The question“How can my siblings and I assess whether we could work constructively in the business one day?”was the theme of the first event in the NxG Legacy Forum series held in late March.
The event was moderated by Telfer’s Peter Jaskiewicz and Sabine Rau, with panellists Valentine Barbier-Mueller of Groupe SPG-Rytz and Drew Everett of Bush Brothers & Company. Both Barbier-Mueller and Everett are members of multi-generational family businesses and have experienced the benefits and challenges of being part of an enterprising family.
Aligning on Values and Embedding Governance Structures
For Barbier-Mueller, one of the most important elements in keeping the next generation of a family business together was having shared goals and being aligned on the values they want to project. For example, while she and her father have different personalities and working styles, they came to realize their differences complemented each other. “This can be a source of positivity.”
For Everett, a fourth generation member of a business involving 95 family members across the U.S., working constructively involved finding meaningful ways for the family to be involved, even if they weren’t working directly in the business.
Some family members wanted to contribute but didn’t necessarily want a job in the firm. Instead, opportunities were created for members to participate, including through governance structures like a board of directors, a family council, a private trust and estate activities, as well as events and family gatherings.
Everett stressed the need to put governance systems in place sooner than later. “Don’t wait until the fourth generation and there’s 95 of you,” he noted.
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Education is Key
For Everett, education was key in helping his family work together. He and other family members attended a series of courses to learn about the complexities of multi-generational businesses, creating systems and dealing with challenges. The courses provided him and his family with a shared educational foundation, vocabulary and understanding of the needs of a large ownership group.
Everett added that working with a knowledgeable family business consultant facilitated the process, helping identify areas of concern and building trust and togetherness.
Building Trust Within and Across Generations
Barbier-Mueller said that she and her sisters talk multiple times a day and try to keep communication flowing. “A family who has fun together will be more likely to stay together,” she said, recommending taking pleasure in the time members spend together.
Another essential element for Barbier-Mueller is giving family members the benefit of the doubt, and “trusting that everyone wants to achieve the same common objectives.”
Everett encouraged all members to make a concerted effort to build relationships. “Have opportunities for fellowship, and to get to know each other better.”
Supporting the Next Generation
For Barbier-Mueller, the most important role for the senior generation is to clarify rules and foster unity. The senior generation must treat all next generation siblings fairly. The principal role of older members is providing a historical context for the business and sharing stories about core family values, thus providing continuity and helping bind the family together.
Rau wrapped up the discussion, mentioning that working successfully with family members requires effort. “We have to become aware that it’s not just a given, but something we have to work for.”
Upcoming NxG Legacy Forums
The second NxG Legacy Forum took place in early April, with the topic question “We have wealth. When should we set up a family office to organize it?” Watch for an event summary soon.
The result of years of international research and practical experience, Enabling Next Generation Legacies delves into the unique challenges that confront family businesses.
Telfer Professors Peter Jaskiewicz. Director of the Family Enterprise Legacy Institute (FELI), and Sabine Rau, collaborator at FELI, have brought together the world’s leading academics, practitioners, and enterprising families to answer the most pressing questions faced by Next Generation members in a short and concise, yet meaningful way.
The book consists of best practices, real-life examples, and additional critical questions for reflection from nearly 100 contributors from 27 different countries. Expert commentaries come from members of the world’s leading family businesses including Auchan (France), Saputo (Canada), and Sabra (Israel), as well as from various academic experts from business schools around the globe like Kellogg, IMD, and INSEAD.
Below, read a commentary to a pressing question by a fourth generation member of a Malaysian family business.
When and How Should Family Members Be Promoted in the Family Business?
Commentary by Yoon Li Yong, Malaysia
Our family business, Royal Selangor International, is located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. My great-grandfather started it in 1885. He was a tinsmith in the growing tin industry and began making products for households. We have never mined or smelted tin. Instead, we focus on adding value to tin. Our business has a strong brand and makes beautiful home products, many of which were designed in our workshop. The third generation was my father and three siblings. This generation internationalized the business to Europe, Australia, and the U.S. in the 1970s and built a network of offices, distributors, and wholesalers.
Today, we have a total of about 600 employees with most of us based in Kuala Lumpur. The family business is still privately held, and we have completed succession to the fourth generation. In our industry, product life cycles are long. Some of our evergreen products are twenty years old. However, the industry has shifted over the last thirty years; living has become less formal. The household items and gifts industry has, therefore, gone through some consolidation with brands either being bought out or shuttered. One has to be very passionate to work in this business but, then again, being constantly surrounded with beautiful things is a pretty good motivation.
In the fourth (my) generation, most of my relatives have been in some way or form involved in the business. Today, only two of us—my cousin and I—work full time in the business. I am the managing director; he is the executive director. I was an engineer by training before I did my MBA in 2004. In 2005 I joined the business as a retail manager for a few years before taking over product, manufacturing, and marketing as a general manager. From there, I worked my way up to where I am now. So, how are family members hired and promoted? Let me highlight our rules and our values.
Our Rules
Every family member has to work elsewhere for at least two years after leaving school.
If a family member is good at what they are doing and fits the company's needs, they might be invited to work here.
We engage our nonfamily directors and managers for hiring family members.
Once a family member is invited, they apply for a vacant position and undergo the standard recruitment process.
Every family hire reports to their head of department, who may not be a family member.
Every family hire starts as a regular team member.
If the head of the department is a nonfamily manager, they make promotion decisions, and twice a year, they review possible promotions and provide employees with feedback. On average, we promote good employees every two to two-and-a-half years. The family council, however, can fast-track family members who excel in their jobs.
Our Values
Our family council includes six members electe d every three years from eligible voting members of the family forum. We organize a large family retreat every eighteen months. At every second retreat, we elect a new family council. A critical outcome of past retreats was the creation of our family charter. Our philosophy is to work together to generate solutions that meet the needs of both the business and the family. We communicate, work together, and practice integrity and love. We see our most important priority as remaining united as a family through spending time together and providing understanding and support to each other. We should maintain a balance of work, family, and play. We encourage family members to contribute views and ideas, to ensure participation regardless of age or experience. We recognise our responsibilities to resolve conflict through a process, to listen and communicate, and to unite in the face of external threats. We value our success, history, and legacy; and through our family council and family foru m we work to pass on to the next generations what has been so ably passed on to us.
Our Family Vision
Our Family Vision is to propagate the Royal Selangor name globally to be synonymous with pewter and good design leading to a vital and dynamic brand. We recognise that employees are a valuable asset. We will recruit, develop, and retain outstanding talent, both family and nonfamily, based on merit. The business will continue to be majority-owned by the family, in order to maintain the legacy of Royal Selangor. The board of directors will have family and nonfamily members. Family members not directly involved will have their views and interests represented through an active family council, and an evolving charter of good family governance. The business will be a good corporate citizen through its interaction with the community.
Questions for Further Reflection
Are you familiar with the history of your family business promoting family members?
Do you agree with the practice of promoting family members in your family business?
Do you think this practice should be updated? If so, how?
Do you have a family constitution/charter detailing how family members are hired and promoted?
If you want to be promoted, as a Next Gen, within your family business, what do you do?
How do nonfamily managers and board members see the practice of promoting family members?
Enabling Next Generation Legacies: 35 Questions That Next Generation Members in Enterprising Families Ask is now available in eBook and hardcopy. All royalties from Enabling Next Generation Legacies go towards the University of Ottawa’s Telfer Fund, helping students in need. Learn more at www.35questions.com.
To read more about how Telfer is shaping the conversation about the future of family enterprise, visit the Family Enterprise Legacy Institute and subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date and be entered for a chance to win your physical copy of Enabling Next Generation Legacies. (you must have a delivery address in Canada).
The Telfer School of Management is the proud presenting sponsor of a series of four webcasts powered by the Globe and Mail Events. Each webcast will highlight one of the four pillars in our Vision for a Better Canada — greener, healthier, happier, wealthier and more prosperous — through an interview with a Telfer professor, followed by a discussion with a panel of experts.
Family enterprises represent more than 35% of Canada’s real GDP and account for nearly half of all private sector jobs, according to a 2019 report by Family Enterprise Canada and the Conference Board of Canada, yet their future is uncertain. As baby boomers exit the workforce, experts say the next generation is unprepared to take over and protect this vital part of the national economy. What skills and knowledge will future business leaders and entrepreneurs need to carry on the family enterprise legacy?
One expert looking into these questions is Telfer professor Peter Jaskiewicz, University Research Chair in enduring entrepreneurship and the founding director of the school’s Family Enterprise Legacy Institute (FELI). In the interview portion of the event, led by Rita Trichur, senior business writer and columnist at The Globe and Mail, Jaskiewicz discussed family enterprises and how, when it comes to business succession, failing to plan is synonymous with planning to fail.
Business: A Family Affair
Jaskiewicz’s research has personal meaning. Growing up with a family musical instrument business in Poland, he had an early taste of entrepreneurship. Unfortunately, following the sudden, unexpected passing of his uncle, the lack of a succession plan led to major family conflict. Within six months, what was once a business appreciated by a loyal clientele and well established in the community closed for good.
This experience motivated Jaskiewicz to help other family businesses avoid the same fate. He also realized that his expertise could not only help business families, but strengthen the global economy as well. During the Globe and Mail webcast, Jaskiewicz said that a third of the family businesses in Europe are in danger of disappearing due to failure to support and prepare the next generation. This represents a large segment of the European economy in terms of jobs, growth and contribution to local surroundings.
