Managing Innvation
Managing innovation was taught by Lib Gibson. She's also an adjunct professor at the Rotman school of business in Toronto. She presented some interesting concepts in terms of how to create business environments to encourage the flow of ideas. Much of what we discussed can be found in Peter Drucker's book Innovation and Entrepreneurship. We also discussed how disruptive innovations work, how to protect your company from being blindsided by disruptive innovations, and some interesting topics from TED.com. Overall, I really enjoyed this course.
The Tricolour Venture Fund
This was the highlight of my MBA academic experience and was run by Elspeth Murray, Peter Gallant, and John Molloy. Queen's has a Venture Capital Fund closely associated with the Parteq Innvotions, the technology commercialization entity for the university. We were split up into three teams and provided with a list of 9 different new ventures who are looking to secure funding to help their businesses grow. The first phase of the course was to do an initial investigation of the companies and decide on which companies to do a deep investigation and due diligence work to evaluate the investment potential. The second phase involved the due diligence work on the companies we selected through extensive meetings with the new venture entrepreneurs and management, and detailed research of the technology, market, and competitors. The companies we evaluated included:
- Skymeter - a gps technology company
- Shoeboxed.com - a digital receipts company
- iPeak Networks - an internet technology company
- SciSense - a medical device company
My team evaluated Xuuk, a fledgling start-up company that developed eyetracking technology for measuring how many people look at a sign and the length of time that each person looked. Really neat technology. The small management team had done a lot of work with the small amount of funding that they received up to that point. We recommended investing but our recommendation went to the investment committee who decide on the actual investment. This was a fun course that involved a real project with real companies and making an investment decision with real dollars. It wasn't just an academic exercise. I really liked it and it inspired me to seek work within the start-up area with VCs and on the government policy side. Unfortunately, the state of the VC industry is bad right now and work prospects are not good.
Marketing of New Ventures
By the time I started this course, the end of the program was in site, the weather was starting to get nice again, and my motivation for course work was incredibly low. I was the only student from Queen's to take this class, the other four students in the course were exchange students. I kind of liked it because of the small size and the company tours that we had. We checked out Mitel's technology incubator in Ottawa called Wesley Clover. We also did a live project to develop a marketing strategy plan for the Westbrook Golf Club in developing a new sports complex on their land.
The final days of the program were spent saying goodbye to classmates who were going on exchange, the exchange students who were with us for a few months, and a big party where we all wore white t-shirts and signed each other.
Over the last month or so, a group of us welcomed the incoming class (2010) and passed on some of the culture of the program, lessons that we learnt, and survival tips. We sent them on a scavenger hunt around town and threw a party for them. It was interesting to see them starting the program and wondering how we looked at this point last year. They're going to have a great year.
Convocation happened on May 26th at Grant Hall. It was a nice ceremony that started off with bagpipes. It was nice to meet the parents of classmates and introduce mine to some of my closer friends. It was fun, but also a little bit sad. It officially marked the end of our MBA experience and an end to one of the best years I've had to date.
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