This last Thursday I had the privelege of listening to two really good speakers, Andrew Fisher from Wesley Clover and Peter Hofstra from Greenrock Asset Management, at the Algonquin Applied Research Day. They both touched on the topics of Applied Research, Talent Development and Engagement and the general state of the Canadian Economy. Enclosed below, in the first of a series of two articles are my thoughts distilled from Andrew’s talk.

On the state of “Funding”

In these times, what we need to impart to the young entrepreneurs is the idea of “Beg, Scrape, Borrow and Steal”. What is important is for our entrepreneurs to understand that we cannot just stop in our tracks because cash is tough to come by. Cash will be tough to come by … period. This is the time for the truly innovative, who can work with their limitations and their resources and not only work their way out of the current downturn but who can also leverage their strengths to actually stand out in these times.

On Entrepreneurial Training

It is important for us to attach our bright young minds to customers and help them understand the value of “focussing on value”, specifically “share holder value”. The concept of “time to market” should not just be a theoretical concept that we expose our students to in an academic setting. There is a need for us to have them truly understand the relevance of markets and the need to meet the “opportunity window”. The best way for us to do it to interface the students with the industry when they are still impressionable and are in the school system.

On how to stay competitive in the new flat and connected world

“Time to market” in essence is our true and only competitive advantage. Unless we can work on a concept, give it a shape, implement it and take it out to the market in the quickest possible way, we stand very little chance of maintaining our global competitiveness. Our educational institutions, while they can compete on quality of the education, investment in basic research and the exposure to applied reasearch skills, cannot compete in terms of numbers that we know exist in most of the countries standing of the threshold of “developed country” status. With these realities, it is even more important for our students to understand the relevance of sales and marketing.

On the core values needed in these times

  • Communicate
  • Work Hard
  • Adapt

While I have heard (and read) most of these messages before, theyhave a special relevance in the context of TalentBridge (my program at OCRI) and what we are trying to do (quite successfully infact) with the program. We closely identify with the concerns and ideas explicated by Andrew and we are constantly striving to create value for the TalentBridge participants along all of the above dimensions. Stay tuned for the next post on an equally interesting take on Applied Research, Entrepreneurship and Innovation by Peter Hofstra from Greenrock Asset Management.

This post is also posted on the “TalentBridge Blog” at www.tbridge.ca

This entry was posted on Monday, April 13th, 2009 at 2:07 pm and is filed under Entrepreneurship/Innovation, Thoughts/Musings, Work/Edu. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.