small businesses : Innovation + Job News

Immigration isn't just a matter of navigating clearly defined legal and employment constraints: getting your paperwork in order, re-credentialling, and so on. There is also a host of soft skills—cultural conventions and communication best practices, social insight and networking capacity—that anyone needs to successfully make a transition to a new country.

Helping skilled immigrants do just that: the mentors of the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council (TRIEC), who assisted 1,000 immigrants this past year via a program called The Mentoring Partnership. Mentors offer sector-specific advice (mentees and mentors are matched by occupation), but also help with the ephemeral, essential task of getting settled in a new work environment.

Those mentors and their successes were celebrated recently, at an annual reception.

Indra Maharjan was a mentee with the program in 2010; he returned in 2013 to act as a mentor to two new skilled immigrants; he was one of the program participants honoured at TRIEC's reception. Like many new immigrants Maharjan had done a lot of research and planning when it came to logistical issues, but it was the Mentoring Partnership, he says, that "helped me to get lots of other information which is not publicly available: how to deal with people, how to make sure your boss is happy," and other similar matters.

The Partnership helped him learn about Canadian work culture and communication styles, which allowed him to find and flourish in new work more quickly. "The crux of success lies in how you communicate with people," Maharjan says, and there's is no better guide to that than another person who can answer real-life questions about it, and help you work through situations as they arise. Years later he and his mentor are still in touch.

This year Maharjan's two mentees each found jobs within two months, he says with pride. "Most people are hardworking, but if they can't express themselves that creates a bottleneck."

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Indra Maharjan, The Mentoring Partnership
Photo: Camilla Pucholt

Ontario is a growing force in medical technology research, and now the provincial government wants to bolster the sector further. Last month Queen's Park launched the new Ontario Health Innovation Council to help support the commercialization of medical innovations and new technologies. The council's task: identify growth opportunities and strategies for market-oriented development.

The council is specifically focused on small- and medium-sized businesses, and has a mandate to create the conditions for job growth in this sector.

The provincial government estimates that Ontario's health technology sector generates $9.1 billion a year. In job terms, the medical devices sector employs more than 17,000—49 per cent of the total nationwide.

The 15 council members represent academic institutions, hospitals, private companies, and non-profits. (Toronto-based members include the heads of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, MaRS Innovation, UofT's Institute for Health Policy, and the University Health Network.)

Deb Matthews, Minister of Health and Long-Term Care, said via a written statement that, "Ontario’s capacity to provide the best care and get value for our precious health dollars depends on harnessing our strengths in health research and innovation. The Ontario Health Innovation Council will help us improve the quality of care while creating valuable new jobs."

Catherine Zahn, president of CAMH, echoed those sentiments in her own comments, writing that "OHIC is an opportunity to ‘think big’ and broadly about health innovation in Ontario and make it real for patients, people and communities.”

The council's members will be looking at a range of issues beyond commercialization, too. They'll be examining ways to lower health care costs in the province, and try to focus on new ways to improve patient care.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care
Photo: Courtesy of the University Health Network.

A year-old partnership between Toronto incubator MaRS and Microsoft just got bigger.

According to a new deal, known as Biz Spark, start-up entrepreneurs will be getting direct and indirect development help from the tech giant.

"Startups will get access to software and tools provided under the Biz Spark program," says Ryan Poissant, a MaRs advisor in IT, communication and entertainment. "Select MaRS clients will also benefit from connecting with experienced product development teams and access to Microsoft's deep industry networks of partners and customers."

Poissant describes the potential beneficiaries of this deal as being companies who figure they can benefit from "Microsoft's tools and industry verticals."

"Microsoft brings a deep understanding of design and development tools and practices as well as expertise in building scalable, enterprise grade applications that reside in the cloud," Poissant says. "This expertise complements the MaRS platform that helps companies move efficiently from the discovery phase to product/market fit through a combination of advisory services, partnerships, access to capital and networks."

MaRs stands for Medical and Related Sciences, though since it was named, its purview has expanded into unrelated fields.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Ryan Poissant

A trip to Ghana in 2009 by a few self-funded Scadding Court-area teens is paying off, and in the process offering an excellent example of how rich countries can learn from poor ones.

