The Atlantic Entrepreneurial Ecosystem conference attendees couldn’t stop talking last week about Gerry Pond’s Grey Grey Matter Matters.
Pond looked at one of Atlantic Canada’s biggest problems: a large aging population. His solution? Take old people’s wisdom to create businesses. That’s how the Maritime investor and entrepreneur arrived at Grey (old people) Grey Matter (the brain) Matters: old people’s wisdom and ideas matter.
Pond said this demographic problem could result in a company that could invest in different ideas to either solve old people’s problems (e.g. helping them with mobility or illness) or use old people’s experience and wisdom to create new businesses or help other entrepreneurs with their businesses.
“The billion dollar goal will make us the best ecosystem in the country,” Pond later said at a panel. “If you don’t set the target, you won’t get much.”
Pond’s Grey Grey Matter Matters idea hit on the major theme of last Thursday and Friday’s Atlantic Entrepreneurial Ecosystem: make creative connections and think outside the normal routes for entrepreneurship.
The conference concentrated on research into where Atlantic Canadian entrepreneurs receive business help, including the countries, regions, organizations, incubators, other companies and entrepreneurs. Ellen Farrell, St. Mary’s University Sobey School of Business professor, led the study and organized the conference.
Farrell’s colourful maps showed the visual representation of her findings. The map most frequently discussed by conference attendees was the one illustrating which countries and provinces Maritime entrepreneurs reach out to for business help and advice. The majority of surveyed entrepreneurs indicated that they tended to ask for help from fellow Maritimers, with a bit of outreach to Ontario and Quebec, and very little outreach to the U.S. or Europe.
Though this insular mentality can be beneficial for a solid support network, conference attendees and speakers agreed that Atlantic Canadians need to reach outside our four provinces to gain better reach for the region’s companies.
One way for Maritimers to start reaching outside the region for entrepreneurial help is by thinking about their image in the world. David Audretsch, Ameritech Chair of Economic Development at Indiana University, explained why location matters for entrepreneurship.
“Places can change the way they see themselves,” said the author of Everything in its Place: Entrepreneurship and the Strategic Management of Cities, Regions and States. “North Carolina went from hick to hi-tech.”
Benson Honig also emphasized the importance of place in his lecture, focusing on how increasing immigration in the Maritimes will better the economy due to a highly educated class of people who will bring a diverse skillset to the region.
“The only way to improve your economy is to grow your population,” The McMaster University DeGroote School of Business Chair of Entrepreneurial Leadership said.
Honig doesn’t understand why immigrants pass over the Maritimes when coming to Canada. Even Manitoba—a much colder and less scenic place—attracts more immigrants than the Maritimes. Echoing Audretsch, he said the Maritimes’ global marketing techniques aren’t working.
“We need to aggressively become a welcoming community to attract and retain immigrants,” Honig said.
Another one of Farrell’s seven maps showed which organizations entrepreneurs most frequently contacted for support. These included accelerators, incubators and sandboxes. The most frequent ones included Volta, Launch 36 and Planet Hatch among others (Entrevestor also figured prominently on this map).
As the Vice-President of Research and Policy at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Dane Stangler studies entrepreneurship and education. He believes that these “ecosystem[s] in a box”—using the same program or accelerator that other regions successfully use—often don’t work because the implementers think too much about the end result of a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem rather than focusing on what their city or region needs to create this ecosystem.
From this, Stangler warned of a “startup monoculture:” several cities and regions attempting to create a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem in the same way.
“Entrepreneurship is about messiness,” he said. “Embrace the messiness.”
Stangler echoed Pond’s point: create hubs for startups where entrepreneurs can solve regional problems and hone in on regional advantages. Stangler encouraged Atlantic Canadians to focus on ocean tech—a huge sector which is increasingly more important as climate change becomes more and more severe.
At the end of the conference, most of the speakers came together to discuss the potential and the future of Atlantic Canada’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. Discussions included arguments about whether they ought to focus on creating a bunch of mid- to small-sized companies or billion dollar companies, and how to incorporate the notion of failure into the accelerators, university programs and support networks for entrepreneurs.
Stangler left conference attendees with this tip to think about when speaking and teaching Atlantic Canadians and others about the region: “Tell the story of the best of entrepreneurship.”
Disclaimer: St. Mary’s University is a client of Entrevestor.