Jaskiewicz mentioned two common mistakes that lead to poor family business succession plans:
Members of the next generation are not viewed as partners in planning their integration and are just treated as kids within the family business. Thus, they fail to see their own value in the business and, more so, as contributors to their community.
Family communication is often implicit. However, the senior generation’s vision does not necessarily apply to the next generation, who are easily taken for granted. Open and honest communication should be welcomed early on and even introduced around the kitchen table from a young age.
Saputo, a member of the Telfer Strategic Leadership Cabinet, agreed with Jaskiewicz on the need for communication. For her, it can be difficult to speak about family conflicts. Many families would benefit from outside help — members might be good at running a business, but it doesn’t mean they’re also good at planning the succession. There is a network of professionals who can help, including at Crysalia, which Saputo co-founded to sustain multigenerational enterprising families.
Hudson agreed, adding that her family has worked with outside advisers for the last 20 years. Establishing structures such as family and shareholder councils is beneficial, as is actively educating the next generation about the business.
The panellists agreed that engaging the next generation from a young age is key to them joining the family business. Both Hudson and Stephens shared stories of their involvement in the business as children — Hudson collected eggs on the family farm at age eight and Stephens worked in the family’s restaurants as a busboy. They not only gained an understanding of the business, but also saw their parents’ and family’s sacrifice, passion and energy.
For all panellists, it was important to set protocols on how family members enter the business. And as Stephens noted, the next generation must work hard and prove their worth: “Just because your last name is Stephens doesn’t mean people are going to respect you. You have to earn it, and you earn it by being a good team player.”
Follow the Family Enterprise Legacy Institute (FELI)
Professor Jaskiewicz and his colleagues at FELI have combined their years of international research and practical experience to establish the institute at the Telfer school.
Jaskiewicz has recently published an already influential book, Enabling Next Generation Legacies: 35 Questions that Next Generation Members in Enterprising Families Ask. He and co-author and FELI collaborator Sabine B. Rau have brought together the world’s leading academics, practitioners and enterprising families to answer the most pressing questions faced by next generation members in a concise yet meaningful way. The book consists of best practices, real-life examples and questions for reflection from nearly 100 contributors from 27 different countries.
Answers are important, but asking good questions can be even more so. In our increasingly divisive world, the right questions can truly demonstrate our willingness to understand the needs of the other side.
For the younger generation in business families – Next Gens – the right questions haven’t previously been posed nor answered. Too often a lack of understanding prevails between the wishes of the senior generations and the concerns and needs of Next Gens. To compound this, much academic research has typically focused on the parents’ generation because they are the ones in power. These realities led Telfer Professors Peter Jaskiewicz and Sabine Rau to ask: what do Next Gens really need and want?
To answer this question, Jaskiewicz and Rau went straight to the source, asking Next Gens for their views, perspectives and concerns. The result: newly released book Enabling Next Generation Legacies: 35 Questions that Next Generation Members in Enterprising Families Ask, which is now available in hardcover. The book brings together the thirty-five most pressing questions faced by Next Gen members around the world, with responses from leading academics and enterprising families.
The book was recently the topic of an online article in Family Firm Institute’s publication, FFI Practitioner. The article explains how the book came together, starting with a research process of formal and informal interviews over several years with senior and Next Gen members of more than 100 business families. From these interviews, it quickly became obvious how much the challenges of senior generations differed from those of the Next Gen. Realizing there was a need to consider the Next Gens’ perspective more actively, Jaskiewicz and Rau systematically collected their questions, asked for feedback, then established a final list of thirty-five questions.
With the intention of encouraging discussion and dialogue instead of pushing static solutions, each question provides a thoughtful response from a leading academic or practitioner, followed by commentaries from Next Gens themselves. This unique format offers a fresh perspective on the topic of family business, equally relevant to academics, practitioners and businesses, bringing together the global community to answer the next generation’s call.
As members of Telfer’s new Family Enterprise Legacy Institute (FELI), Jaskiewicz and Rau will be using research findings like those from Enabling Next Generation Legacies to help bridge the gap between differing generations in family businesses. Specialised programs such as the Certificate in Responsible Ownershiptackle the intergenerational disconnect and help prepare the next generation, leading to healthy, sustainable relationships within the family and business.
The result of years of international research and practical experience, Enabling Next Generation Legacies delves into the unique challenges that confront family businesses.
Telfer professors Peter Jaskiewicz and Sabine Rau have brought together the world’s leading academics, practitioners, and enterprising families to answer the most pressing questions faced by Next Generation members in a short and concise, yet meaningful way.
The book consists of best practices, real-life examples, and additional critical questions for reflection from nearly 100 contributors from 27 different countries. Expert commentaries come from members of the world’s leading family businesses including Auchan (France), Saputo (Canada), and Sabra (Israel), as well as from various academic experts from business schools around the globe like Kellogg, IMD, and INSEAD.
Below, read the response to a pressing question asked by family enterprises, followed by commentary from a Next Generation member of an enterprising family.
How Can I Prepare Myself to Work Effectively With My Fellow Family Owners?
Response by Peter Jaskiewicz and Elizabeth Tetzlaff, Canada
A PricewaterhouseCoopers survey of 956 Next Gens in 2019 from sixty countries and territories found that Next Gens have big plans.[i] With 70 percent of these Next Gens actively engaged in the family business, by 2025; 41 percent expect to be executive directors (i.e., owner-managers); 29 percent anticipate being majority shareholders; 15 percent plan on being involved in business governance, and the other 15 percent expect to become non-executive directors. In other words, 85 percent share the ambition of becoming owners of their families’ businesses.
As Marvel’s Uncle Ben reminds Peter Parker, “with great power comes great responsibility.”[ii] Ambition, like power, has its own counterweight—obstacles. So, it could be said, “with great ambition come great obstacles.” Despite their ambition, 52 percent of Next Gens have yet to be given the responsibility of a special project, and despite being “deeply engaged” in the family business, 64 percent of them admit that they are not being used as a sounding board. Worse still, 10 percent of these Next Gens feel unheard: “I make suggestions, but they are hardly ever listened to.” These statistics echo the sentiment that Next Gens shared with us: We are ambitious and want to work effectively as owners, but how can we prepare for that ourselves?
Ambition, Abilities, Approach, and Acceptance
In our experience, effective Next Gens have their “A game,” which includes four As—ambition, abilities, approach, and acceptance.[iii]
Ambition.To have ambition is to have determination and a strong desire to achieve or see something to completion.[iv] For Next Gens, this desire could speak not only to their desire to succeed as the successor, but also their determination to improve upon the advancements made in the family firm. Indeed, on one hand, we have met Next Gens who lacked ambition, stating: “I will never be as good as the incumbent.” On the other hand, we have met ambitious Next Gens who were keen to learn how to accelerate their own development and were eager to leave their mark. For instance, they talked about projects to reduce carbon emissions of the family firm, unify the family before spinning off outdated business units, or implement plans in the family office to sell investments that do not comply with environmental and social standards. Without their ambition, these behaviors might not take place. Ambition is thus the first necessary quality that Next Gens need to possess. However, in order for it to be beneficial and not destructive, ambition, like energy, needs a value-oriented direction.
Abilities. Abilities help to harness ambition and give it direction. Abilities are commonly equated with accounting degrees or strategy MBAs. However, the abilities that make effective family owners are much broader and include having good people skills, being able to motivate others on the team, having healthy coping mechanisms to deal with stress, and being able to approach conflict constructively. In his biography, Charles Bronfman—the second-generation former co-leader of Seagram—describes many effective decisions that he and his brother Edgar made, but Charles also discloses that his biggest mistake was to suppress his thoughts when his brother and his brother’s son brought forward proposals that were driven by their personal interests rather than business sense.[v] Charles says that he saw the problems of the family’s investment ideas but admitted that he did not use his veto right because he felt pressured to comply and wan ted to avoid conflicts. From Charles’s story, we learn how important it is for family owners to have an encompassing range of soft skills. We can also see that ambitions that are not properly guided can ruin the family business.
Approach. Having the right abilities equips the owner with a foundation onto which they can add an effective approach to decision-making processes in family business. In our experience, as long as all parties involved feel that their voices are heard and accounted for, family owners are able to make controversial decisions (e.g., How do we deal with an underperforming family manager?)—even if they do not fully agree with each other to start with. Otherwise stated, Next Gens need to understand what constitutes a fair process, communicate, and then implement such processes.[vi] We have witnessed, firsthand, good decisions failing because the family did not use an approach that allowed those involved to feel that they were all on equal footing in the decision-making process.
Acceptance. Finally, having the ambition and the ability together with the right approach leads Next Gens to the door, but in order to open it, a key is necessary: acceptance. It is not uncommon to experience the disheartening feeling of meeting everyone, having them congratulate you on the new board appointment, and then ignore you for the rest of the meeting (or the next five-to-ten years). This does not mean that the Next Gen will not be accepted, it simply means that Next Gens will need to accept that it is necessary to prove themselves in order to be recognized. Learning about ownership can look like attending family council meetings, being a board observer (visitor) in board meetings, and assuming formal roles in student groups, local not-for-profits, or regional family business associations. Rather than passively waiting for acceptance, Next Gens need to proactively work tow ard it. In other words, if Next Gens are able to commit to proving themselves outside and inside of the family business, then they will be more likely accepted as Next Gen leaders.