"What we saw there were all kinds of rusted out containers where people were selling chicken, cutting hair," says Scadding Court Community Centre head Kevin Lee. "We came back to Toronto, there's so much under-utilized public space, like sidewalks that are three times the size they need to be, and on Dundas Street, economically depressed, with no eyes on the street…."

So now, there are 19 containers on Dundas just west of Bathurst, and a charette at the Scadding Court Community Centre on Tuesday brought together architects, designers, city planners, public health workers and community members to show and tell how that might be expanded into the city's first container mall.

The first container went up three years ago, very shortly after the group, of which Lee was a part, got back from Ghana. At first, it was just food, but it soon morphed into retail, including Stin Can, a bike repair shop run by two 19-year-olds, graduates of the Biz Start program who, according to Lee, were able to start up with just $2,000. (You may want to think about stopping by their container instead of your usual local.)

"What we're trying to do," Lee says, "is establish a template for the city of Toronto in terms of economic development at the grassroots level. Economic development doesn’t just mean trying to attract Google to move their head office to Toronto."

The city just found $80,000 to buy two or three new containers, according to Councillor Adam Vaughan, in whose ward the containers sit. Now they’re just waiting for a council vote on approvals, which could come as early as this week.

"You put 10 bureaucrats around a table, all it takes is one to say no to scrap things," Vaughan says from the floor of the charette. He says the original idea came from a private company who wanted to set up some containers on Queen West. Heritage Toronto nixed it, according to Vaughan, saying the only spot they could use was the parking lot at Queen and Phoebe, so the company dropped the idea.

The charette, and the community centre's central involvement, is a way, Vaughan hopes, to circumvent the usual impediments to Toronto ever having nice things. "What we're looking for here is a way to say yes."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Kevin Lee, Adam Vaughan

Though many of us still think of libraries as a place to pick up the latest fiction or catch up on back copies of favourite magazines, there's a substantial amount of programming that is oriented to very practical, day-to-day aspects of life in the city.

One example: resources available to small businesses, ranging from meeting space to specialized business databases. Libraries are increasingly becoming community hubs in Toronto, places where workshops and other events can be as important as what's on the shelves.

A part of all this: the library's entrepreneur-in-residence program, which is now entering its second year. This year's entrepreneur in residence is Jean Chow, a business coach with decades of small business experience. She'll be officially launching the program with an on-stage Q&A at the Toronto Reference Library on Wednesday, October 2; a second event—a drop-in session for entrepreneurs seeking advice—takes place a week later, on October 9.

It isn't just public events though. Chow will be offering other support as well. "Part of the [program's] mandate," she explains, "is to have a look at newly submitted business ideas, and…select 20 of them to give one-on-one consultations on how entrepreneurs can start their business." Effectively, Chow will be providing a free session of business coaching to each of the 20 applicants whose ideas she thinks are most promising. (If you're interested in taking part, you have until October 16 to submit your application.)

We asked Chow what she'd be looking for in the proposals, and what would make an applicant stand out.

"Number one," she says, "what i'm looking for is uniqueness and how well you know your customer. You know not only what you're selling, but who you're selling to." She wants ideas she hasn't heard before, and ones that are well-timed given current trends. After that, Chow goes on, what matters is the applicants themselves—whether they have any entrepreneurial experience (even with a family member who might have exposed them to the mindset a new business owner needs) and whether they are deeply passionate about their idea.

But what's most important to Chow is that people come out, and give a workshop or an application a try. "The library programs are free and they're good for any level of business learning," she emphasizes, and taking steps to learn more is the essential first step.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Jean Chow, Entrepreneur in Residence, Toronto Public Library

About a year ago, Rogers Communications began pilot testing of a mobile payment system, one that would allow customers to pay bills with a tap-and-go smartphone service. Joining the race to get Canadians to make purchases without opening their wallets: PayPal, which launched a pilot of its own last month in Toronto.

PayPal's partner is TouchBistro, an iPad based point-of-sale system used by many food trucks, cafes, and restaurants. Customers who check in with the new service can pay their restaurant bills from their PayPal accounts via an app on their mobile phones.

Jimmy's Coffee is one of the venues that has been participating in the pilot. Manager Penny Vine says that so far the experiment has been going relatively well—right now about $100 a day are processed through the PayPal/TouchBistro system.

