This conceptual enterprise, founded by Iain Baxter& in 1966 and officially incorporated in 1969, was run with Ingrid Baxter until 1978. The objectives of N.E. Thing Co.—already hinted at in its playful acronym—read as follows in the provincial letters patent document:

i. To produce sensitivity information;
ii. To provide a consultation and evaluation service with respects to things;
iii. To produce, manufacture, import, export, sell, and otherwise deal in things of all kinds.

This “corporate persona” allowed Baxter& to organize his artistic output into various “departments”—research, accounting, ACT and ART (Aesthetically Claimed Things and Aesthetically Rejected Things), photography, printing, COP (copying or plagiarism), film, consulting projects and service—and to diversify the scope of his intervention in areas such as the environment, commerce and the new technologies of the time (e.g., telecopier and telex machines). The aesthetic agenda of N.E. Thing Co. acknowledged not only emotions but also judgments, facts, ideas and the environment as types of “sensitivity information.” An artist, the agenda continues, is considered a producer of sensitivity information who is responsible for perceiving, organizing, interpreting and disseminating that information. This concept of sensitivity information (SI) also encompasses a multidisciplinary attitude, taking into consideration visual (VSI), sound (SSI), moving (MSI) and experiential sensitivity information (ESI). Language—to again take up the aesthetic agenda—is a favoured mode of expression because it enables us to access types of sensory experiences that go beyond a strictly visual relationship to things.

The N.E. Thing Co. Projects department—prodigious, heterogeneous, enigmatic, and always systematically marked by the travels and daily lives of the presidents—is difficult to define. N.E. Thing Co. organized personal exhibitions, produced an environment at the National Gallery of Canada, organized an expedition to the Arctic, collaborated in international conceptual art exhibitions, used communications technologies to produce art works at a distance, did corporate consulting, developed an educational program, disseminated and produced sensitivity information of all sorts, designed catalogues, and ran a specialized photo lab (N.E. Photo Lab) as well as a restaurant (Eye Scream). The company also increased its visibility by designing logos, business cards, official letterhead, and slogans; taking part in trade shows; sponsoring a junior hockey team and synchronized swimming performances; and producing book and magazine covers, as well as the official poster for the Montreal Olympic Games in 1976.