In summary, Next Gen owners’ effectiveness is an outcome of their ambition, abilities, approach, and acceptance. If the senior generation does not share influence and does not treat Next Gens as owners, the latter will be less effective. Similarly, fellow Next Gen owners can be destructive. If they are poorly prepared and immature, they can torpedo processes and push away effective Next Gens. Therefore, families and Next Gens need to do their part to ensure that none of the future owners become the Achilles heel of the family and the bottleneck of their enterprise(s). Families whose Next Gens bring their “A game” are more likely to make a difference for their families, enterprises, and communities.
Elizabeth Tetzlaff is a PhD candidate at the Telfer School of Management. Her research centers around exploring the impact of mental health on both the functioning of the business family as well as on the health and vitality of the family business. In addition to her research, Elizabeth is working on SSHRC-funded research study to understand how differences among families influence the longevity and success of their family businesses.
The ebook for Enabling Next Generation Legacies: 35 Questions That Next Generation Members in Enterprising Families Ask is now available. Learn more at www.35questions.com. Print copies available February 2022.
To learn more, visit the Family Enterprise Legacy Institute and subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date on how Telfer is shaping the conversation about the future of family enterprise.
References
[i]“Agents of change: Earning your licence to operate,” PwC’s Global NextGen Survey (Germany: PwC, 2019), 1-26.
[ii] Spider-Man, directed by Sam Raimi (2002; Culver City, CA: Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment), DVD.
[iii] Mira Bloemen-Bekx, “Enriching the Early Phases of the Succession Process: An Explanation of the Role of Social Mechanisms in Business Families” (PhD diss., Hasselt University, 2019). Authors’ note: Mira Bloemen-Bekx speaks of ambition, abilities, and acceptance.
[iv] Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd ed. (2001), s.v. “ambition.”
[v] Charles Bronfman and Howard Green, Distilled: A Memoir of Family, Seagram, Baseball, and Philanthropy (New York: HarperCollins, 2017).
[vi] Ludo Van der Heyden, Christine Blondel and Randel S. Carlock, “Fair Process: Striving for Justice in Family Business,” Family Business Review 18, no. 1 (March 2005):1-21.
Family businesses pass more than ownership to the next generation – they also pass on traditions. And better management of these traditions can help family enterprises address two of their fundamental tensions: the need to modernize the business and the need to honour the founder’s vision.
Early studies suggested that traditions were an impediment to change because they burdened the family business with history. For instance, traditions could make family businesses risk-averse and less innovative because the preservation of the status quo trumps anything else.
However, as explained in a recently published article in The Conversation – co-authored by Peter Jaskiewicz, Telfer’s University Research Chair in Enduring Entrepreneurship – family firms shouldn’t be so quick to cast traditions aside. To explain the importance of traditions, the article weaves in examples from Greek folklore, using the famous stories of Theseus’ Paradox and Sophocles’ account of Oedipus. Parallels to the hit HBO series Successionare also made to explain how traditions can help and harm the family firm.
The article – adapted from an earlier paper published in Family Business Review – proposes that traditions shouldn’t be thrown out of the firm, nor rigidly enforced, but instead reinterpreted by the next generation. One way this can be done is through collective remembering: when senior family members share stories about past achievements and discuss their meaning with the next generation, they co-create narratives that are relevant to both generations. Another way is by retaining the structural elements of traditions — the rituals —but continually updating them to be relevant in today’s world.
It is through this rebuilding and reinterpreting of traditions that senior and next generation family members learn to better work together for the benefit of the family firm. Telfer’s new Family Enterprise Legacy Institute (FELI) – of which Jaskiewicz is the inaugural Director – encourages and supports these relationships, working directly with family enterprises to help them evolve while maintaining their authentic identity and traditions. Knowledge gained and applied leads to more family enterprises enduring from generation to generation – leading to a stronger Canadian economy.
Peter’s research on family business has received numerous awards and were considered among the most globally influential scholarship in 2013, 2015, and 2017. Peter has presented his research insights to members of the European Parliament, the European Commission, and employees of the United Nations. In addition, he has also worked with the federal government in Canada. His current research focuses on antecedents of transgenerational entrepreneurship and corporate reputation in family and founder firms. Moreover, Peter researches organizational outcomes of entrepreneurial legacies, managerial pay dispersion, and family dynamics in these firms.
The balance between launching an Ottawa startup and being a student can be both a time-consuming and rewarding feat. University of Ottawa alumnus, Karim Alibhai, and Telfer alumna, Alina Jahani, know all about the student entrepreneurship lifestyle.
The BSc and BCom Management Information Systems duo launched their recruitment startup, HireFast, while completing their undergraduate degrees and are now closing a six-figure exit deal with a large American company.
The Beginnings of HireFast
Karim, the engineer of the partnership, remembers exactly how the HireFast journey began: “I was on a bus in Ottawa and my friend was telling me how he was interviewing for software engineering positions and how [employers] make them solve different problems in interviews. They were testing software engineers on algorithms, even though that’s not really what they’d be doing at their jobs.”
He then got the idea to start HireFast, an assessment tool for software engineer employers that would more accurately test applicant skills. He brought on Alina to help with project management and business development, and the partnership began. Now, the business uses pre-existing insights and data to help improve hiring times, quality of applicants, and quality of jobs.
The Life of Student Entrepreneurs
After Karim and Alina established their business idea, their first step was contacting Telfer entrepreneurship professor, Stephen Daze. Professor Daze teaches third and fourth-year classes for entrepreneurs and is noted to be one of Hire Fast’s key resources.
“He was a pivotal piece to our company. He was phenomenal and was not afraid to rip us apart and tell us when we were [not doing the right thing],” Karim explained.
After pivoting, the business grew and Alina and Karim began noticing the struggles of balancing their full-time work on a business and studies for each of their degrees. The two biggest challenges they faced as young, busy entrepreneurial students were related to time management and financing.
“Time management was tough. It was really hard to balance time, so as a result, we got lower marks [in courses] than what we were used to. Also, you are very cash-constrained, so we were trying to save money on small things that other people in the market could afford”, shared Karim
However, the benefits of being students while starting a business was their access to student competitions and opportunities like Startup Garage that the university has to offer.
uOttawa Entrepreneurship Programs and Business Accelerators
HireFast joined the Startup Garage program at the University of Ottawa’s Entrepreneurship Hub as part of the 2019 cohort. The pair originally applied to join because the program allows students to take an eight-month break from their studies and focus on their businesses full-time.
“We ended up getting more than just that, the best probably being a community of like-minded people, which was very powerful,” Karim explained. “Sometimes when you are failing it can be very overwhelming, but having other people in those same situations to guide you really helps.”
Another benefit to the program, Karim noted, was the access to experts in fields that they needed help in: “We were able to connect with Nolan Beanlands, who used to run the Startup Garage. He was extremely helpful.”
Alongside accelerator programs like Startup Garage, Karim and Alina noted that the business also felt supported financially by the university and its programs and competitions.
Business Startup Advice
Looking back, Karim had a few pieces of advice for current students who want to bring their business idea to life: “Try to stand on the shoulders of experts, alumni, and anyone you can. That was one of the key factors to our success. To talk to amazing people like Stephen Daze and Nolan Beanlands. We are still in touch with them and a lot of the time I had tunnel vision and getting advice from them was super useful.”
As for the Telfer alumna, Alina, she says that the main goal student entrepreneurs should keep in mind is to not give up: “Whatever the challenge is in your business, the last thing you want to do is lock yourself in a room and try to figure it out yourself. Lean on your beta users, customers, industry experts to find the answers you need. Launch small but powerful experiments to get your hypothesis validated and iterate from there.”
The Six-Figure Acquisition
HireFast was recently acquired by a consulting recruitment business in New York, U.S.
Karim shared how they were able to find the perfect match to make an exit deal:“We wanted someone with the right fit. So, we found a company in NY and they were already running a consulting recruiting business and they wanted to go into the software side. HireFast was basically their trampoline to the software side of recruiting.”
The New York-based business plans on launching the software in 2022.
As for the business and engineer duo, they are now both pursuing careers at two different startups. Karim is working in the dental startup space in New York, while Alina is pursuing project management as a Product Analyst in the retirement world.
Although living the life of a student entrepreneur can be hard work, the University of Ottawa and Telfer School of Management works hard to support students who are chasing their dreams.
Entrepreneurs and their start-ups, and the subsequent growth of their firms, can have a vital impact on the health of an economy. What’s more, young adults in Canada have demonstrated a growing interest in entrepreneurship as a career choice. Although entrepreneurship has historically been associated with business schools and traditional start-ups, all students need to learn to create value in uncertain environments with limited resources. Consequently, regardless of their faculty or career path, every student needs to learn and practice the skills typical of entrepreneurship. Whether these students become entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, employees, or innovators, the question for educators is: How are we working toward this goal?
To answer this question, Professor Stephen Daze and his team conducted a review of entrepreneurship activities at the 27 largest universities in Canada. This annual report describes the numbers and types of entrepreneurship courses available, the opportunities for students to learn this valuable skillset outside the classroom, and the current practices that support student start-ups.
Professor Daze shared the highlights of his 2021 annual report in an article published in The Conversation Canada. Read the full article to learn more about entrepreneurship education in Canada.
