MaRS

Bill Young at CIBC Presents Entrepreneurship 101

Since founding Social Capital Partners in 2001, Bill Young has been a fixture in the social finance scene in this country. After his own “ship came in” (Bill was CEO of Hamilton Computers),  he has been promoting individual social ventures (both non-profit social enterprises and for-profit social purpose businesses) and striving to determine how he can take his initiative to change the social hiring landscape in this country beyond the “interesting magazine article” stage.

On reflection, it appears the efforts of Social Capital Partners came in three distinct phases.

Marisa Fortune, Career Edge intern at MaRS

Career Edge Organization, a national not-for-profit, has worked with over 1000 employers across Canada to provide meaningful work experiences through paid internships for recent graduates, those with disabilities and internationally qualified professionals.

I’ve used Career Edge interns for several years now and have been very pleased with not only the quality of the interns but their passion for the opportunity they have been given – one not normally open to new grads.

Recently, Career Edge held their annual Achievement Awards at the Toronto Board of Trade offices. I’m very pleased to report that SiG@MaRS’ own intern, Marisa Fortune, received honourable mention for her tenure with us – one that recently turned into full-time employment with our team.

Incentives matter: Find the right carrot to encourage innovation

How can we create more major breakthroughs:  with more scientists and research projects or better incentives?

Fears that we could lose our competitive edge have pushed innovation to the forefront of economic strategies nowadays.  The holy grail of innovation is how to encourage game-changing innovation in addition to innovation that achieves incremental improvements.  Questions about how we can ensure future innovation usually call for increasing the number of innovators (i.e. promote science in schools!  Increase visa quotas!) or projects (i.e. more funding!).

But what if finding the right incentives for scientists, not just increasing the number of scientists or funded projects, was the answer to increasing innovation? Could you study research incentives themselves to see which ones produced the most breakthrough innovations?

Time for a change? Time to plan

Thinking about joining a new start-up this year? A friend of mine recently contacted me for some assistance. She’d been promoted to the top of her company and would be President and CEO in a couple of weeks. “Do you have any advice?”

“You bet! You’ll need to build that 99 Day Plan for your first quarter on the job. It’s one of the most valuable things  you can do to maximize the start of your new role.” 99-Day Plans are based on the theory that, in the first ninety-nine days of a new assignment, an individual will be consuming more value from the organization then they are able to contribute. My two favourite books on the topic “The First 90 Days” (Watkins) and “You’re in Charge, Now What?” (Neff & Citrin). Some of the key principals follow.

Networking: The roots of your resilient business

Is our success in business as dependent on networking as we think? The answer is “yes”.

That seemed to be the general consensus at the CIBC Presents Entrepreneurship 101 session on December 17th. An interesting aspect to this is: if you polled 100 people 15 years ago and asked them what had made them successful in their chosen career, perhaps 1-5 people might have said being a part of “the old boy’s network” or meeting the right people at the right time. They would not have said that networking is a strategy — a learned skill that is essential to growing your business or getting a job.