PayPal makes money on the system by collecting a small percent of each bill that is processed, which means that the lower price point of cafe sales isn't as lucrative for them as full-fledged restaurants. TouchBistro approached Jimmy's and asked them to participate in the pilot, however, simply because their more frequent sales—nearly 400 transactions a day—gives them a bigger sample size to learn from.

From Jimmy's perspective, explains Vine, the pilot was appealing because the cafe doesn't have the capacity to process credit card transactions, and this gives them an alternative electronic option for customers without cash. The mobile payment system, Vine says, "is great because at the actual point-of-sale it's really fast. It's easy…and it's cheaper than taking credit cards."

This, however, only works if customers check in before they arrive at the counter—if they aren't ready the payment process can take a bit of time. It's mostly a question of visibility, Vine thinks, pointing out that "people don't really know much about it yet." She also notes that the system only works if the technologies that support it do: if the app goes down, or a customer's phone network is on the fritz, mobile payments won't work.

Jimmy's is so far seeing more advantages than downsides: Vine says they would definitely be interested in keeping the system once the pilot is over.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Penny Vine, Manager, Jimmy's Coffee

With the emergence of social enterprise, and the increasing visibility of many social, and especially environmental, issues, many more investors are becoming interested in using private capital to not only generate revenue, but also tackle some of our greatest problems. Helping to match investors with the enterprises that might achieve these goals: Social Venture Connection (SVX), an online platform that's just been launched by MaRS with the help of the Province and several private partners.

Billed by the Ontario government as the first such system in North America, SVX is a registered dealer with the Ontario Securities Commission. At launch, 12 ventures (including both non-profit and for-profit enterprises) were registered, ranging from an organic farm supply company to ZooShare, which is piloting a biogas plant at the Toronto Zoo. Their goal is to attract what are dubbed "impact investors," ones who have "a focus on achieving positive social and/or environmental outcomes and modest to market-rate financial returns," according to SVX's website. 

It's the first step towards a larger goal of creating a full-fledged regulated market, one that functions much like any mainstream exchange but with an explicit focus on social impacts.

Because SVX vets the enterprises that apply to be listed, and also provides some support services to the ones that make the cut, the idea—or at least the hope—is that those enterprises that do get selected will have an easier time attracting investors. SVX is also actively working to identity potential investors, ones who are known to have an interest in the social implications of the ventures they support.

To be eligible for consideration, ventures must have been incorporated in Ontario for at least two years, and have revenues between $50,000 and $25 million a year.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Ministry of Economic Development, Trade and Employment

Toronto's got no shortage of well-intentioned people who care enough about various issues to devote their days to launching non-profits, charities, social enterprises, and businesses with social or environmental missions. Not everyone who starts such a venture knows quite how to make it succeed, however, which is why we're seeing more and more incubators and accelerators targeting this sector in particular.

The latest entrant: Cause School, a project that was just launched by Julia Howell in conjunction with communications firm Corktown Seed Company. The idea is to provide a sort of bootcamp for a new venture, Howell explains—just one to start off with, as all the time and support involved are being donated.

Cause School has recruited 12 "faculty" members with expertise in a variety of fields. The founder(s) of the winning project will spend two hours with each one, learning about everything from funding and networking to community engagement. After that, Corktown will provide branding and marketing support, helping the project polish its identity.

What's most important is that applicants demonstrate that they have an initiative that's ready to go, Howell says. It could be a new venture or a project launched by an existing group, and that group can take any form (social enterprise, registered charity, etc.).

Cause School is looking for something "that isn't already being done," she goes on, and "it could be anything: it could be a cultural initiative, it could be an environmental project, it could be in social justice."

What will matter in selecting the winning project is that the applicants have "the basic framework to make [their project] happen"—that they have reliable people involved, perhaps have completed some market testing, and have other fundamentals already in place. It's a crash course for those needing to fine-tune, in other words, rather than a place for people who aren't sure how to begin.

If you're interested you can apply via a simple online form; the deadline is October 14. A shortlisted group will then be invited to make more detailed pitches in person.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Julia Howell, Founder, Cause School

In a city with an ever-increasing number of incubators, accelerators, and other support programs, it can be surprising to realize how many unmet needs our aspiring entrepreneurs actually have. It's still a developing community though, and there are many gaps to be filled in. Addressing one very specific gap is SheEO (pronounced SHE-E-O), a program for women entrepreneurs in the social sector, which has just graduated its first cohort of program participants.

