career: Organizations struggle when information is fragmented and decisions are disconnected from facts.

Solving that takes more than a new process. It requires understanding how the business actually works—where the money flows, how the work gets done, and where decisions stall. That perspective allowed Larry to bridge disciplines usually treated separately: business transformation, financial systems, and process redesign. He brings that same “connected thinking” to the realities of running a small business.

Experience That Produced Measurable Results

Larry’s expertise isn’t theoretical. He has a track record of leading implementation projects that delivered hard numbers and real change.

  • Advised Senior Government Leaders: Consulted to public- and private-sector executives, including Assistant Deputy Ministers.
  • Delivered US$100 Million in Savings: Led a business-process redesign for a major telecommunications company that generated reported annual savings of US$100 million.
  • Recovered Lost Revenue: Implemented a customer-training system that recovered $4.5M USD (18%) of previously lost annual revenue and achieved ISO certification on its first attempt.
  • Shaped Global Supply Chains: Developed the business-capability release strategy for e2Open (described at the time as the world’s largest web-enabled supply chain).

An Author, Educator and Contributor

Larry has spent much of his career helping others understand and apply complex ideas. He is an experienced author, course author, educator and invited contributor to international professional bodies.

  • International Recognition: Chaired the Business Agility Institute’s inaugural Editorial Board (2019-2020) and wrote Canada’s contributions to the OECD ICT Procurement Playbook (2017). He was invited twice as an agility expert to the PMI Global Congress.
  • Standard Setter: Developed the complete ITIL V3 courseware line for Global Knowledge and served as Author Mentor for AXELOS’s PRINCE2 Agile (2015).
  • Cyber-Resilience: Board Advisor (2017-2018) for the National Foundation for Public-Private Collaboration (NFPPC) of Washington, DC. Larry was recognized by Dr. Ron Ross, author of the NIST Cyber-Security Framework, as one of the first to connect cyber-resilience to business value and overall organizational resilience
  • Published Author: Wrote the 2015 book Agile Value Delivery: Beyond the Numbers. In the mid-1990’s, he contributed to the Handbook of Local Area Networks, anticipating principles later formalized as Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) that underpin the modern internet.

Seeing the Whole Business to Fix the Friction

Larry’s background is unusually broad because his work often took place where business functions meet—precisely where friction develops.

He knows that a financial problem often starts as an unclear process, and a growth problem usually exposes weak operating systems. He doesn’t treat these in isolation. Instead, he traces the friction back to its source.

That connected perspective shapes the Built to Thrive Four Domains (Formation, Tax, Operations, Strategy). They aren’t unrelated categories; decisions in one area create consequences in another. Together, they help owners see the business clearly and build the structure needed to move forward.

From Large Organizations to Small-Business Ownership

Larry understands small business problems personally—he has run them himself.

He believes large organizations and small businesses share the same root issues: information is scattered, important work depends on memory, and owners and leaders are pulled between today’s demands and future building.

A small business doesn’t need corporate bureaucracy—but it does benefit from the same underlying disciplines: clear responsibilities, dependable records, and repeatable routines. Larry created Built to Thrive to translate those disciplines into practical guidance for Canadian owners.

The Perspective Behind Built to Thrive

Larry holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science (Memorial University) and an M.A. in Public Administration (Carleton University), backed by 20+ professional certifications in project management and organizational change.

He isn’t trying to turn every owner into an accountant or strategist. He is helping owners understand enough to stay responsible for their business, recognize what needs attention, and work effectively with the professionals who support them.

Note on Credentials: Larry is not a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA), lawyer, bookkeeper, or tax practitioner. He writes as an experienced business owner, consultant, and educator—someone who has done the work himself, not just advised on it.