Stephen Daze is a long-standing, award-winning member of the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Canada. He keeps his skills fresh as by serving as a visiting professor who teaches entrepreneurship in the undergraduate and MBA programs at the University of Ottawa and by working with entrepreneurs during the launch of their new ventures. He also currently serves as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Telfer School of Management and in 2016, he was named the University of Ottawa Chapter Honoree of Beta Gamma Sigma, an international business honour society. Learn more about Stephen Daze’s work.
In the coming months, The Telfer Knowledge Hub will be featuring select parts from Enabling Next Generation Legacies: 35 Questions That Next Generation Members in Enterprising Families Ask.
The resultof years of international research and practical experience, Enabling Next Generation Legacies delves into the unique challenges that confront family businesses.
Telfer professors Peter Jaskiewicz and Sabine Rau have brought together the world’s leading academics, practitioners, and enterprising families to answer the most pressing questions faced by Next Generation members in a short and concise, yet meaningful way.
The book consists of best practices, real-life examples, and additional critical questions for reflection from nearly 100 contributors from 27 different countries. Expert commentaries come from members of the world’s leading family businesses including Auchan (France), Saputo (Canada), and Sabra (Israel), as well as from various academic experts from business schools around the globe like Kellogg, IMD, and INSEAD.
Below, read the response to a pressing question asked by family enterprises, followed by commentary from a Next Generation member of an enterprising family.
Who Is Considered Part of the Family?
Response by Gibb Dyer, US
The question “who is considered part of the family” is important for both academics and consultants who study and work with family businesses as well as family business owners and managers themselves. For academics and consultants, identifying who is considered family is key to determining a family’s impact on a business (and the business on the family) while those families who own and manage a business often need to decide if those who are considered family will have an opportunity to be involved in the ownership or management of the business.
Definition of “Family”
To identify who makes up a family we need to understand what people commonly consider a family to be. The definition of family is problematic today given the various types of families that exist. For our purposes, a family will be defined as “individuals who identify themselves as a family unit, are recognized by others as part of a family, and share a common biological, genealogical, and/or social history.”[i]
Families come in all shapes and sizes. Common family types include the nuclear family (father, mother, and often children), extended family (one or more children living with a parent and a related nonparent adult, often a grandparent), blended family (one or more children living with a parent and a stepparent), cohabiting family (one or more children living with a parent and an unrelated adult), a single adult/parent family, and a polygamous family (typically one or more children living with a father who has multiple wives).
Family as a Social Construction and Legal Entity
These different family configurations raise interesting questions concerning who is considered family. For example, should a child consider an unrelated adult cohabiting with her mother a family member? Or should a child consider the children of a stepparent members of his family? While there are legal determinations of what constitutes a family, very often family is a social or cultural construction created by family members. For example, while a stepparent might legally adopt a child, that child may not recognize or relate to the stepparent as her father or mother. In other situations, there are parents who “disown” their biological children—the parents may be biologically related to a child, but they do not recognize that child as a member of their family, often due to what the parents consider bad behavior on the part of the child. However, when it comes to inheritance, unless a family member is explicitly denied an inheritance in a family member’s will, they might still have a claim on that family member’s assets—particularly if that person is a blood relative or a spouse —and those assets might include the family firm.
Family Roles in the Family Firm
We see families who own and manage family businesses having family members take on a variety of roles in the business. Ownership and management roles in the business typically consist of family members who are central to the business and have the most power. Other family members may have management roles but are not involved in ownership. Often Next Gens fill this role but hope to eventually be owners when succession occurs. Conflicts may occur when certain family members own the business but are not managers in the business. Family members who are in the business typically benefit from their salary and other perquisites that managers receive and are generally interested in putting profits back into the business to help it grow. However, family members who are owners and not managers typically want the profits from the business to end up in their pockets so they can benefit from the business’ success. This creates natural conflicts between family members who are owners and family members who are managers in the business (and may be owners as well). During succession, family members who haven’t been either owners or managers may want to lay claim to the firm’s assets increasing the likelihood that family conflicts will occur. Even if a family member hasn’t been involved in owning or managing the business, she may lay claim to the firm’s assets based on inheritance or some other criteria. For that reason, it is important for a family to determine not only who is currently considered family but who in the family may have a legal claim to the family’s business assets.
Family Membership and Succession Planning
Family conflicts and lawsuits are often the result of ambiguity regarding “who is the family.” With that in mind, it is important for families who own businesses to identify all individuals in the family who currently or may in the future be involved in family business ownership and management, take those family members into account when making decisions regarding the firm, and make provisions for those family members who will likely not be owners or managers. The rule of thumb is for parents (or other senior family members) to leave other assets in their wills (money, property, etc.), not family business ownership, to such heirs to avoid conflicts.
These issues are also important to consultants who want to help family firms.[ii] Research shows that before succession takes place the family should put together a clear succession plan, specifying which family members will be owners and managers in the business. It is important to share that plan with the family before succession takes place. To do this, the family needs to identify who is legally considered a member of the family and thus may have legal claims to the firm’s assets as well as those who may not be considered legal claimants but are viewed to be family members with many of the privileges of legal family members. To plan for such a change, research by Ivan Lansberg and others encourages family members to have common goals or a “shared dream” along with creating ownership structures and processes to resolve these potential conflicts.[iii]
W. Gibb Dyer (PhD MIT) is the O. Leslie and Dorothy Stone Professor in the Marriott School of Business at Brigham Young University. He has been a visiting faculty member at IESE in Barcelona, Spain, and a visiting scholar at the University of Bath. He has published nine books and over fifty articles and his research has been featured in Fortune, The Wall Street Journal and Fast Company. His recent book, The Family Edge, focuses on how “family capital” supports business growth. He has been ranked as one of the top ten scholars in the world in the field of family business.
Commentary by Marcelo De Rada Ocampo, Bolivia
My family’s business is an international insurance brokerage in Bolivia. After a decade of experience working for both U.S. and Bolivian insurance companies, my father started the business in 1995 and grew it to become the largest brokerage in Bolivia in terms of revenue, clients, and number of sales agents with presence in all cities in Bolivia. In 2009, he and two partners from Ecuador and Venezuela developed a strategic alliance that made them the third-largest MGA (managing general agent) in LATAM, partnering with ten different international insurers, managing hundreds of distributors, and operating twelve offices across seven different countries.
I am the oldest of three from my father’s second marriage. My half-sister is thirty-seven and lives in Florida, while my younger brother (twenty-five years old) is in San Diego, and my younger sister (twenty-two years old) lives in Miami. After studying in the U.S. and working at start-ups in San Francisco for two-and-a-half years, I returned to Bolivia to help my father in the family business. I worked as a sales operations manager, splitting my time between empowering sales agents with training and new digital tools, and the insurance partners negotiating new policy coverages, premium increases, and sales incentives. Now, while I am doing my MBA at INSEAD, I continue to support my father as an advisor, holding weekly to biweekly calls with him to discuss the strategic and operational challenges of the business.
The article is a good starting point in understanding why it is important to define who is considered part of the family in a family business. I agree with Prof. Gibb Dyer that having a clear definition is essential in helping the first generation build a fair process with regards to the ownership and ownership of the business. This can be critical when future generations start getting involved in the business and don’t have the same understanding of who is considered part of the family and its impact on the business. Even just as a second generation, I frequently found myself between my two parents in discussions about the fairness of financially supporting struggling family members in each of their extended families. There were efforts of providing employment to extended family members, which ended up creating more harm than good, probably caused by the lack of clarity regarding the roles of each family member in the family firm. From my experience without clarity about the rights and responsibilities of owners and managers, succession planning has been difficult to push forward. An owner must understand and allow the manager to operate the business successfully, while the manager must also provide the owner with enough transparency on the strategic alignment and execution of the business in order to put to best use the business assets.
The ebook for Enabling Next Generation Legacies: 35 Questions That Next Generation Members in Enterprising Families Ask is now available. Learn more at www.35questions.com. Print copies available February 8th, 2022.
[i] Gibb Dyer, The Family Edge: How your biggest competitive advantage in business isn’t what you’ve been taught—It’s your family (Sanger: Familius, 2019), 15.
[ii] Jane Hilburt-Davis and William Gibb Dyer, Consulting to family businesses: Contracting, assessment, and implementation (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer, 2003).
[iii]Ivan Lansberg, Succeeding generations: Realizing the dream of families in business (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999).
The acknowledgement of the need for reconciliation through Truth and Reconciliation Day is a step in the right direction, but there is still more progress to be made as hundreds of Indigenous communities currently hold boil water advisories.
Advisories like these mean that in order to consume and use the water through their existing water systems, Indigenous communities must first boil the water to consider it safe. In some communities, the water is not usable at all.
University of Ottawa student and Project Manager of the Nibi Project at Enactus uOttawa, Alexandra Whiteduck, grew up with unsafe drinking water, despite only living an hour and a half from the Nation’s Capital.
“I grew up in a community 1.5 hours north of Ottawa, and I grew up without clean drinking water,” shared Alexandra.
As someone who has experienced the issue first hand, Alexandra now works on the student-led initiative, Nibi, to bring safe drinking water solutions to other Indigeneous communities through testing and purification solutions.
The map on the left shows the number of Indigenous communities in Canada with boil water advisories (note that the map does not include the do-not-use advisories) - via watertoday.ca.
