ADM 3396 Entrepreneurialist Culture: Brochure
By:
Professor Bruce M. Firestone, B. Eng. (Civil), M. Eng-Sci., PhD.
Entrepreneur-in-Residence, entrpreneur-en-résidence, Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa
Founder, Ottawa Senators, Executive Director, Exploriem.org, Real Estate and Mortgage Broker, Partners Advantage GMAC Real Estate
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Introduction:
Do you want to learn how to create significant value for yourself and your family in a business that you own and control; value that can provide you the freedom and security to realize your lifetime goals? Have you ever wondered whether entrepreneurs or intrapreneurs are born or whether they can be trained? What is a Personal Business for Life and how can you get one? How do you start a business without much in the way of your own start-up capital? Can you organize your work life so that if anything goes wrong in your business, you and your family will be OK? Then join Professor Bruce M. Firestone, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the University of Ottawa's Telfer School of Management, Founder of the Ottawa Senators, Executive Director of Not-For-Profit, Exploriem.org, Real Estate and Mortgage Broker, Partners Advantage GMAC Real Estate to learn how to 'Bootstrap Yourself to Success in the 21st Century'.
What is the number one reason people decide to become entrepreneurs? A) To make more money? B) To be their own boss? C) Because they can't get any other type of work? D) To work fewer hours or have greater flexibility in their schedule? E) Because they believe they can create more interesting work for themselves than others can create for them? Most often, the answer turns out to be E).
Entrepreneurs believe in themselves; they have confidence that they can create great new products and services and, in the process, create new enterprises that will outlast them. They are driven to put their creative energies to optimal use.
Being a successful entrepreneur allows them to exercise greater control over their own destiny: both professional and financial. Many people think that having a JOB is more secure but entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs think that real security comes from the skills, knowledge, training, creativity and experience you possess and they know that you can be laid off from any JOB at any time.
Entrepreneurialist Culture is not just relevant to business and engineering students and graduates contemplating starting their own enterprises. It is just as relevant to people who intend to seek employment within large companies or, indeed, are going to enter public service or, work with NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations), charities, museums, hospitals, universities, public school administration, not-for-profits and the like. These people are called intrapreneurs. Great organizations in any field need creative, determined 'heroes': self-starters and independent-minded intrapreneurs who think outside the box, who have the courage to pioneer new ways of doing things and start new things. These intrapreneurs are the people who get their new projects green-lighted and they get promoted too.
New initiatives rarely start from the top down. Many organizations are bureaucratic, rule-bound, process driven and nearly frozen in time and place. Instead, institutional entrepreneurs learn to practice anew, an old art form; guerrilla politics or, as the Japanese call it, the art of nemawashi. How did great institutions, so different from run-of-the-mill programs, like the NYC Julliard School of Music or Ottawa's Canterbury School for the Arts or Philadelphia's Mural Arts Program come into being? Often, it is people in the trenches working 'below the waterline' and by stealth that achieve new ways of doing things. All such creative persons will find that this course can help them and their respective organizations in their chosen careers.
An entrepreneur is known as: 'a person who will work sixteen hours a day for himself just so he or she doesn't have to work eight hours a day for someone else.' This is a useful reminder of the personal sacrifices that entrepreneurs or would-be entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs must be prepared to make to be successful. These sacrifices should not be underestimated; their impact is significant and takes a toll.
As Jerry McGuire (Tom Cruise) said in the film of the same name: "We live in a world of tough competitors." It's true; entrepreneurship is tough. Your competitors want to eat your business by taking your customers away from you, one at a time. And no one will respect you for trying hard; they will only respect you if you succeed. You must be able to deal with stress and still be able to perform at a high level every day.
Artists, architects, writers, musicians and other creative persons are also entrepreneurs and they can benefit from studying entrepreneurship so that 'death isn't a career move' for them; that is, they can learn how to 'get rich while they're still alive'.
In Entrepreneurialist Culture, You Will earn How To:
-Select the right idea for your next startup;
-Create business models for the 21st Century that produce great results: so that the harder you work, the more money you make;
-Add differentiated value and 'pixie dust' to your business model;
-Create a compelling value proposition and learn how to clearly demonstrate it to customers and clients.
