TEC Edmonton has come a long, long way since its birth as a unique collaboration between the University of Alberta and the City of Edmonton (through theEdmonton Economic Development Corporation) in 2006.
Its mandate, however, remains etched in stone: Helping entrepreneurs and researchers create and grow innovative, technology-based companies in greater Edmonton, by providing business expertise, training and extensive networking opportunities.
Realizing that mandate is always a work in process, TEC Edmonton continues to review, tweak and evolve the multi-step process by which a brilliant new idea ends up as a viable, wealth-generating business.
“We’ve come a long way,” says TEC Edmonton CEO Chris Lumb. “We started and grown many partnerships. We’ve built our capacity to serve more clients. Internally, we’ve grouped our services into three easily-understood categories:
Technology Management,
Business Services and Entrepreneurial Skills Development.”
To create new entities and new commerce, Chris says, the entire system needs to work well. “to that end, we’ve identified two links to shore up in 2012: Entrepreneurial skills, and funding for early-stage companies.”
TEC Edmonton has long offered entrepreneurial education, but the programs have operated within separate silos.
Basic business advice is currently offered through the
TEC Source program, where experienced business volunteers offer advice to the handyman with a prototype and a better idea.
Within the
Alberta Deal Generator program, entrepreneurs are coached in presenting their business cases to investors.
Finally, entrepreneurial workshops for contestants is a vital component of TEC Edmonton’s annual
VenturePrize Awards competition.
In 2012, a unified, coordinated TEC Edmonton Entrepreneurial Skills Development program will be unveiled.
Chris offers two examples of what a coordinated entrepreneur skills training program could do.
The first is pro-active: “There are 8,000 graduate students at the University of Alberta. Most of them begin by thinking of careers within post-secondary education. The fact is only about 15% will stay in academia. The rest will go out to find a job … or they can create a job.
"If a small percentage is inclined to the latter, good things can happen. TEC Edmonton will be helping them learn and absorb the culture of entrepreneurship.”
Then there was the inexperienced CEO of a TEC client company, who “believed his product, just because it worked in a laboratory, would catapult to a $100 million business within two years," says Chris. "It was a wild pronouncement, but he thought that was what investors wanted to hear.
"What the investors really wanted was a strong, realistic business plan. It cost him his credibility. The company failed. Had he benefited from a solid entrepreneurial training program, he would never have been so unrealistic. His company could have thrived.”
The lack of early-stage financing, Chris says, is the other big gap in the current system.
“Many promising technologies fall into a grey area; too mature for research funding but nowhere near robust enough to go to market.
“TEC Edmonton is supporting individuals in the community who are championing the creation of seed funds. We are not funders, but we are the deal-flow people or the facilitators.
"TEC Edmonton has the expertise to select and filter promising companies on behalf of potential investors. TEC Edmonton helps its clients meet the criteria that early-stage investors are looking for.
"Making sure that investment capital is available for promising early-stage companies – it’s an area we’ll emphasize this year. It’s definitely one of the bigger gaps in the system.”
Fixing those two systemic gaps is Lumb’s top priority.
Then there’s the tweaking of TEC Edmonton’s impressive Business Development division. “We’d like to grow our engineering and clean tech expertise,” says Chris. “Our history has been more in working with information technology and life sciences companies.”
The challenge for TEC Edmonton’s highly respected Technology Management program is keeping up its gold-plated standards as an ever-increasing volume of work comes through its door. “Which is a good thing!” grins the boss.
Offering comprehensive entrepreneurial skills training programs and encouraging early-stage seed capital for promising client companies are at the top of the CEO's to-do list for 2012.
“In the last two years, we’ve become more focused in what we do,” says Lumb. “Our reputation has grown. We’re broadly supported in the community. The number of companies we help is growing significantly.
“It’s been a good journey,” says the CEO. “TEC Edmonton is doing the right things: we don’t need to radically change. We simply need to consolidate our position and build on it.”