The Importance of Clean Drinking Water
Without clean drinking water, the basic necessities of life are not met. Alexandra encourages you to ask yourself the question:
“What tasks do you plan on doing today? Are you going to wake up and have coffee? Drink a glass of water? Take a shower? Brush your teeth? Wash the dishes? All these tasks are not accessible to Indigenous communities.
As you go throughout your day, consider these questions and ask yourself: could I do this if I didn’t have access to clean water? There will be many tasks where the answer would be no, and for Indigenous communities, it continues to be the truth for them everyday.
If we work hard towards a future where Indigenous communities all have access to clean water, their everyday lives and everyday productivity would change drastically.
The Nibi Solution
How they’re helping
Alexandra became a part of the Nibi team as the second Project Manager. The two Project Managers before her who started the initiative were other uOttawa students Michelle Wronski and Elisabeth Mercier.
“Michelle and Elisabeth founded this project because they saw a large gap in research and support for the water crisis in Indigenous communities. They were extremely passionate about the issue and wanted to find a solution to fix it.”
The two founders saw Alexandra speak on the issue, and instantly saw her as a good fit to join the team. As someone who has lived without clean drinking water, Alexandra is able to bring first-hand insights on where support was lacking and how it could change to better Indigenous communities.
The student-run initiative now focuses on three different pillars of support: Testing, purification solutions and workshops.
For testing, Nibi connects communities with certified partners that help teach them how to monitor water on site. This gives Indigenous people ownership of their water treatment and the ability to monitor the systems themselves.
Nibi also helps Indigenous communities find purification solutions that work with their socio-economic needs. Unlike working with government bodies, the communities are not forced into accepting any help or taking action after the results are given.
“We conduct need-based assessments to identify purification solutions that meet their needs. It’s all their choice; if they want to work with us we will, but if they don’t, no problem.” The Enactus team then finds the contaminants in the water and asks the communities what they hope to see from the purification process.
Lastly, Nibi hosts workshops to empower youth to keep control of their water quality and infrastructure. The Nibi team also converses with Indigenous youth to see what they hope their communities look like in the future.
On this day of Truth and Reconciliation, it's important to remember that there is still a lot to be done. We hope everyone takes this day to continue to educate themselves on the lives of Indigenous people and how they are impacted by current legislations.
We are delighted to announce the release of the report, Entrepreneurship Policies through a Gender Lens by the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD). This timely report contains a collection of 27 policy insight notes on long-running policy issues in women’s entrepreneurship support. OECD data and editorial insights reinforce the policy note findings. This report will be of interest to women entrepreneurs, policymakers, women’s enterprise advocates, and academics at a time when evidence-based sights are needed to drive post-pandemic recovery measures.
Background
This report is a collaboration between the OECD and the Global Women’s Entrepreneurship Policy Research Project (Global WEP), which is a network of established researchers from over 34 countries. The project was led by Jonathan Potter (Head of the Entrepreneurship Policy and Analysis Unit) of the OECD and Dr. Colette Henry, Chair of Global WEP - (Dundalk Institute of Technology, Ireland; Chair, Global WEP), Dr. Susan Coleman (University of Hartford, United States) and Dr. Barbara Orser (University of Ottawa, Canada). Excerpts from the Executive Summary follow.
What will you learn from this report?
Women’s enterprise issues have become even more relevant as the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to set women’s entrepreneurship back 20 years. The notes contained in this report cover a range of policy challenges – including in relation to formal and informal institutions, access to finance, access to skills and policy design – and policy instruments that can be used to address them. The notes underline core principles and good practices to follow in designing and implementing policies.
This report also offers an overview of the state of women’s entrepreneurship in OECD countries and beyond, using gender-disaggregated indicators on business creation, self-employment and barriers to business start-up, sustainability and growth. These indicators illustrate gender gaps in entrepreneurship, not only in activity rates but also in the proportion of entrepreneurs who create jobs for others. Persistent gender gaps call on public policy to continue to address gender inequalities in entrepreneurship.
Overall, this report provides an important source of new insights to assist policy makers and advocates seeking to strengthen holistic interventions in support of women’s entrepreneurship, and to encourage and facilitate peer learning across countries.
Report highlights
The policy insight notes in this report argue that mainstream entrepreneurship policies and programmes are not gender neutral. Explicit approaches are needed to address barriers to entrepreneurship that are experienced differentially by men and women, and to ensure that women have equal access to policy support aimed at entrepreneurs.
To an extent, this reality is recognised by the wide range of dedicated policy interventions for women’s entrepreneurship that have been put in place internationally across many contexts. The interventions address barriers in the areas of entrepreneurship culture, entrepreneurship skills, access to finance, entrepreneurship networks and ecosystems, and regulatory institutions, as well as approaches to designing and delivering policies to achieve gender equality. These approaches illustrate the dynamic nature of women’s entrepreneurship policy, as well as the gains that are being made as policy makers recognise the needs and contributions of women entrepreneurs.
However, women’s enterprise policy initiatives are often fragile – time-limited, small-scale, sparse, symptom-oriented – and not sufficiently underpinned by a genuine vision and framework for women’s entrepreneurship. To address these limitations, there is a need to increase awareness and knowledge about policies that engage and support women entrepreneurs within entrepreneurial ecosystems. Adherence to gender-blind entrepreneurship policies will be ineffective in achieving the benefits to be had from truly stimulating equal opportunities in entrepreneurship.
There are three main priorities for further policy development:
Overarching policy frameworks for women’s entrepreneurship need to be introduced
In some countries, policy frameworks for women’s entrepreneurship are well-developed and women’s entrepreneurship programmes work effectively towards the global objectives and priorities set out in these frameworks. However, in other countries, women’s entrepreneurship policies are incomplete or ineffective, often because the programmes are not consistent with global policy objectives. Governments should do more to strengthen policy frameworks for women’s entrepreneurship. They also need to dedicate greater resources to ensure that programmes are informed by frameworks and are sustainable in the long-term.
Women’s entrepreneurship policy interventions must reflect context
Governments need to ensure that policy interventions are appropriate for the institutional, cultural and social contexts. The policy insight notes describe vastly different contexts, ranging from developed economies where gender inequalities persist but are relatively subtle to developing economies with strong patriarchal systems. Women’s entrepreneurship policy can be effective in any context, but the objectives, instruments and delivery mechanisms must be selected accordingly.
More evaluation evidence is needed as a foundation for scaling policy initiatives
A wide variety of policy instruments and delivery approaches have been put in place in many countries. A key challenge is to assess the effectiveness of these approaches in different situations and different combinations and to scale and transfer the most effective approaches. More evidence is needed on the effectiveness of women’s entrepreneurship supports in different contexts. This includes, for example, the impacts of measures for training and mentoring, financing, and the role of measures that influence underlying institutional conditions. Information is also needed on the extent to which measures need to be applied as packages. The lack of evaluation evidence represents a lost opportunity to learn from high impact policy interventions and may lend to the vulnerability of women’s enterprise programme funding.
The CEOx1Day program from Odgers Berndtson offers student-leaders the opportunity of a lifetime: a chance to spend a day with a top Canadian CEO.
For many management students, the ultimate career achievement is to earn the title of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of an organization. While being a CEO is a much sought-after position, the job is complex and constantly changing. This one-day event offers third and fourth-year students a unique opportunity to explore a CEO’s role at their respective company.
Last year, there were two Telfer students who advanced far into the program:
Audrey-Anne Délage, semi-finalist
Nayaelah Siddiqui, finalist
International Management and Entrepreneurship student and CEOx1Day finalist, Nayaelah earned one of 18 competitive finalist spots, getting to spend an inspiring day of learning and mentorship with Teresa Marques, CEO of the Rideau Hall Foundation. Nayaelah shared that she “had the opportunity to learn lots of different things” from meeting Former Governor General David Johnston, spending time at the Senate of Canada, and spending one-on-one time with Marques.
Nayaelah faced an intense and eye-opening selection process. To get her day with Teresa Marques, she went through four selection phases: Application, Online Leadership Assessment, Phone Interview, and In-person Evaluation. Nayaelah recalls that she “didn't know if [she] would be the finalist, but just getting through so many rounds gave [her] the confidence boost to never give up and be [herself]. There is a lot to learn even if you don't make it all the way!”
The Entrepreneurship Foundry course (ADM3396) is a cross-campus initiative that leverages University and community resources to help you grow your business venture in a for-credit 13-week long course. This course lets you earn credits while working on your existing business or social enterprise (not just an idea), acting as an accelerator for your entrepreneurial venture.
You will have access to external mentors at themed sessions as well as frequent access to “lab” time to allow you to focus on your business. Course deliverables are designed to be relevant to your venture and each week you will have dedicated work time to help meet your milestones.
This course is open to all University of Ottawa students.
Interviews and Application
An interview and acceptance process will ensure only those most committed to real entrepreneurship will be accepted. Student teams are eligible, and not all members need to be registered for the course to participate. Space is limited to 25 students.
Venture Assessment
Your venture will be evaluated by using a pre-survey and interview to determine where you are at with your venture and set goals.
At the end of the course, you will be interviewed to measure the progress.
Frequent pitches will allow you to develop your pitch skills, as well as gain valuable feedback from professors, mentors and peers.
Below you can watch Andres Tovar talking about his experience taking the Entrepreneurship Foundry course and building his business Noetic Marketer.