-Self-capitalize (bootstrap) the new enterprise so that you end up owning it not a VC firm, angels or other investors or partners;
-Use smart marketing (guerrilla and social marketing-reaching world markets using the blogosphere, social networking, news agglomeration sites and other new Internet tools as well as earned media) so you can acquire customers and clients cost effectively;
-Mass customize products and services using the Internet so that, for the first time in history, you can get custom outputs from standard inputs;
-Reverse out some of the work to your clients, customers and suppliers using the Internet so that you create a scalable enterprise that can produce more value than if you had a JOB;
-Find pre-launch and launch customers and sell, sell, sell;
-Exploit unconventional sources of finance including finance from future clients and customers as well as suppliers and sponsors;
-Execute expertly;
-Innovate and improve constantly;
-Make your own rules;
-Learn how to use negative cost marketing and selling as well as co-branding to deliver your message and capture customers by 'intricating' them in the process;
-Exercise leadership;
-Compete effectively with hard charging entrepreneurs from China, India and other Tigers by having a business model that can not be easily duplicated or dislodged which gives you a lasting, sustainable competitive advantage and a concession or franchise;
-Study new enterprise formation and analyze case studies to learn what others did right and what they did wrong;
Participate in and win cash prizes in our Business Model Competition, the Wes Nicol Business Plan Competition and the Faculty of Engineering's Entrepreneurship and Innovation Endowment Fund Business Plan Competition to win cash prizes;
-Learn entrepreneurial skills like how to create case studies, make effective presentations including two-minute elevator pitches, market by media release and create new enterprises or new initiatives within established organizations that will be successful;
-Be in touch with unconventional mentors who really know how to create and run businesses and know how to get and keep clients and boost cashflow.
-Apply to Exploriem.org's new Enterprise Centre (www.MiniOffice.org) for free office space, unconventional mentoring and early stage funding.
Acquire a Powerful Skill Set:
Whether you are going into business for yourself or working in an established organization, you will find that by acquiring the skill set of an entrepreneur, you will achieve greater levels of success and be more satisfied in your work life and career. You will learn to: take initiative, be more innovative, do things in parallel, find launch clients, build cashflow, understand the value of a client and customer, use bootstrap capital, sell/sell/sell, use guerrilla marketing and social marketing to build a brand and capture market share, try new things, build a sustainable business model with a lot of 'pixie dust' in it, set goals and achieve them, not require a lot of direction, be dynamic and have high energy, create a business plan and be ready to change it when the market moves in sudden and unexpected directions.
Remember: "An Entrepreneur is someone who would rather ask for forgiveness than beg for permission," Anon.
We Focus On:
The vast majority of startups never obtain any VC funding and that is our focus-bootstrapped startups. Why is that? We believe that bootstrapped or self capitalized enterprises that focus on customer acquisition, cash flow and sound business models as well as excellent execution are longer lasting, more sustainable ventures that ultimately create more value for their stakeholders, for society in general and also allow their owners to maintain control over their creation. Here is what Clayton M. Christensen, Mark W. Johnson and Darrell K. Rigby say in the MIT Sloan Management Review (Spring 2002): "Too much cash allows those running a new venture to follow a flawed strategy for too long. Having barely enough forces the venture's managers to flounder around with actual customers, rather than in the corporate treasury for ways to get money. Tight purse strings force managers to uncover a viable strategy quickly - if one exists." (Page 29)
They also emphasize the need for excellent execution and sound business models-good ideas are not enough:
"Many observers assume that an absence of good ideas is the reason for the fall of once-disruptive companies, and they try to focus their own companies on generating new ideas. But in our interviews with managers of companies that failed to capitalize on disruptive opportunities, not once did anyone say, 'We just never thought of it.' In fact, the executives had actively considered and usually experimented with the disruptions that eventually displaced them. A lack of good ideas is not the problem. The problem is in the absence of a robust, repeatable process for creating and nurturing new growth businesses. We have suggested how executives might shape and implement a strategy to create a single new disruptive growth business. To establish an organizational capability to do it over and over again, senior executives should build the components that go into an innovation engine. (That is, you need a viable business model, Ed.)" (Page 30)
To Find Out More:
Study Entrepreneurialist Culture (ADM 3396) at the Telfer School of Business: http://www.dramatispersonae.org/EntrepreneurialistCultureFrontPage.htm.
Find out what your Entrepreneurialist Culture Quotient score is using our online ECQ Test. Take five or six minutes to go on a voyage of self discovery: http://www.dramatispersonae.org/ECQTest/ECQ(ns)TestAuto.htm.
Check out our EQ Journal Blog: http://www.eqjournalblog.com/.
Find out more about Dr. Bruce M. Firestone: http://www.dramatispersonae.org/ShortFormResumeParsed.htm.
Join our new incubator/mini office complex and our networking and mentoring organization, www.Exploriem.org.
Mini Offices available: MiniOffice.org
For more information, please contact: Professor Bruce M. Firestone, B. Eng. (Civil), M. Eng.-Sci., PhD. Tel.: 613.422.6787 Fax: 613.422.2877 Email: bfirestone@partnersadvantage.ca
Entrepreneurialist Culture Front Page
DramatisPersonae.org
