This past month, two articles in this column stimulated a significant amount of interest. The first one was Ron Mitchell's article of Feb. 11 indicating that entrepreneurial skills can be developed through experience and "the right kind of training." The second one was the article I wrote on Feb. 18 introducing the New Venture Institute, a nonprofit educational organization designed to provide that "right kind of training." This article is written to answer the many requests for information.
Based on Mitchell's research and the entrepreneurship program he founded at the University of Victoria, the New Venture Institute has now structured an entrepreneurship training seminar series in response to the enthusiastic reception of the institute's mission.The seminars are to be called the Business Venture Success Series and are based on Mitchell's venture success through failure prevention model. The model is designed to foster venturing success by eliminating the known causes of venture failure, similar to the approach taken by modern medicine, which reduces infant mortality and increases quality of life and life expectancy by eliminating the known causes of disease. The venture success through failure prevention model focuses on preparing the individual venturer, the specific venture and the venturing environment. The key to business venture success and failure is contained in these three fundamental "cellular" areas of the venturing process.
The Business Venture Success Series consists of three one-day seminar modules, each addressing one of the fundamental areas of focus:
Module I - "How to be an Expert Entrepreneur or Compensate for the Difference" - focuses on the individual venturer. This seminar reviews the research that indicates that successful venture formation is associated with individual entrepreneurial expertise; trains you in the use of the New Venture Profile , a computerized diagnostic tool that is designed to assess an individual's readiness to venture; and teaches various steps that can be taken to assist an individual in becoming a more expert entrepreneur. The objective of the seminar is to provide you with the tools to evaluate and enhance readiness to venture by increasing personal entrepreneurial expertise.
Module 2 - "Six Secrets to High Potential Business Ventures" - focuses on the business venture. This seminar reviews the six known causes of venture failure; trains you to use the New Venture Template , a computerized diagnostic management tool that detects causes of failure in a venture; and gives guidelines to eliminate those causes of failure in a new or existing business venture. The objective of the seminar is to provide you with the specialized knowledge and technology that will allow you to evaluate, advise and/or build high-potential business ventures.
Module 3 - "Solid Gold Stakeholder Strategy for the Expert Entrepreneur" - focuses on the venturing environment. This seminar teaches how to identify and prioritize the key stakeholders in your venturing environment, such as financiers, shareholders, suppliers, customers, employees and the government, and provides tools to suggest the correct approach for a profitable relationship with each stakeholder. The objective of the seminar is to provide you with high-powered prioritizing tools needed to profitably manage the stakeholder environment
Each seminar includes a reference workbook, video or audio tapes of the seminar material and a diagnostic software program that allows an individual to implement the expert venturing knowledge taught at the seminars. The seminars are currently in the approval process with the Utah Association of CPAs for continuing professional education (CPE) credit.
Due to the intense interest, the training is being made available immediately through in-firm instruction and newly scheduled group seminars. For information on the entrepreneurship training seminars scheduled for March and April, or to make arrangements for in-firm seminars, contact the New Venture Institute at the numbers below.
In America, we are transitioning from a time when the focus of our career was on the job to a time when the focus of our career must be on entrepreneurial opportunities. Individuals, organizations and entire societies can prosper and become self-reliant by applying sound principles of entrepreneurship. George Gilder reminds us that what we need for economic progress is "an immense class of entrepreneurs who comprise a near majority of working citizens . . . wielding the powers of enterprise." The larger organizations of our society also realize the critical need to become more entrepreneurial in the way they think about and run their operations. Jack Welch, the CEO of giant General Electric, says that "we are trying relentlessly to . . . get that small company soul . . . inside our big company body."
As with anything else, we must prepare to succeed. Mitchell has proven that "entrepreneurship can be learned. To be successful business creators . . . we need access to the right kind of training . . . ." The New Venture Institute is pleased to use its resources to play a role in providing that training.