The course will run Fall 2020, Thursdays from 2:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.
To learn more and to apply for the course, please contact Stephen Daze.
Have you been considering pursuing a Telfer MBA or MHA degree? The Telfer School of Management is holding an information session for each Masters program this month. If you would like to learn more about the programs, attend an upcoming session to interact with professors and ask one-on-one questions about the program.
What is the value of a Master’s Degree?
Both the MBA and MHA programs provide value through a personalized, hands-on, and connected learning experience. Each of the classes are small and engaging, which provides the opportunity to work closely with your peers, and learn from your professors in a multicultural environment. Our masters programs can enable you to build competencies, grow your career, and establish valuable, long-lasting connections, all while being located in the heart of the Canadian G7 capital.
Why take your MBA at the Telfer School of Management?
There are over 250 student associations at the University of Ottawa, which encourage students to work with their peers while discovering their strengths and passions. One of the newest teams, Formula uOttawa, continues to evolve and promote experiential learning opportunities in the STEM fields through a collaboration of multiple faculties, including the Faculty of Engineering and the Telfer School of Management.
Formula uOttawa is the University of Ottawa’s student race car team. Each year, the team is required to design and build a brand new race car, which is judged at various international competitions and scored based on the overall design, cost, and performance of the car. The team’s third season has officially come to an end, after their most successful competition to date at Formula North 2018. The team placed 23rd out of 49 registered teams. By gaining this hands-on experience, the members of the Formula uOttawa team are able to highlight to employers that they can apply the knowledge and skills that they have learned in the classroom. As a result of the hard work of the students on this team, numerous members have secured internships at multinational companies including Tesla, Chrysler, and Continental Tire.
Not only were the racing events at Formula North a success, the talented group of students from the Telfer School of Management were able to capture 2nd place in the business presentation out of 27 teams. These outstanding students made this year’s car possible by securing 26 sponsors who provided over $30 000 in donations. The students from the Telfer School of Management are members of the Formula uOttawa Marketing Team, Accounting Team, and Administration Team.
Formula uOttawa could not have attended the international competition without the hard work and collaboration of students in both faculties.
For more information about Formula uOttawa and to learn how you can get involved, visit their website at www.formulauottawa.com
Telfer alumnus Cassy Aite (BCom 2015), and his co-founded company Desk Nibbles have landed pre-seed financing to fund U.S. expansion. Desk Nibbles uses Artificial Intelligence to make it easier for Office Managers to manage their office kitchens. With over 65 customers and a growing number of employees, Desk Nibbles is quickly expanding.
The empirical report and action strategies will be of interest to policymakers, small business and innovation organizations, advocates, industry associations, and corporations that support supplier diversity.
A new Telfer study, conducted in collaboration with Public Services and Procurement Canada, identifies action strategies to increase federal SME supplier diversity and inclusive innovation. Showcased at the Chatham House International Policy Forum in the UK, the report provides important benchmarks about the progress of women entrepreneurs in Canada, and sets a standard of reporting in examining gender of firm ownership, breadth and types of innovation and federal SME contracting.
The empirical report and action strategies will be of interest to policymakers, small business and innovation organizations, advocates, industry associations, and corporations that support supplier diversity. The research, for example, helped to inform a key Chatham House conference resolution, one that the W20 adopt entrepreneurship, procurement, and trade as one of its three policy priorities.
Telfer report recommendations include:
Adopting sector-specific strategies to help achieve the Government of Canada's commitment to increase the participation of women business owners from 10 percent to 15 percent in federal contracting. Sector-specific strategies follow from the Telfer finding that gender differences in the likelihood of SMEs being federal contractors varied significantly by industry sector.
Improving SME procurement data and analytics, including large samples and detailed analyses to move beyond anecdotal evidence and to increase SME contracting opportunities.
Developing gender-sensitive procurement training in collaboration with industry organizations, such as Canadian Aboriginal and Minority Supplier Council (CAMSC), WBE Canada, WEConnect International Canada, Women’s Enterprise Organizations of Canada (WEOC), among others.
"Enactus uOttawa has been named both the 2018 TD Entrepreneurship Challenge National Champion as well as the Scotiabank EcoLiving Green Challenge National Champion for their business, The Growcer.
The Growcer’s core product is a state-of-the-art farming system that utilizes hydroponic technology to enable entrepreneurs to create their own businesses growing produce locally in northern food-insecure communities. Enactus uOttawa’s Growcer system has yielded 10,000 servings of vegetables in just 5 months.
Enactus uOttawa was also named a finalist in the Scotiabank Youth Empowerment Challenge, and the Hellman’s Food Security Challenge. These competitions were created to empower post-secondary students to develop and deliver projects that teach relevant entrepreneurship skills to aspiring and existing entrepreneurs.
Drew Stirling, VP External, mentions that “Enactus has been an incredible platform to develop personally and professionally, meet other driven students, and travel the world - all while learning to use business to change the world for the better”.
The Growcer was also named finalist in the Scotiabank Youth Empowerment Challenge, and the Hellman’s Food Security Challenge.
Not to be outdone, Alida Burke was named Project leader of the Year, while Holly Todd was also named the HSBC Woman Leader of Tomorrow runner up. uOttawa had a strong showing at nationals finishing 2nd overall amongst 70 other schools.
"It's always great to challenge ourselves at competition and see the growth of the team year after year - I could not be more proud to lead this team", says Holly Todd, President of Enactus uOttawa.
Congratulations to Enactus uOttawa on a successful National Championship!
The Telfer Centre for Executive Leadership (CEL) at the University of Ottawa and Ryerson University’s Diversity Institute have collaborated to launch the Ontario Inclusive Innovation (I2) Action Strategy.
The Brookfield Institute of Entrepreneurship + Innovation has awarded Telfer CEL, in collaboration with Ryerson’s Diversity Institute, a $225,000 contract to report on the state of women’s enterprise support in Ontario, facilitate gender-sensitivity entrepreneurship workshops, develop a certification program, and host a conference to showcase evidence-based practices for empowering women entrepreneurs. Industry partners include: Women in Communication and Technology, WEConnect International Canada, Canadian Aboriginal and Minority Supplier Council, WBE Canada, YWCA and Youth Employment Services.
Telfer and Diversity Institute research has shown the need for women-friendly culture and gender-sensitive entrepreneurship services. Community-based enterprise supports focus heavily on technology, in spite of the importance of other sectors in which entrepreneurial women operate in larger numbers. Women entrepreneurs are significantly less likely to secure capital and government contracts, resulting in lost business opportunities.
“It is an economic imperative to translate evidence-based insights into programs and tools that empower women entrepreneurs. Failure to support growth-oriented and diverse entrepreneurs wastes intellectual resources and contributes to economic and social inequality,” says Telfer faculty member and Project Lead Dr. Barbara Orser. “This 12 month action strategy is expected to transform Ontario into one of the most inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystems in the world.”
Adds Diversity Institute Director Dr. Wendy Cukier, coauthor of Innovation Nation, “Women play a critical role in driving economic growth. We need to remove barriers to diverse women and ensuring that the processes and supports do not reflect conscious or unconscious bias. Our recent research has shown immigrant, racialized, and indigenous female entrepreneurs face additional challenges. Diversity drives innovation and we can leverage what we know about innovation to level the playing field.”
As part of the Leadership, Strategy and Sustainability course, nearly 150 Telfer School of Management students in courses ADM 4717, ADM 4317 and MBA 5211participated in an interactive online simulation called Fishbanks.
It is a multiplayer web-based simulation during which each team of students plays the role of a company that owns and manages a fishing fleet. The teams compete to maximize their net worth during the simulation. They begin by defining their strategy for the next 10 years. They must plan their annual operations, mostly their fishing activities, by allocating their resources each year according to their initial strategy. They decide whether to buy, sell or build their ships, where to fish, and they negotiate with one another. Students focus on strategic thinking and decision making. The program automatically calculates all the annual financial results and indicators for each team. It simulates a real business system where marine natural resources are the main source of income for the companies. However, the goal of the simulation is not limited to merely raising students' awareness of the importance of strategic planning and the short- and long-term consequences of decisions. It is especially meant to expose them to the issues surrounding the dynamics of ecosystems and irrational exploitation of resources.
"We are preparing the decision-makers of tomorrow who will be managing businesses directly or indirectly involved in exploiting living ecosystems," said Dorra Jlouli, professor of course ADM 4717. "The interdependence of the system's different parameters is the main challenge of system dynamics, such as those in the management of natural resources. This simulation is an excellent tool that simplifies for students this complex aspect of the tragedy of the commons," she added.
The debriefing following the simulation is as important, if not even more important than the simulation itself, as students realize and understand the consequences of their decisions. "The players all tend to exceed the maximum size of the fleet for rational and sustainable exploitation of resources, despite having learned about renewal dynamics of fish stocks before the simulation. This is typical behaviour in different contexts in which this simulation is used, regardless of the level of knowledge of the subject matter," said Dorra Jlouli.
"When designing the course, we deliberately sought a teaching method that allows students to experience a certain cognitive dissonance between the type of leader they think they are and the real impact of their business decisions on the planet's future," said Daina Mazutis, professor of courses ADM 4317 and MBA 5211. "The Fishbanks simulation provides a learning experience that allows for profound personal reflection on the connections among leadership, strategy and sustainability," she added.
