Meghan Kirwin walked away with more than just an MBA degree when she graduated from Wilfrid Laurier University three years ago. She also had a thriving small business.
She was among the first of Laurier's MBA candidates to take advantage of a revolutionary new approach to business education. The school let her spend her final term working with its Schlegel Centre for Entrepreneurship to create her own human-resources consulting company as part of her coursework.
Better yet, from Ms. Kirwin's point of view, Laurier provided not just coaching and mentors to make her business, the Kirwin Group, an immediate success, it also kicked in a sizable amount of cash. It not only provided an office and paid legal fees to incorporate the business but also gave her a small stipend so she could work full time on her new company.
"I was one of the first selected to try this new program," says Ms. Kirwin, who is 35. "Since then they have done it with one or two MBA students a year. I think it must have cost the school $15,000 or $20,000 in direct costs, not counting the coaching and mentorship time."
Along with her Laurier MBA, Meghan Kirwin got to start her human resources consulting business. (Glenn Lowson for the Globe and Mail)
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It's a big expense, considering the tuition for Laurier's 12-month MBA program is $20,000. But the success of this pilot venture has proved so encouraging that the Waterloo, Ont., school announced this fall that it is formalizing what it has been doing informally for three years: It launched a new innovation and entrepreneurship MBA, the first in Canada, according to the school.
'Incubator'
"The pilot program with students like Meghan proved so successful we wanted to expand on it," says Ginny Dybenko, Laurier's dean of business and economics. "What we want to do is provide an incubator for innovative, entrepreneurial businesses. They are the key to Canada's future."
The goal is a business school that delivers academic credentials as well as a community-college-style approach to the technical skills needed to run a businesses, says Hugh Munro, the school's director of MBA programs.
He points out that:
- Seven out of 10 Canadians work for businesses with 10 or fewer employees;
- The growing globalization of trade demands that Canada focus on innovation, keeping the intellectual capital at home while doing large-run, commodity-style manufacturing abroad in cheaper-labour venues;
- Business schools deliver the theory of entrepreneurship but few pay much attention to such nitty-gritty tasks as setting up bookkeeping systems, doing the necessary government form-filling and providing start-up capital.
"We are really running a pilot program right now," he says. "The first intake was in August. All students will take the basic classroom program until December, and then in the new year will select specializations or concentrations. The innovation and entrepreneurship program is one of them."
Dr. Munro and Ms. Dybenko predict that 10 to 20 students will opt for the new program. The remainder will choose an MBA-CMA, MBA-CFA or regular MBA program with such specializations as supply-chain management or organizational behaviour, the specialization Ms. Kirwin chose.
If they select the new innovation and entrepreneurship stream they again face choices: to focus on entrepreneurship in large organizations or to start their own company. Those choosing a future in a corporation will have a practicum session in which they work for a corporate sponsor. Those wanting to be their own bosses will work with the Schlegel Centre to start their own company.
"The idea is to provide students all the help they need to get a small business to the stage where it is essentially up and running when they graduate at the end of July," says Dr. Munro.
That means coaching them as they do market research, write a business plan and make a pitch for startup financing to the centre's dedicated new venture capital fund. They also will work with coaches — volunteers drawn from the business world — in such areas as sales, marketing and company structure. They will even get help finding appropriate premises upon graduation.
"We are perfectly positioned for this," says Ms. Dybenko. "Waterloo is one of the centres of innovation in Canada. In fact, demand from the marketplace is one of the reasons we launched this program."
Both academics say the focus is not just on high-tech startups, although that is the Kitchener-Waterloo area's forte.
Ms. Kirwin's new company is an example. She earned her MBA on a part-time basis, working for five years at both a degree and a job with an HR company in Guelph, Ont.
"I always wanted to start my own HR consulting company, and I went to Laurier to get the skills I thought I would need," she says.
"By luck I was in the right place at the right time to be among the first in this original pilot program.
"I had all these experienced business people helping me understand everything from marketing my company to setting up GST accounts. It was stuff I just had no idea about other than the theory. They gave me an office and even gave me money so I could pay my bills while I worked on launching the company."
Her business has proved a success from the start thanks to Laurier, she says. The Kirwin Group has about eight clients at any one time and four employees. It provides human resources to small ventures in southwestern Ontario.
"I even had my first client before I graduated thanks to my marketing coach," she says. "From my point of view this is the way business schools should go if they are really committed to entrepreneurship."
Special to The Globe and Mail
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