Without generalizing, I will like to share my thoughts about the current state of affairs in youth entrepreneurship …. in Ottawa specifically.

“Entrepreneurship as a serious career option” is increasingly a tough choice to make, especially if you are young. We have such a fixation in Canada (and in Ottawa in particular) on institutions (read public funds and banks), formulaes (read VCs) and way-it-has-been-done-before (read old guard), that the barrier to entry for young turks to do it differently is absolutely ergonomous.

I find that most judgement calls on new entrepreneurial ideas (still) are made on the basis of pre-defined success parameters (mostly around a case based on future VC money), which creates very limited opportunities for blow-your-mind away ideas/merit that challenge our status quos. I recently had a conversation with a very successful local entrepreneur around where the bulk of Web 2.0 money has been made, and by whom. As I see it, a majority of those folks would not have stood the tests that we tend to have in place. We have still not found a way to encourage and energise our young talent - and in my mind that should be always the thing to do even if someone fails to win on the basis of some pre-defined (business plan competition like) criteria. Every year we have more (declared) losers than winners, often driving the losing contenders out of the entrepreneurial/venture creation loop for ever. As someone, who taught me a lot about entrepreneurship, used to say “Supporting Entrepreneurship is all about making investments in people, their dreams and their aspiration - and yet it is so easy to stay fixated on ideas and technologies and completely forget that it is about people”. I always agreed, and I still concur.

It is quiet sad, but that is not to say that there is no hope. What heartens me, and it really does, is the presence of minds (and hearts) around me that understand (and feel) the gist of this issue. Everyday, on a regular basis, I get to work with folks (unsung heroes sometimes) putting every ounce of their energy towards promoting, encouraging and supporting youth entrepreneurship. I will like to take this opportunity to thank all of them for their work and to let them know that their work is well appreciated. We have some distance to go, but we will get there :)

There is indeed (always) a silver lining in the grey skies.

Manu

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 at 10:07 pm and is filed under Thoughts/Musings. 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.