Fishbanks is a simulation created by the MIT Sloan School of Management. Renowned international universities use it mainly for management and sustainable development programs. It is also used by international institutions, chiefly GIZ, for strategic planning workshops pertaining to sustainable development and to explain the Tragedy of the Commons phenomenon.
During the Winter Study Week (February 20th - 23rd, 2018), the Telfer School offered a four-day intensive course entitled Global Marketing & Innovation Strategy: Learning about and from China, taught by Amy Karam, a Telfer alumnus, who is the author of the book, The China Factor. The course addressed the topic of whether: “There is a global economic power shift and whether Western-based businesses are being challenged in different ways by the rapid growth of China and other emerging entrants and what can they do about it?”
The course offering served as a guide for Western companies to understand how their Chinese competitors do business and how they can change their strategy to be more successful in international markets. A third of the class were BCom students from China who shared their expertise regarding the Chinese emerging market with other Canadian BCom students.
With the emergence of China, the rules of the global business and trade game have changed. Innovation and product superiority are no longer enough to win business in international markets – especially in emerging markets. Western companies need to re-evaluate their sales and marketing strategies and reposition themselves in the context of a new genre of competition and different customer demands. This course explored how China and other emerging entrants do business using the 5Ps of Global Marketing Framework while studying how a Western-based company can learn from them and adapt their strategy, all while incorporating competitive dynamics into their plan. Maintaining an innovation advantage is also a key success factor in the new global economy and students learned ways to become innovative at innovation by learning about new models.
Amy Karam, who is a speaker, consultant, author and corporate instructor of Stanford University professional development courses, taught this intensive seminar. She has advised and trained sales teams, executives and managers across North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa and at companies such as Cisco, Apple, Visa, Nationwide, Capital One, SAP, Bell Canada and AT&T. Notably, she led a CEO-sponsored global competitive sales support program at Cisco Systems, the catalyst for her current practice. She has also led business development initiatives with the World Bank, ITU-D, government Ministers of emerging countries and high-technology companies, to foster public and private sector collaboration.
It was another great success for our Entrepreneurship Bridges Lecture Series, which brought together the co-founders and co-CEOs of Surmesur, François and Vincent Thériault, and the Elevator Pitch Competition presented by the National Bank.
The annual Elevator Pitch Competition showcases some of the University of Ottawa’s top talent. As a part of Global Entrepreneurship week, this competition allows young entrepreneurs to present their business ideas that are still in the early stages of development to a panel of judges and Rise to the Top. The winners are awarded with a generous cash prize that they can put towards furthering their business idea. “The competition is a great preview into what students are working on and what is to come. Entrepreneurs create jobs and grow economies and it’s encouraging to see that our students are building the next generation of businesses, both traditional for-profits and social enterprises”, mentions Stephen Daze.
The competition has two categories: validation and traction. Each category can make a big contribution to the development of a start-up, with prizes of $5,000 and $10,000 respectively.
Results:
Validation Competition: Swich
Swich is a carbon air filter company utilized for odor elimination across many industries. It’s the world’s first reusable and biodegradable can-styled carbon filter and is the most economic, efficient and environmentally sustainable option on the market.
“We are in the beginning of a Green rush, and when everyone in mining for gold you want to be the one selling them shovels and pickaxes. Or in our case Carbon filters”, said Adam Czach, Co-founder of Swich.
Traction Competition: Desk Nibbles
Desk Nibbles is a local uOttawa startup serving snacks across the country. They Strive to create the best customer experience and ensure providing their clients with the best snacks in Canada.
“Anyone can agree the work they do deserves to be treated with a snack once in a while. Desk Nibbles is a service that prides itself on delivering that treat straight to the employees of any office. Desk Nibbles delivers the best snacks to your office, so it can glow with varieties of taste tested, proven, premium healthy snacks. These snacks will energize the minds and bodies of the workplace. It’s also a simple, painless process, no need to lift a finger. Simply signup online or call a representative to place an order. Then receive bundles of the best healthy snacks for to any office hassle free.”
Visit their website at https://desknibbles.com/
This page is for the 2018 Entrepreneurship Foundry Course. For information on the upcoming session, visit this year's page.
The Entrepreneurship Foundry is a cross-campus initiative that leverages University and community resources to help you grow your business venture in a for-credit 13-week long course.
The Entrepreneurship Foundry course will act as an accelerator for your entrepreneurial venture; you will have access to external mentors at themed sessions as well as frequent access to “lab” time to allow you to focus on your business.
Your venture will be evaluated by using a pre-survey and interview to determine where you are at with your venture and set goals.
At the end of the course you will be interviewed to measure the progress
Mandatory 3 slide check-ins on a bi-weekly basis; will allow you to develop your pitch skills, as well as gain valuable feedback from professors, mentors and peers.
An interview and acceptance process will ensure only those most committed to real entrepreneurship will be accepted.
The course will run this winter on Thursdays from 4-7 p.m. and space is limited to 25 students. Student teams are eligible and not all members need to be registered for the course to participate. The deadline to submit applications is December 12, 2017.
To learn more and to apply for the course, please contact Stephen Daze.
The University’s Co-operative Education Programs and the Entrepreneurship Hub have teamed up with RBC Royal Bank to launch an innovative CO-OP program designed to develop an entrepreneurial mindset. Read the complete article in the Gazette »
Given the recent surge in entrepreneurial activity on the University of Ottawa campus, it is appropriate to recognize and celebrate the culmination of each annual cycle of teaching, competitions, workshops and hard work that lead to exciting start-ups.
In the fall of 2015 and early 2016, we conducted the 2nd annual search for the Top 5 Start-ups on the uOttawa campus. This is a collaborative effort between the Telfer School of Management, the Faculty of Engineering, Startup Garage and the uOttawa e-hub.
“Each year the quality of start-ups on campus is improving” says Stephen Daze, the Dom Herrick Entrepreneur in Residence at the Telfer School. “Student interest, faculty programming and an increasing culture of entrepreneurship is contributing to this rise in quality and it’s encouraging to see our next generation of leaders creating their own opportunities”.
The Top 5 uOttawa start-ups, in no particular order, are:
Helix (Powered by MicroMetrics)
Cofounders: Andre Richards, CTO (Honours Bachelor of Science 2011, uOttawa) and Artem Abramov, CEO.
MicroMetrics is a software company with a focus on customer experience innovation. Working together with TripAdvisor, they’ve developed Helix – a robust guest experience management platform that empowers hotel staff to conduct real-time service recovery. Since its introduction, Helix has helped brands like Starwood and IHG deliver memorable guest experiences, improve occupancy rates and outperform their competitive sets at premier properties across North America.
GymTrack
Cofounders: Lee Silverstone, CEO and Pablo Srugo, COO.
Gymtrack is a platform that brings personal training to all exercisers through their gym and impacts the $80BN gym industry. Gymtrack provides gyms with virtual coaching that automatically tracks everything in an exerciser’s workout, from weight lifting to cardio and helps gyms reduce churn.
Go Give-Back
Cofounders: Lemuel Barango, (Bachelor of Science 2015, uOttawa) and Liora Raitblat (Telfer BCom 2015, uOttawa).
Go Give-Back (GGB) is providing a solution for charitable causes by offering a mobile donation platform that accepts donations, catering to the “in-the-moment” factor. GGB will include detailed demographics for the organization with “on the go” analytics used to retain and engage donors.
TruReach:
Founder: Jeff Perron, MBA (Clinical Psychology PhD Candidate, uOttawa), Clinical Lead: Dr. Joti Samra, PhD, C. Psych.
TruReach provides instant access to scientifically proven cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). It eliminates the stigma associated with mental illness and helps people get better, faster. TruReach cuts costs associated with the management of mental illness and their analytics give organizations data to prove it.
Spectrafy
Cofounders: Richard Beal, CEO and Viktar Tatsiankou (B.A.Sc., M.A.Sc. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, uOttawa).
Spectrafy has reinvented the way we measure sunlight and the atmosphere. Spectrafy’s solution, the SolarSIM, combines simple hardware and breakthrough software to slash the cost of measuring sunlight and the atmosphere by over an order of magnitude.
How were the Top 5 start-ups on campus selected?
A working committee of the 4 leaders on campus who run the various entrepreneurship activities select possible candidates from the start-ups they see in their programs. In addition, a public web-based call for nominations allowed start-ups to show their interest. The nominees were then evaluated by the committee and an initial long list of top start-ups was selected.
Feedback from various alumni and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley was obtained before a final list of five “Top Start-ups” is selected. From the Top 5, selected start-ups will be invited to visit Silicon Valley for a learning and business development experience. The exact number of start-ups who are invited to go to Silicon Valley will be a function of available funding.
Photo: Liora Raitblat, Go Give-Back cofounder, at Startup Weekend 2015 (Feb 27 - March 1)
Startup Weekend is a non-profit organization headquartered in Seattle, Washington that brings people together for weekend-long workshops to pitch ideas, form teams, and start companies.
An exclusive edition of Startup Weekend is coming to uOttawa and is geared for current uOttawa students and recent graduates. The objective is to connect students across all faculties to encourage and promote entrepreneurship regardless of discipline of study. We look forward to seeing the different types of innovative ideas that can come to life when students branch out and connect with those around them with different skill sets and areas of expertise.
