I'm a member of one of our areas of strategic impact (ASI),
which is organized into four areas of strategic impact
which are intended to recognize our collective expertise
but also to demonstrate to the community where we have depth
of that expertise. The one I'm a member of is the
Entrepreneurship Innovations Strategic Management group.
The ASI team at the Telfer School of Management
is a team of interdisciplinary scholars who are interested in
understanding how ideas and opportunities can be translated
into new products, services and programs.
And how organizations and new ventures can be better managed
to create value in a rapidly changing world.
For example, about 15% of Canadians are self-employed.
Teams at Telfer are looking at the reasons why so few
are able to grow their company's to a significant size.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning will make many jobs
in tomorrow's economy obsolete.
Considering Canada is leading in this area of development,
how can we benefit from AI and machine learning
through innovative new jobs, new ventures and new opportunities?
About a third of Canadian business owners fail at succession.
Telfer scholars are looking at best practices
that enable business owners to pass on their firm successfully,
to their other businesses and family,
so that families can thrive for generations to come.
Answering these and many other questions
will help Canadian businesses grow, our society to create new jobs
and government to be more effective.
This is important because most new net job creation
come through small business growth.
We also know that today's employers seek graduates with
entrepreneurial skills and competencies.
Telfer Research is having impact at the regional,
national and global level.
We are influencing practices among support agencies
for small business and innovative firms.
We are influencing Canadian policy to support woman entrepreneurs
and across to OECD, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,
we are infusing gender smart policies to support the growth of women
owned enterprises.
What we are talking about today is a project that takes up most of my time
which is something I'm quite interested in and very excited about
which is funded by SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada)
For the last 50 years we have been excited about entrepreneurship
but what we have discovered over the last 50 years
and almost a part of all the excitement
is that much new ventures fail
in fact the majority of them fail,
but those that survive make marginal economic contributions.
In fact, most of the economic growth, the wealth and jobs,
is created by a very small number of companies.
There is a rule of thumb, where 5% create 50% of the wealth
of employment in any given period.
What happens is after they go these companies that sometimes had something
that made them good, made them growing enterprises, don't grow again
Many of them actually decline,
and so we want to know what happens after they grow.
The things we are starting to look at is the impact of growth on growth intention.
For instance, we have always presumed that growth intentions are fairly stable
like past growth of what you can grow again is a sort of
success beats success kind of model
We have this variety of entrepreneurship, variety of innovation
which gives us, I think a new sense of excitement
about the kind of things we are doing and the impact we can have.
This project is ongoing we don't have the answers, we have not gotten to the end of it
but that is where we are looking and it is what is taking a lot of my research time
and what's getting me excited about the job