MY BLOG – ONE AUTHOR – TWO THEMES

Thursday I attended the Demo Camp at the Creative Destructive Lab at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. The Lab is focused on converting innovation to entrepreneurship selecting concepts with merit and guiding the founders through the process of getting to market. In the process the goal is to encourage the brightest and best to stay in Canada. The first program was completed in June. It is a competitive environment as it should be. Last September when the Lab was in it`s gestation period there were 76 project submitted. Of these the G7 founding partners selected the 18 that they felt had the most merit. The groups were assigned specific targets to carry out over a six week period at which time they met with the partners again. The one with the weakest performance was dropped. By June on completion of the program there were ten projects left. In less than a year the survivors have created over $ 65 million in equity with more to come. Great performance for a program in its infancy. Great things are destined to come out of this program. It`s already started.

I am very proud to have been invited to become a partner of the CD Lab. Not as one of the G7 partners who will continue to run the program in conjunction with the founders Professor Ajay Agrawal and Jesse Rogers but as one who is passionate about entrepreneurship and willing to help these people with phenomenal potential in whatever way I can. There are many levels and forms of entrepreneurship. The common bonds are the personal issues and fundamental business issues that every entrepreneur has to address from team building to funding. The transition from innovator to entrepreneur is difficult at the best of times but the pace at the Lab as for any accelerator is fast and furious. Understanding what to expect on these basic challenges can facilitate the transition and keep things in perspective.

Which brings me back to the title of this post. The adrenalin of the Demo Camp was contagious. Ajay and Jesse along with the G7 partners are building a culture of success. The combination of seeing the progress that was made last year as reported by the charter participants along with over twenty new pitches to show what is on the horizon was compelling and just plain exciting. There is a developing worldwide race to attract talent. Keeping our own is critical. Attracting sources from other countries nearly as important. Canada has introduced a new visa program to attract innovators who can confirm capital to support their programs BUT the key to attracting others is to keep our own, build a world class ecosystem and foster the culture of success. The Creative Destruction Lab will be an important factor in the process. Very exciting !!!!

Quite a number of my friends are professionals. Often they let me know how lucky I’ve been to own and operate companies with employees who keep churning out results even when I am at the cottage or on the golf course. For them time is money-they generate the revenue. They have to be there or nothing happens. I don’t even have to show up.

The traditional idea is that once you get to be the boss, you coast while others do your bidding. Maybe that idea’s grounded in the reality that most people get promoted to their level of incompetence where performance falls off. Of course it’s delusional to think that you start your own business and find a gravy train of financial success, freedom and success, all with little effort. This rarely happens but we do revere examples when it does like some the instant successes that have materialized in the tech world. Frankly that type of success is equivalent to winning the lottery which isn’t going to happen for many. Unfortunately this is the romantic side of entrepreneurship- rare but appealing.

If your goal is to get to be the boss and then take it easy , perhaps you should look to the public sector where that is at least a possibility. Being a true entrepreneur means living in a revolving door with each turn bringing a new problem to solve. If this lifestyle is meant for you , it’s like getting the business equivalent of a runner’s high, every day, all day. If not welcome to chaos. The faster the problems come the more you must thrive on the process. The last thing entrepreneurs want to do is sit idle while others do the work and get all the fun of problem solving.

That’s why they succeed in startups but struggle in managing established businesses even though they may have built those same businesses. No matter how great your innovation, converting that project to a successful business requires entrepreneurship. Success takes determination, adaptability, resilience, commitment and the certainty that you will take the project to completion and make that project happen. It is not the project that makes an entrepreneur. It is definitely the process! Very few are content to level their business and enjoy the fruits of success. So if you are all about power, money or prestige maybe entrepreneurship isn’t for you. Being the boss is just a necessary evil.

Entrepreneurship rests firmly on opportunity. But in the face of a rapidly changing global economy there is an overwhelming increase in entrepreneurship of necessity. Seniors need to extend their careers. Youth are struggling to launch theirs. Women are looking for flexibility to meet a combination of career and family needs. Individuals around the world are seeking freedom of opportunity. At the same time Big Business is pursuing profits around the world undermining the stability of employment markets. There is widespread decline in loyalty between employers and employees. Structural unemployment is a demoralizing prospect. One need only look to Detroit to see the impact.