A can’t miss event for students interested in entrepreneurship
“Startup Weekends are an international phenomenon being held in the most innovative cities around the world” said Stephen Daze, the Dom Herrick Entrepreneur in Residence at the Telfer School of Management. “The Telfer School and the University of Ottawa are bringing this event on campus to provide our students an opportunity to learn, network, start a business, meet potential co-founders and much more.”
Entrepreneurs, innovators, makers and those curious about starting a new venture that attend this event will benefit from 54 hours of fast-paced start-up experience working with a team of like-minded students, mentored by seasoned veterans from the local start up community.
“Nowhere else can you experience entrepreneurship/start-up in a more concentrated and curated format” said Stephen Daze. “This venue brings together business students, coders and designers, and provides training and mentoring in a cool atmosphere targeted at creating start-ups.”
The Telfer School’s commitment to Entrepreneurship
We are committed to helping students succeed. For many, success will be starting a new venture or contributing to one as co-founder or team member. We provide the tools and resources you’ll need to learn, network and build your innovation and entrepreneurship skills. In addition to hosting Startup Weekend uOttawa, here are some of the other initiatives that are available:
Entrepreneurship Bridges Speaker Series – Co-hosted with the Faculty of Engineering, this 5-part annual speaker series is targeted at students looking to or considering entrepreneurship. The speaker series features local young entrepreneurs who tell their start-up stories and act as a source of inspiration, education and mentoring. The series is also the home for other entrepreneurship-related announcements and competitions such as the final pitches in the Entrepreneurs' Club Elevator Pitch Contest. The series averages 150 students per session and includes the formal talk or panel, as well as networking and refreshments.
Entrepreneurship Foundry Course - The Entrepreneurship Foundry is a new Telfer-led initiative that brings together collaborators from across campus to build, manage and deliver a semester-long, for-credit course that sees participants apply for entry in order to start a venture over 13 weeks. Working in multi-disciplinary teams, students will learn from experts in lecture and workshop environments and complete evaluated work leading to the start of their new venture. It is anticipated that the course will see 25 students in the first session scheduled for Fall 2015.
Start-up Tools Workshops - The 4-part workshop series is designed to teach students the tools and resources available for start-ups. Each session focuses on a specific theme and students and external resources are relied upon for content within the curated environment. Themes include: Tools of Validation; Web Design; Marketing and Analytics; and Software and Productivity. Each session is attended by approximately 25 students.
Telfer Business Traction Competition - This new business competition is a new take on traditional business plan competitions. It's open to full-time undergraduate students at the Telfer School of Management and/or teams comprised of at least 50% Telfer students. It is not about ideas and proposed business plans, it’s about traction. Contestants will demonstrate the achievement of real milestones towards starting, or validating their business ideas as well as realistic goals moving forward. Applicants can be at any stage of their business idea but must be able to demonstrate real milestones completed and future goals. External judges will determine the winner based on actual work to date and planned milestones. $10,000 in prize money is available to be won.
The Telfer School is pleased to announce that Stephen Daze has been appointed as the inaugural Dom Herrick Entrepreneur in Residence. Stephen Daze joined the Telfer School of Management in 2012 as the Entrepreneur in Residence, a position that has been renamed recently thanks to a generous donation from alumni Rob Ashe and Sandra Herrick.
Stephen teaches Entrepreneurship and is responsible for entrepreneurship strategy and program planning, providing counsel to students and faculty on business planning and business start-up issues, and working with the community to bolster support for the School’s entrepreneurship activities. His new mandate takes effect until 2017.
Additionally, the University of Ottawa announces the arrival of Luc Lalande as the first Executive Director of the Entrepreneurship Hub. Luc graduated from the Bachelor of administration (1984) and the Bachelor of Public Administration (1986) from the University of Ottawa's Telfer School of Management. He possesses a wealth of experience in creating successful start-ups, and coaching students who wish to enter the business world. He was previously the Director of the Innovation Transfer Office for 15 years at Carleton University.
We're pleased to have once again participated in the Nicol Entrepreneurial Award. Our winners, CigBins, will now be entered into the National Competition to be held late March in Ottawa. Congratulations to our other finalists: AllergyFree and Knowline!
W. Brett Wilson, iconic Canadian entrepreneur, philanthropist and three-season panellist on CBC's Dragons' Den, was invited as a guest speaker for the Entrepreneurship Bridges Lecture Series.
He shared his experiences in the business world and discussed what he would do differently if he could start over. Attendees of the January 30 event received a free copy of his book. Thanks to Mr. Wilson’s generosity, they had the opportunity to meet him personally at the end to get their book signed or to ask more specific questions.
Here are the top three tips for success proposed by Mr. Wilson:
On January 24 and 25, students from the Telfer School of Management and the Faculty of Engineering competed in the 4th annual Strat24 Case Competition. Strat24 Case Competition is a multidisciplinary competition run by Enactus uOttawa. The competition requires 2 engineering and 2 business students to work together for 24 hours to come up with a solution for the case at hand. This year’s case sponsor was Hydro Ottawa. “At Hydro Ottawa innovation is critical to our success as a leading and trusted energy service provider,” said Roger Marsh, Chief Energy Management Officer at Hydro Ottawa. “We’re proud to support events like uOttawa’s STRAT24 Competition that helps develop the talent that we need to meet the many challenges of the future.”
The winning team received a $4000 scholarship, jointly donated by the Telfer School of Management and the Faculty of Engineering. Congratulations to this year’s winners!
Roger Marsh (Hydro Ottawa)
Soonbum Cha (Team 8)
Nicholas Guolla (Team 8)
Mithun Kommular (Team 8)
Anthony Tarasio (Team 8)
Michelle Lim (Director of Strat24, Enactus uOttawa)
Ajmal Sataar and Kathleen Kemp will be attending the largest international undergraduate business plan competition in Canada: the Queen’s Entrepreneurs’ Competition (QEC), presenting their startup: Cigbins.
Now entering its 26th year, the Queen's Entrepreneurs' Competition brings together the brightest young entrepreneurs from around the world to compete for $25,000 in cash prizes. The QEC has received business plan submissions from as far as Australia, China, Thailand, Malaysia, Scotland, South Africa, India, Singapore, Portugal, Sweden, the Philippines, the U.S. and across Canada. The Telfer team made it past the preliminary business plan grading and will have the opportunity to attend the final weekend in Kingston, and to present their plan to Canada's leading business professionals. The QEC final weekend will be taking place on January 16-18, 2014.
The QEC is well-known internationally, and the New York Times hails it as “one of the longest-running and best-known undergraduate business plan competitions in the world”.
Thanks to a new initiative, University of Ottawa students who wish to make their entrepreneurial dreams come true will be able to find support and partners. The University of Ottawa has announced that it will invest $1 million to create an on-campus Entrepreneurship Hub.
The hub will facilitate entrepreneurship promotion through various existing initiatives as well as serve as a catalyst for new actions across all faculties and schools.
“The uOttawa Entrepreneurship Hub will not only help to produce graduates who can integrate the latest knowledge into better products, but who also have the skills and experience to start their own businesses or innovate within existing companies,” said Allan Rock, University of Ottawa president and vice-chancellor.
The Entrepreneurship Hub will be led by the Telfer School of Management, the Faculty of Engineering and the Technology Transfer and Business Enterprise office. It will continue successful programs such as Startup Garage and will implement new initiatives such as an entrepreneurship mentoring program to bring young entrepreneurs together, a co-op program to enable students to earn money while working at their own companies and an entrepreneurship fund to provide space, financing and mentoring to startups.
“There are a lot of things which can't be taught in the classroom. Students need to have real hands-on experience in trying to build a business. They also need mentors and role models to help them. When things don't go according to plan, they must learn to adapt. The key to entrepreneurship is persistence,” says Joshua Chan, founder of Alpha App Studios and winner of the Faculty of Engineering 2011-2012 Prize in Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
Indeed, the number of student business projects is increasing, as is the number of success stories, for example, an app, Knowline, and a business, MicroMetrics, both created by University of Ottawa students.
“With this in mind, the University of Ottawa remains fully committed to ensuring that its students receive first class training as well as all the resources necessary to go from ideas to action and from the classroom to their business,” said Rock.
The University of Ottawa is holding its first Entrepreneurship Week [This link is no longer available], featuring a range of activities, including panels and workshops, November 18 to 22.
Telfer School professors shared their perspectives on innovation management with a South African delegation led by Dr. Phil Mjwara, Director-General of South Africa’s Science & Technology Department on September 13.
Following an introduction by Dean François Julien, Tom Brzustowski, RBC Financial Group Professor in the Commercialization of Innovation, provided an overview of innovation in Canada and the role of the universities.
Tyler Chamberlin highlighted the local dimension of commercialization and the ability of regions to adapt to changes in the international marketplace.
Margaret Dalziel examined how best to measure the impacts of government investments in innovation.
Joe Irvine, Director of the Technology Transfer and Business Enterprise (TTBE) office at the University of Ottawa, discussed the work of his team in advancing strategic partnerships that create value.
The South African delegation was in Ottawa as part of a study tour examining technology commercialization, innovation management and intellectual property management in Canada.
Photo: Viviana Fernandez, Research Facilitator, Phil Mjwara, Director-General of South Africa’s Science & Technology Department (DST), Professor Tom Brzustowski, Mmapitso Mokotedi of DST and Dean François Julien.
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