The Windsor Challenge

I spent the last few days at the University of Windsor, presenting to MBA classes and at the Angel Roundtable hosted by the Odette School of Business. Dr. Allan Conway, who was my strategy professor during my MBA studies, is now Dean of the Business School. He was a huge influence for me and I jumped at the opportunity when the invite came earlier this year.

As far as I can see, Dr. Conway is doing an incredible job. There are about 2,100 students at Odette, which is large for a city the size of Windsor (about 300,000). The students I met were energetic and eager to learn, and there are some sharp people in the faculty. As far as I can tell, these people love their city and see networking events like this as a way to re-energize the city from the negative effects of their dependency on the automotive sector.

I was given the opportunity to present to students, faculty, entrepreneurs, and some of Windsor’s most influential and affluent business people. During my presentations, I encouraged them to create an ecosystem for entrepreneurship in the community – and emphasized the role that everyone had to play. As a result, here are my three challenges to the entrepreneurial community of Windsor:

1. The student and entrepreneurial community must step up their game. They have to generate more ideas, prototype more ventures, and write better pitches. I convinced them to start holding DemoCamps in the new year, and a few students have committed to doing so. They already have several great presenters, including Dr. Anne Snowdon and Peter Dobrich, co-owner of the Windsor Spitfires. Rakesh from the local business development commission has agreed to sponsor. Contact Alec or Adam if you’re interested in attending, sponsoring or presenting.



2. Windsor’s business elite needs to step up and support the community by lending their time and money to the effort – (emphasis on time). Most successful people have benefited from the advice of a great mentor, teacher or coach. Inspiration can come from anywhere, so I encouraged them to do anything they could – tell their stories to the community, volunteer to sit in on a pitch session and offer suggestions, or mentor a young CEO. We’ll see what happens, but I’m very encouraged to hear that several people have already offered their financial support for future events.



3. Government-run organizations need to look closely at the effectiveness of their programs. Often, these programs are run by bureaucrats who are more concerned with logo placement than with helping entrepreneurs succeed. I’ve thrown down the gauntlet here – so if you’re a government bureaucrat with responsibility for the economic development of the Windsor region – prove me wrong!

Congratulations to Dr. Francine Schlosser and her student teams at CBAR and ACE for putting on a great event. I spoke to a lot of happy people in the crowd, and they’re ready for more events like this. Also, thanks to my fellow entrepreneurs Chris Arsenault of iNovia Capital and Stu Sutton of GPSNet Technologies for taking the time out of their busy schedules to present at the roundtable.