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Some personal trainers bark loud orders, spurring clients on by cruelly demanding set after set of chin-ups and ab crunches. Others rely on gentle words of encouragement to inspire the overweight exec gasping on the treadmill. But when Ryan Nickelchok worked as a trainer at the Alliance Fitness Corp. gym in Kitchener, Ont., he employed an altogether different technique. Armed with an undergraduate degree in mathematics and computer science, Nickelchok developed a software program that encouraged his charges by tracking their progress and demonstrating how their fitness levels were improving compared to others. The computer program, which pumped out graphs based on body composition measurements, and strength and endurance test data quickly made Nickelchok the most popular trainer at his gym--and prompted his employer to ask him to stop using the tool, because other trainers were growing envious of his success.
"It was ridiculous," says Nickelchok. "The company could have negotiated with me and bought the software. I would have developed it for them." Instead, because it couldn't figure out how to leverage Nickelchok's entrepreneurial zeal for its own benefit, he quit, and the majority of his clients followed him. Now Nickelchok, along with a team of other entrepreneurial-minded folks enrolled in the University of Waterloo's new master of business, entrepreneurship and technology program (MBET), is launching a company called Vita--which means "way of life" in Latin--based on his original concept.
The gut instinct of Nickelchok's former employer--to shut down a new idea rather than nurture it--is a disheartening reminder of a common Canadian problem. Business leaders in this country often lack the managerial, marketing and financing skills to bring innovations to commercial success. To address the void, two Ontario schools--the University of Waterloo and McMaster University in Hamilton--are now offering graduate-level programs focused on helping budding entrepreneurs learn how to turn innovative ideas into profitable products--without enduring all the bumps and shakes traditionally associated with startups.
At the University of Waterloo's Centre for Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology, which opened 18 months ago, 23 eager entrepreneurs, most of whom have a background in engineering, computer science or environmental studies, are immersed in the rigorous 12-month MBET program. (There were 140 applicants for the 2004-05 academic year; the program will be capped at about 30 this fall.) Students say they spend an average of 12 hours a day in their basement classroom. They attend lectures from nine to five and work late into the evening on assignments for courses in accounting, marketing and operations management. While that sounds suspiciously like an MBA (something CBET director Howard Armitage finds "a little too traditional"), the MBET twist is that all students' assignments revolve around determining if a specific technological innovation--their own or someone else's--can be turned into a successful company. The second and third terms include a commercialization practicum, where 50% of a student's time is committed to the nitty-gritty details of actually launching his or her own business: things like registering a corporation, carrying out patent searches, identifying customers and obtaining financing.
Since the University of Waterloo is located in Canada's tech triangle and fully one-quarter of all university spinoff companies in Canada were born at the institution, MBET students can mingle easily with the business community. Thursday-afternoon guest lectures by successful local entrepreneurs boost the program's networking opportunities, as does the access students are given to the MBET advisory board, a group largely comprised of individuals who have launched their own successful tech companies. When construction of the Accelerator Centre--a joint venture between local universities, the provincial and municipal governments and the tech industry to incubate budding businesses--is complete (the expected date is spring 2006), CBET will have a modern new home in Waterloo's Research and Technology Park, right next door to real, live companies, such as software firms OpenText Corp. and Sybase Inc.
Armitage emphasizes that his program is for those who already have the entrepreneurial bug. Tim Tang, who has a degree in electrical engineering and worked at Research In Motion before starting his MBET last fall, describes it this way: "There is no glory in having MBET on your business card. If you want a salary hike, this is not the program for you. This is for those who want no salary and 80-hour workweeks. In an MBA, you take two years to study 25 years of business. Here, you study the first five years of a business in one year."
Colleague Bob Mersereau, a five-year veteran of what for him was the "boring and dull" world of pension planning, quit his job the day he found out about the MBET program. "I noticed that my friends in MBA programs, their goals are to be consultants or managers," he says. "Everyone here wants to build something." Adds classmate Sylvie Beliveau, a former project management consultant: "I was looking at MBA programs and stumbled across the MBET. I found it fit my personality a lot more." Beliveau recently partnered with Nickelchok to launch Vita.
While any new program is bound to have a few bugs to work out, the tight-knit community of MBET scholars are clearly gaining expertise in how to take an idea and make it a reality. According to Nickelchok, the networking contacts alone are worth the MBET's $22,000 tuition. (It will rise to $24,000 next year.)
At McMaster, the three-month-old master of engineering entrepreneurship and innovation (MEEi), supported by substantial grants from Xerox Canada and philanthropist Walter Booth, chairman and CEO of The Timberland Group, has the same raison d'être as the MBET. However, the approach is somewhat different. All students currently enrolled in the MEEi are attempting to simultaneously complete a graduate-level engineering degree and/or hold down a full-time job, so class time, at three hours a week, is kept to a minimum. In addition, input from McMaster's DeGroote School of Business is limited--an unfortunate fact, considering the engineering department's genuine desire to imbue its students with business know-how. (MEEi director Rafik Loutfy, former vice-president of the well-respected Xerox Research Centre of Canada in Mississauga, Ont., indicates the interaction may change as the program ages; MEEi students are already allowed to audit biz-school classes if they want.)
Loutfy, who has secured commitments from DuPont, 3M Canada and GlaxoSmithKline Inc. to hire MEEi grads, is working at a furious pace with instructors--some of whom are skilled entrepreneurs who have never taught business principles before--to develop courses to round out the new degree. As MEEi candidate Brooke Gordon describes it, "Prof. Loutfy has a personal stake in this. Our success is his success. We are his project."
Already there are bright ideas coming out of McMaster. Kareem Shoukri is developing radio-frequency identification applications while doing his organic electronics PhD, and Craig Thornton is testing solar-powered wireless networks that cover all of McMaster and the vicinity.
The theory behind both the MBET and the MEEi is solid: take bright, enthusiastic entrepreneurs with good ideas but little experience. Add skilled business veterans with expertise to share--and mix.
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