Report by
Professor Bruce M. Firestone, B. Eng. (Civil), M. Eng.-Sci., PhD.
Entrepreneur-in-Residence/l’entrepreneur
en résidence, Telfer
Founder,
Broker, Partners Advantage GMAC
March 2010
A) Completed so far:
1. Bootstrap Awards—re-launched successfully with OCRI and Carleton’s Lead to Win Program: http://ocri.ca/exploriem/.
2. Mini Offices—early stage funding, mentoring and office space incubator
launched in Sept 2009: www.MiniOffice.org.
3. Business Model Competition— successful completion of biz model competition for four years. Prizes of $1,500 per annum. Record number of entrants for 2010—22 in all. Using Review Room online utility for upload of entries and review by judges (http://uottawa-nicol.myreviewroom.com/). Biz Model Comp (http://dramatispersonae.org/AssignmentsADM3396BusinessModelCompetition.htm) is filter for Wes Nicol Business Plan Comp.
4. Wes Nicol Business Plan Competition—co-ordinate U of O entrants. Successful Business Model Competitors move onto Wes Nicol Competition. Four competitions completed including two U of O winners placed in the Wes Nicol National Finals to compete against ~ 12 other CDN university teams. 2010 winner will compete in National Finals at end of March 2010. Prize money of $8,000 per annum. http://www.dramatispersonae.org/AssignmentsADM3396WesNicolBusinessPlanCompetition.htm.
5. Sponsorship—Wes Nicol generously
continues to support the
6.
Course—ADM3396
Seminar in Administration: Entrepreneurialist Culture—How to Bootstrap Yourself
to Business Success in the 21st Century. Winter Term. Wednesdays from 4 p.m. to
7 p.m. Fourth year of the course near completion. Video record on YouTube.
Integration of Twitter into course for student communication: general
announcements, student reminders, hashtag #EC3396 used for cross-communication
amongst students and Prof. Pioneering in video case studies. Integrate Telfer
students as well as engineering students and others. http://dramatispersonae.org/EntrepreneurialistCultureFrontPage.htm.
7. Completed Entrepreneurs Handbook: http://enhandbook.com/.
8. UCoursePack.com—Use of new technology developed by Telfer student for course packs. IP-protected USB keys which not only have course pack on it but also have social media integrated into it. As each student makes notes, they are seen by all other students in the course. Prof can also make and add notes, seen by all users everywhere who have the USB from UCoursePack.com. Price of course pack to students about $20, ~ half of paper copy.
9. Speeches—Keynote speaker at CEED
conference in
10. Entrepreneurship Club—Judge at Elevator Pitch Comp.
11. Promotion—appear in several classes in Fall 2009 to promote entrepreneurship program including: Career Centre Entrepreneurial Challenge, Entrepreneur Club’s Business Dinner, Entrepreneur Club’s Elevator Pitch Competition, Business Model Competition and Wes Nicol Competition plus Entrepreneurial Mind, Introduction to Entrepreneurship, Strategic Management, Enterprise Resource Planning, Marketing Strategy, ADM 3318 International Business and a number of engineering courses.
12. Blog—EQJournal.org focuses on entrepreneurship, especially self-capitalized startups: Business Modeling, Guerrilla and Social Marketing, Self Capitalization and Bootstrapping, Value Differentiation and 'Pixie Dust', Ethics, Future Vision and Technology, 25 Steps to Business Success, Guerrilla Marketing Research, Pricing as an Art, IRR, Development Economics and Entrepreneurship, Micro Capital Lending, Customer Service, Creativity and Value, the Internet, Investing, Value Proposition, Branding, Productivity, Entrepreneur Skill Set, Intrapreneurs and Intrapreneurship, Personal Business for Life, PB4L, Intellectual Property, Financing, Human Resources, Negative Cost Value Proposition, Product Management, Marketing, Leverage, Asymmetric Information, Cash Conversion Cycle, CPM, Sponsorship, Venture Capital.
13. Mural arts program— http://muralarts.ca/.
14. Media and Linkages—Interviews with Mark
Sutcliffe and A-Channel. Appearance on expert panel with Janet Eastman,
15. Office Hours—office hours (Wednesdays p.m.) Desmarais 5132.
16. Mentoring—developed conventional and non-traditional network of mentors for student entrepreneurs: www.Twitter.com/OC67 and www.Twitter.com/ProfBruce.
17. Developed Speakers Series—Magic from a
Hat lectures: Entrepreneurship
and the Sports Business (Feb. 24, 2010). Ted Wagtstaff,
Lecturer,
18. Learn By Doing—developed
a practicum based on the
19. ECQ Test—to measure entrepreneurial ability: http://www.dramatispersonae.org/ECQTest/ECQ(ns)TestAuto.htm.
20. BMG, Business Model Generator—online utility: http://www.dramatispersonae.org/bmg/.
21. Business Model Scoring Test—online utility: http://www.dramatispersonae.org/BusinessModels/BusinessModelScoringTest.htm.
