Introduction
The Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, runs a program every Spring in Regent Park, titled the Rotman Regent Park Small Business Program. The program enables residents in and around Regent Park to access a business education course from university professors, particularly when the residents may not be able to afford University or College level courses. The Rotman Regent Park Small Business Program was initiated in 2006, and has received some positive press coverage, and is in the process of becoming institutionalized as a long term program.
The purpose of this blog, is to treat the whole process of institutionalizing the Rotman Regent Park Small Business Program as a structured project, to identify the steps, resources, and people required to make it happen. This blog is different from other projects since it is also a social experiment, in treating the project as a distributed and parallel problem solving challenge using social networks such as LinkedIn and FaceBook. None of us individually have the resources to make it happen, but collectively, we do !
The Rotman Regent Park Small Business Program has been running for four years, and based on feedback, the program could be strengthened in two main areas:
a) For the school: a greater number of Entrepreneurship Ready participants
b) For the participants and community groups: Providing a longer term support mechanism
The Rotman Regent Park Small Business Program has additional capacity to include additional participants for the course. The average number of participants in the course is 20, whereas comparable MBA courses can have 60 participants. Due to the intensive one on one coaching required for this type of course, the optimum class could involve up to 30 participants.
There is also a significant drop off in participation after the initial class, when people determine whether the course is suitable for them. It would be preferable to have a larger pool of applicants, who can be screened for entrepreneurship readiness, to ensure that the program is available to those who would most benefit from it.
Participants and community groups have identified a need for long term support for participants after the course has been completed. The long term needs range from financing for the entrepreneur’s new business to ongoing coaching and mentoring requirements.
Solutions-Need Your Input !
History and People