"I've been a mentor to young entrepreneurs for almost 20 years, and one of the things that I'd noticed the women mentees were asking very different questions…around boldness, and confidence, and buildings networks," explains the program's co-founder, Vicki Saunders.

Anyone can pick up the hard skills of running a business, she went on: you can learn basic bookkeeping and how to build a pitch deck online quite easily. It's the soft skills—communication and management and wooing investors—that are trickier to develop, and "which we're now realizing are the most important." In our current business environment, Saunders says, women in particular can face challenges because their sense of what leadership looks like can differ from the prevailing models.

One thing in particular that Saunders points to is the need for any entrepreneur to be self-aware, to understand how she is most naturally comfortable acting as a leader. This isn't just a nice form of self-development, she maintains, but essential to the business itself: "You can't be a leader and not be yourself. You can't fake it and have people follow you. To really be a leader you need to understand who you are and what motivates you." That's why the opening days of SheEO's month-long program are devoted helping participants flesh out an individualized concept of leadership.

After that, the question is: leadership for what? Like a growing number of entrepreneurs, Saunders isn't interested in launching businesses just to capitalize on money-making opportunities. That's why SheEO is aimed not just at women, but at women who want to create ventures with social or environmental benefits.

Plans are already underway for future cohorts, and Saunders says that the program will continue "…as long as there are people out there who think that they need this, but the goal is that we never need to run any kind of program."

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Vicki Saunders, co-founder, SheEO

Founded in 2011, MaRS's Data Catalyst gathers data from partners in several sectors—healthcare, entrepreneurship, and energy—and analyses it to help support the development of the province's innovation economy. This past weekend, Data Catalyst organized the city's first ever Green Energy Hackathon, to give local app and product developers a chance to work with some of that data as well.

Data from many of the province's smart metres—from 2.7 million households, to be more precise—is currently being gathered in what's called the Green Button initiative. It's the Green Button open API that was made available to participants at the Hackathon—data that enables users to better understand how Ontarians are actually using their energy. Using that data, participants at the hackathon came up apps that do everything from help individuals know the best time to use certain appliances to warning small businesses about impending weather disruptions.

"There's a big hairy problem about how to engage people in their use of energy," says Joe Greenwood, program director of Data Catalyst. That problem, he goes on, has a lot to do with behavioural economics: even though we could save money by changing our energy consumption habits, it turns out people aren't entirely rational in how they handle such choices—which leads to the thorny question of how exactly to induce them to alter those choices.

On the bright side, Greenwood explains, Ontario has also made one of the biggest investments in smart metres, which creates a big opportunity for smart developers to give people the capacity to manage their energy use more effectively. Because we're starting to learn more about how we currently consume energy, we can start experimenting with tools that will motivate people to consume it better.

One key theme Greenwood noticed in the apps that were started at the Hackathon—some of which will be getting support for further development—is simplification. Though energy companies and large corporations may look at charts and graphs to help them determine their choices, individuals work differently; many of the developers started looking at giving rewards—badges or air miles, or using humour—as tools to help people change.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Joe Greenwood, program director, MaRS Data Catalyst

"In a market economy, if you solve a big problem you get a big reward," says Tom Rand, managing partner of the MaRS Cleantech Fund.

Generating substantial amounts of environmentally sustainable energy is certainly a big problem, and the Cleantech Fund's goal is to try and find the emerging companies who will help solve it. The $30 million private venture capital fund, located at MaRS, has just landed a new $500,000 investment courtesy of RBC Generator, the bank's investment arm that looks specifically for opportunities in companies that address social and environmental issues. It's the first investment deal RBC has announced as part of that initiative.

Green energy is obviously a huge sector; the MaRS Cleantech Fund focuses primarily on "early stage, disruptive, low carbon energy infrastructure," Rand explains. (More concretely, this means innovations like smart grids that better distribute energy.) The Fund has already invested in eight companies, and is aiming for 10 to 12 in total.

Though the fund is entirely privately financed, Rand also emphasizes the importance of being located at MaRS, which he calls "the most serious clean-tech innovation machine in Canada by far."