22. Guerrilla
Marketing Test—online utility: http://www.dramatispersonae.org/GuerrillaMarketingAndFinance/BMGGuerrillaMarketingTest.htm.
23. CCC, Cash Conversion Cycle—measurement
tool: http://www.dramatispersonae.org/BusinessModels/CashConversionCycleMeasurement.xls
24. Launch of
Entrepreneurship Concentration—Telfer SOM:
http://www.uottawa.ca/academic/info/regist/calendars/programs/686.html.
25. Student Entrepreneur Tools—access to free Shopify.com accounts and free Eseri.com accounts.
26. Foundation for Entrepreneurship—Exploriem.org royalty program developed.
27. Tracking Student Entrepreneurs—Exploriem.org.
28. Meeting with Wesley Clover—referrals of top Telfer and FOE students to WC, further involvement of WC with funding initiatives, WC to speak at Telfer, look to develop Course on “Strategic Selling and Business Communications”.
B) Under development:
1. Integrate—ADM3396 Entrepreneurialist Culture and ADM3313 Entrepreneurial Mind: New Venture Creation into one year program.
2. Add— ADM3396 to Entrepreneurship Concentration: http://www.uottawa.ca/academic/info/regist/calendars/programs/686.html.
3. Review—Mark Freel, Barb Orser, Tyler Chamberlin, Scott Ensign, Bruce Firestone to review Entrepreneurship Concentration.
4. Fundraising—Named Professorship in Entrepreneurship: goal to raise $1 to $1.5 million.
C) Original objectives:
The
In the context of this appointment, Dr. Firestone will be involved in several activities related to development of a stronger focus on entrepreneurship at the School and the integration of those efforts into the surrounding community. A draft proposal is attached. In particular, he will:
- Help us to design and deliver an undergraduate concentration in entrepreneurship that could also be open to students in other Faculties.
- Contribute to the development of entrepreneurship related tools and teaching materials.
- Guest lecture in entrepreneurship courses and bring other speakers of note to the School as well.
- Work with faculty and students in the development of a research program on entrepreneurship and enterprise growth.
- Provide support to the School’s fundraising campaign to establish a formal centre in this area.
- Develop a Business Model Competition for students, the first if its kind and different from Business Plan Competitions in that the focus is on the engine of the business—i.e., the relationship between the business, its clients and its clients’ clients as well as its suppliers together with a marketing dimension that concentrates on how to effectively acquire new clients.
- Contribute to networking and tracking of entrepreneurs who graduate from the School together with an annual Awards ceremony for outstanding achievement.
- Consider the formation of a Foundation or other method of supporting entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship not only within the School but also in LDCs.
- Bring 11 years of teaching experience and over 20 years of entrepreneurial endeavours to the School by (separately) teaching courses such as Entrepreneurialist Culture, devoted to creating self-actualizing, successful entrepreneurs or Real Estate Development for Entrepreneurs.
The appointment would be for a period of 2 years, commencing May 1st, 2006 and is renewable.
D) Writings and
research as Entrepreneur-in-Residence (www.EQJournal.org):
Don’t Trade in Your Old Suit (Yet)
Hangman: Fast Selection of a
Winner in a Public Space
The Impeccable Warrior and the
Life of an Entrepreneur
Ten Reasons People Stay (or
Come Back) to Ottawa
Deal Structure, Deal Flow and
Bootstrapping It
Can You Tell Me the Way to … ?
Negative Cost Selling and the
Pro Sports Team
Putting Your Website On The
Map (Guest)
The Internet Revolution and the
Business Model
Secrets to Attracting and
Keeping Clients
The Seven Measures of Business Success
What is Business Success and
How to Achieve It?
ROI is Measured in Terms of
CPMs and Engagement
What’s Legal versus What’s Right
Want to be a Better Leader,
Manager, Business Person and Human Being?
Why What Would Google Do is Wrong
Why a Local Foundation Should
Own its Own Real Estate
How a Not-For-Profit Learned
How to Raise $2m in Less Than 10 Minutes
Don’t Be Afraid to Make the First Move
Firestone’s Three Laws of Power Selling
The Worst Sports Collectible Ever
Why Teams don’t Work in the
REALTOR Space
Lack of Creativity is Hurting
Chartered Banks
How to Measure the Value of
Earned Media (Guerrilla Marketing, GM)
A Joke for Your Kids (G, for
General Audiences)
A Product Manager’s Fatal Mistake
Profession to Watch for in the
21st Century: Curator
Negative Cost Selling and
Bootstrap Capitalization
Home Staging in a Commercial Setting
Planning at Macro and Micro Scales
Concessions are Where You
Find Them
Should I Sell or Should I Hold?