The result? The most valued skill in the 21st Century may well be the ability to create your own job. Job creation rests clearly on individuals -first for themselves and then for others. It reflects the difference between Localization versus Globalization – small scale entrepreneurs find their opportunities locally creating jobs in areas that Big Business has abandoned for offshore savings. To compound this the fast paced rate of change driven by technology favours small flexible and adaptable businesses that adjust to changing circumstances. Large companies find their growth through acquisition not startups.

Around the world governments are finally recognizing the importance of entrepreneurs. Fortunately there is a great deal of talent that is suppressed and can be unleashed, whether through culture, education, gender , race, funding or other limitations. It will be up to government to remove the shackles Entrepreneurship has been the driving force behind the economic dominance of the Western world. It is the economic resource that puts other resources to work. Our economic future is moving to the hands of those who are driven to make things happen.

Much as we would like to, we never really love our parents as much as we do our children. Your business is exactly like a child. In the early or startup years it will depend completely upon you, looking to you for all the answers. You will always supply them with confidence, belying the uncertainty that you may feel as a first time owner just as you do as a first time parent. The child will look to you 24/7 in sickness and in health and as the parent you will always be there regardless of the problem, dropping everything else in the process. Your business and its components from customers to your team will do the same and like the parent you will be ready and willing to oblige. You cannot easily walkout on your children. Oh some due but for the majority it’s a non-starter. Same thing with your business. You are your business but try to remember your business is not you.

The middle years are the best when you have become comfortable within your developing family and confident in the decisions that must be made. Neither your child or your business will question you during this peak period. Things do get into a groove on both fronts but then comes the maturing years, the transition from total dependence  to independence. Tough for the parent to admit it’s time to let go and let the child mature  developing all of it’s capabilities, finding new methods and learning new things that the parent doesn’t know or understand.  So difficult to do but you the parent do it willingly in the best interest of your child. And so you must with your business. At some point you will become the limitation in your business. The day will come when it has outgrown you. It will not mature and reach it’s potential unless you let go. Easier said than done but be ready.

Like your first born that first business must move on to a new future. But then remember you can do it again. Maybe you already are. The second child is easier. There are tried and true practices that you know and understand. You can take that second child from gestation through birth to adolescence from startup to a thriving healthy entity. You can do this as many times as you can handle. And so you can with business. That’s what makes you a parent and that’s what makes you an entrepreneur. There are many mentors that can steward your child and your business into full maturity who cannot deal with the early years. You are the one who launches them from nothing and starts them along the path to maturity.

So recognize the need for that end game- when it is time to move on and begin again. It’s what you do best. The child will ask for you opinion. The business may ask you to consult. You will learn to enjoy both, but you will find your happiness doing it all over again.

Whatever happened to the optimum size of the firm? You know the size at which the company was it’s most efficient? most productive” most manageable? Economies of scale did dictate making the firm larger UNTIL the company hit the law of diminishing returns meaning the optimum size had just been passed. It seems that somewhere along the line it was decided that the best way to compete in an evolving global economy was to keep getting bigger regardless of inefficiency and loss of control. Ironic isn’t it. Free enterprise following the example of bureaucratic Big Government. Build behemoths. If you get big enough there’s no way to get rid of you. But how? Well in order to make this happen create a wage pyramid so that those at the top who have very little idea what’s going on below them make outrageous salaries well beyond any possible contribution they can make to the organization. Sound good so far?

But what happens if things really do get negative? Don’t worry as long as you get big enough your cousin Big Government will have to bail you out. If small companies or individuals get hurt in the process they’re, well, collateral damage, just not as important as Big Business is to the world-expendable. This approach is pretty much out of touch with reality. Businesses do not last forever. Just look at the original list of the Fortune 500 to see how many have survived. In this era of 24/7 hyper-connectivity manifested in an ever increasing rate of change their life expectancy is going down. Size does matter but it’s becoming “Too Big to Survive”. Flexibility and Adaptability are the essential traits of business today. Social media is critical to deal with this new fast paced reality. The real watch words should be “Too Small to Fail”.  Entrepreneurs focused on opportunity, flexible enough to change quickly,, in touch with their business and all the key players are designed for the current environment.

Technology has opened up communication around the world making global business possible for small well lead companies who can gravitate to that desirable optimum size. For Big Business more independent divisions under a corporate umbrella, sized properly, will help but the era of domination by huge entities will weaken. Careers with one organization have already disappeared. We are a society of individuals. The most important skill for an individual will be the ability to create your own job. We are entering a New Age of Entrepreneurism.