MaRS assists the fund with deal flow—the most promising new companies can be found there, so for investors it provides fertile ground for sniffing out the best opportunities—and their ongoing support with essential processes like preparation for the market make it, Rand adds, "the most high powered, high octane help you can get."

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Tom Rand, Managing Partner, MaRS Cleantech Fund

We know, broadly speaking, the key factors that help create the conditions for success for would-be entrepreneurs. They include access to capital, mentorship, and a very practical knowledge of day-to-day business operations. However, though Canada--and especially Toronto--have very high rates of immigration, we tend to spend less time thinking and talking about the challenges that are specific to immigrant entrepreneurs, and the conditions for success that are particularly pertinent to newer Canadians.

Stepping in to the breach is North York Community House, which recently released a study (conducted with the help of Public Interest) examining precisely those issues.

The report, DIY: Immigrant Entrepreneurs are Doing it for Themselves, looks at the specific challenges immigrant entrepreneurs face, and in the process outlines some major opportunities for offering more and better support to this community.

Among the report's key findings: English language skills, and knowledge about the mechanics of opening a business--the rules and regulations and procedures and nitty-gritty details--are two of the biggest determinants of success of failure for immigrant entrepreneurs. Mentorship and entrepreneurial experience (either directly, or within one's family) are also crucial--and all of these can be particular challenges for new immigrants, who may not have ready access to many of these supports in the way that Canadian-born entrepreneurs might.

"There are some really good programs going in Toronto for newcomer entrepreneurs," says Shelley Zuckerman, executive director of North York Community House, "but there aren't a lot."

She goes on to explain that there are some very targeted supports in place, for particular demographics or providing very specific services, but there simply isn't a sufficient number or variety of programs to meet the demand. "There's definitely a need for more mentorship programs," she says, especially for people without a family history of entrepreneurship, and especially aimed at those who are trying to get started with very small businesses.

At the most general level, the report finds that immigrant entrepreneurs fall into two main groups: those who are "pulled" towards entrepreneurship, who are attracted to it and choose it and arrive in Canada with that course of action in mind, and those who are "pushed" towards it, who don't find satisfactory or sufficient employment elsewhere and turn to entrepreneurship to close their income gap, or provide more flexibility in their scheduling and family life.

It's the latter group in particular that needs the most support, since it generally consists of people who have fewer resources (both financially and in terms of a pre-existing knowledge base), and aren't quite ready to hit the ground running. Even simple things like how language classes are structured can make a significant difference, explains Zuckerman.

"One of the difficulties around language for immigrants is that a lot of the language classes are during the day, or quite intense, so if you're running a business [at the same time] it can be quite challenging to attend," she says.

NYCH convened a roundtable of groups offering services to immigrant entrepreneurs in the course of putting together the study; that group will continue meeting now that the results have been released, to share more information and examine how they might coordinate their services more effectively.

They'll also be discussing the "need for government and funders to look at different ways of supporting small entrepreneurs" and, in particular, try to learn more about how services can be best structured to be of greatest value.

DIY: Immigrant Entrepreneurs are Doing it for Themselves is available online [PDF].

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Shelley Zuckerman, Executive Director, North York Community House

When the question of how to ensure workers are compensated reasonably for their work arises, one standard that is often invoked is the minimum wage: the notion that governments should protect workers from exploitation by ensuring they are paid a rate than covers their basic needs. (Whether or not current minimum wages accomplish that goal is a separate question.)

More recently though, a new kind of question has emerged, namely one about equity within a company--not just establishing a minimum threshold for every worker, but assessing the difference between how much the lowest and highest earners within a company make. Especially in the wake of movements like Occupy, the idea that senior executives make twenty or thirty or a hundred times more than their junior employees strikes many as unfair, unhealthy for corporate cultures, and damaging to the well-being of the economy overall.

Enter Wagemark, a new international standard for this metric. The Wagemark Foundation just launched specifically to promote this standard, one which it suggests should be an 8:1 ratio:  that is, in any company, the top earner should make no more than eight times as much as the lowest earner.