Why Scotiabank Place Is Where
It Is (Part 2)
Measuring the Value of Design
and Creativity
Why Large Companies Buy
Cashflow Not Ideas
Should Every Person on the Planet Have a PB4L
Calculate the Real Rate of Return
Can You Hire an Entrepreneur to
Work in Your Organization?
Productivity in the Digital Age—
Sponsorship Can be a Useful
Form of Bootstrap Capital
Six Reasons to Call Your
Independent Mortgage Agent
Two Sentence Explanation of a
Value Proposition
1964 The Tribute Band and Guerrilla
Marketing
Negative Cost Selling—It’s
Everywhere
How to Make a Great Elevator Pitch
Ten Things that Startups Forget to Do
Insider Trading and Insider
Knowledge/Expertise
Weather Forecasting and Quantum Effects
Negative Cost Selling: Jeff
Hunt and the Ottawa 67s
Michael Jackson—Astute Business Person
Bootstrap Capital—Reducing
Capital Requirements
An Alternative to Multi Res
Real Estate Investing
Density Increases Property Values
Malcolm Gladwell Ottawa
Appearance
Can you Create a World Class Org
Why Scotiabank Place is Where it Is
How to (Not) Get Elected
Student President
Business Improvement Associations
Learning Events, Lost and YouTube
Body Clock and the Arizona Cardinals
New Business Model for a REALTOR
Why I enrolled for ADM 3396 (Guest)
If I Gave You a Million Dollars
Why You Need a Professional
Commercial REALTOR
In Defence of Suburbia: Part II
Truth/Smart Truth and Charlie Crist, Governor of Florida
Landlord Licensing is a Bad Idea
Speak the Truth, the Whole
Truth, Frankly and Boldly
Value Proposition for a Residential
REALTOR
Conditional Probability and the
Deal that Fails
John McLellan,
Former President, Bell Canada Speaks
Co-opetition: Airlines, Petrol
Companies, Food Services, Home Builders, … Hey Even
Yahoo May Do It
New Source of Boostrap Capital: Online Micro Loans
Why You Should be Careful about
Causality
Why You Should be Careful with
Statistics: A Haiku
No Manager Has Time to Baby-sit Anymore
What is the Value of Lunar Real Estate?
The Ten Most Important Things
for a Startup to Do
The World’s Greatest
Website—Bruce’s Ten Rules
What is the Biggest Industry in
the World?
Investing in Real Estate with
Little to No Money Down
More About Self
Capitalization
Game Theory and Entrepreneurship
<strong>Entrepreneurship
as a Career Choice</strong>
What should an Undergrad
Entrepreneurship Program at a University look like?
Why Google is Eating the Universe
The team that helped build
a city
Why the Sparks Street Pedestrain Mall in Ottawa Sucks
What makes a person a “Professional”?
Count Down To .500 Lifetime for
the Ottawa Senators Hockey Club (Guest)
The Best Partnership is No Partnership
The Ideal Machine and Web User Interface:
a Q and A
Yoga and Injury Reduction on a NHL Team
HR Professionals– How To Demonstrate their Value Proposition
Why Realtors Should Increase Sale Prices
What’s More
Important? Good Execution or the Next Big Idea?
Props to KFC—Great Guerrilla Marketing
Exceptions to the Rule Make Bad Law
Land Prices Indicate Land Shortages
Democratic Abuse- Getting Rid
of the OMB is NOT the Answer
New Form of Online Payment
System Gains Traction due to use of some Bootstrap Financing
Customer Service is a PROFIT CENTRE.
There are no Rules in Entrepreneurship
Coldwater Creek is a Great
Example of a Bootstrap Startup
Land Price Increases—the Real
Underlying Cause
Entrepreneurialist Culture
Quotient online quiz
Free Online Business Model Generator
What is The Purpose of a National Economy? (Part 1)
Dr. Bruce M. Firestone, B. Eng. (Civil), M.
Eng.-Sci., PhD.
Real Estate Broker and Mortgage Broker
Partners Advantage
GMAC Real Estate, Brokerage; Founder, Ottawa Senators;
Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa;
Executive Director, Exploriem.org.
LINCOLN FIELDS SHOPPING CENTRE, 2525 CARLING AVE, SUITE 23, OTTAWA ON K2B 7Z2
Tel.: 613.422.6757 Fax: 613.422.2877 Email: bfirestone@partnersadvantage.ca
Internet: www.OttawaRealEstateNews.com, www.PartnersAdvantage.ca and www.Exploriem.org
Blog: http://www.eqjournalblog.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/ProfBruce