Peter MacLeod, executive director of the Wagemark Foundation, is also the co-founder of MASS LBP, a consultation firm that focuses on increasing public engagement. Explaining the relationship he sees between these projects, MacLeod told us that "at MASS, we're really interested and concerned in issues like trust and confidence in public institution and well being of members of society... how people can be better involved in policy-making, and work with institutions that they will then hopefully be more inclined to trust." However, he goes on, "this only gets you so far if the economic picture is concerning. Inequality is just unhealthy...it affects everything from crime rates to maternal health to mental health.'

Though the greatest wage disparities are found in the largest corporations, Wagemark is in its first stages aimed at small- and medium-sized businesses. MacLeod says that it's important to note that it isn't just a company's size that helps determine the disparities among the wages its workers earn--geography and culture matter as well.

In countries with the lowest overall wage disparities, such as Japan or Scandinavian nations, there are cultural influences (such as an emphasis on the values of modesty or the common good) that "have influenced contemporary compensation structures."

Wagemark's goal in beginning with smaller companies is "to begin to create that as a cultural norm in North America and [western] Europe"--to start shifting our expectations, and then have those expectations begin to percolate up into larger corporate structures.

We asked MacLeod whether it was mere coincidence that a new standard like Wagemark would emerge here. "If there is fertile ground in this country," he replied, "it's because we have a huge middle class that hasn't recovered…and has huge anxiety that we're being sorted out into different groups and income brackets...and I think that's out of step with Canadian values. I hope that Wagemark speaks to Canadian values."

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Peter MacLeod, Executive Director, Wagemark Foundation

"Creative destruction." It's an economics term that captures the dynamic cycle in which economies make progress--develop and integrate innovations and create new sectors and industries--by destroying the previous systems.

It's also the name of a new lab based out of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. That lab has just seen its first cohort of participants complete and eight-month boot camp, designed to give participants the pragmatic knowledge and real-world connections they need to make their ventures flourish.

One distinctive feature of the program is that acceptance in no way guarantees completion: in fact, nearly half of the original group doesn't make it through to the end. Participating ventures, each of which have between one and five members, meet periodically with mentors over the course of the program to establish milestones for their companies' development, and track progress along the way. After each round of meetings, those that are weakest get dropped from the program--of the 18 original participating ventures, only eight completed the program.

Worth noting: those eight now have an equity value estimated at $65 million in total.

Creative Destruction Lab came about, explains its director, Jesse Rodgers, after "looking at the gap that exists in education and research….there's certainly a failure in terms of connecting with [the] right people. The biggest thing that's messing with early stage entrepreneurs is the judgment in how to get where they want to go, and get there faster. They can't get the right mentors, they can't get the right coaches - that's a scarce resource."

As for what distinguished the ventures that successfully completed the program from those that did not, Rodgers says, it came down to one simple element: "Team dynamic. All the ones that didn't make the cut had team issues." It was surprising, he said, just how powerful this factor was, and how universal its influence. "Regardless of industry, the common thing is just the people, and how they work."

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Jesse Rodgers, Director, Creative Destruction Lab

Entrepreneurship can come at any age--and often it can come very early in a person's working life. Hoping to give a leg up to some of the country's youngest and most promising entrepreneurs is The Next 36, a nine-month program that provides intensive mentorship and support to 36 undergraduates and recent graduates. They've just opened up applications for their 2014 cohort.

Program participants work in teams of three, each of which will develop a business aimed at the mobile technology market.

That doesn't mean that only developers and the technologically-oriented should apply though: participants come from all disciplines. The key quality applicants should demonstrate is leadership, explains marketing and events director Jon French.

It's not the sector that matters so much as the characteristic, someone with the ability to "look at an opportunity or challenge and turn it into a positive," he says. To that end, "a track record of excelling at at least one thing" is the single most important factor Next 36 looks for when selecting its finalists, which have included top athletes and musicians as well as coders and engineers. (In previous years participants have been split into roughly one-third technology majors, one-third business and commerce majors, and one-third students with a background in the humanities.)

While program participants spend their time with Next 36 developing a new business, immediate impact matters less than establishing the skills for long-term success, French says. Their main goal is that in 10 or 15 years, some of Canada's leading entrepreneurs will have come through the program, having learned the hard and soft skills they need to build viable businesses throughout a long entrepreneurial career.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Jon French, Director of Marketing and Events, The Next 36