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Assunta Krehl

reportonbusiness.com: Failure and risk - 0 views

www.theglobeandmail.com/...home

Charles Plant failure MaRS entrepreneurship

shared by Assunta Krehl on 30 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Charles Plant, Managing Director of the Market Readiness Program for entrepreneurs at MaRS
  • Plant says that acceptance of failure is a cultural problem in Canada in that we tend not to reward the people who have failed. "We tend to punish people who fail whereas in Silicon Valley, they tend to reward people who have failed because they've learned lessons and can gain from that failure.
  • "I think you have to quickly acknowledge when something is a failure and have a back up plan of what you're going to do," says Plant. "Don't keep flogging a dead horse."
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • "To make failure a learning experience, first you have to celebrate it by acknowledging in a very positive way, the person who tried something and failed. You can't hide it under a table," says Plant. "You've got to develop a system that both rewards for the attempt as well as the success. Frequently, we don't do that and that sends a bad message. The act of punishing people makes them want to stop innovating."
  • We also need to build more accountability into failure, according to Plant who says that when failures are detrimental to the economy, we can't pretend that nothing happened. "Right now, some people are being rewarded for absolutely hideous failures, such as in the banking system," says Plant, who is also a Chartered Management Accountant. "Part of the problem is accounting which does a very poor job of measuring risk. Never leave anything up to the accountants!"
  • "You have to allow people to fail in this economy," says Plant. "It's failure that leads to productivity gain and innovation."
  • According to Plant, there's a different risk tolerance in smaller companies versus big ones, although he doesn't see a real difference by industry. Whether a company tolerates or accepts risk depends largely on the nature of the company. "The more established companies probably don't tolerate failure as well so they don't actually incubate a culture of risk," says Plant. "Larger companies do a lot of things to make sure they don't fail. Smaller ones tend to favour risk because it's the only way they can get ahead. And if you're doing things that haven't been done before, then you're going to fail again and again."
  • "You need a culture that allows failure for success because without it, people become anti-failure," says Charles Plant. "Trying different things is the act of innovation. If you fail 14 times, hopefully you're going to succeed on the 15th try. Without failure, we're not going to be driving and growing the economy."
  • Innovation is the result of taking big leaps,
  • Innovation is the result of taking big leaps, but failure is often the downside of taking those leaps.
  • Cathy Bogaart on 30 Mar 09
     
    without failure, you can't drive productivity. without failure, there is no innovation. So we need to fail to improve the economy!
  • Assunta Krehl on 30 Mar 09
     
    The Globe and Mail investigates the failure and risks with businesses and innovation with business leaders, Tony Chapman, CEO of Capital C, a Toronto communications and advertising company, Charles Plant, Managing Director of the Market Readiness Program for entrepreneurs at MaRS, and Naeem 'Nick' Noorani, founder and publisher of Canadian Immigrant magazine.
Assunta Krehl

Focus on Customers Even When Seeking VC Dollars - To Revenue - 0 views

www.torevenue.com/...revenue-model

raising capital

shared by Assunta Krehl on 13 Aug 09 - Cached
  • Charles Plant of MaRS Discovery District, the innovation hub in Toronto. Charles communicates a rather negative view of venture capital, but it has the merit of presenting some of the important things to consider before seeking VC money.
  • I especially like the call to focus on customers first. This is not always possible, but designing for a defined market certainly is, and anyone involved with tech commercialization will tell you it’s often the exception rather than the rule.
  • Assunta Krehl on 13 Aug 09
     
    Blog mentions of a presentation where Charles Plant spoke about Venure Capital and how you need to have a compelling business case to maximize and obtain favourable conditions from VCs. March 3, 2009
  • Assunta Krehl on 13 Aug 09
     
    Blog mentions of a presentation where Charles Plant spoke about Venure Capital and how you need to have a compelling business case to maximize and obtain favourable conditions from VCs.
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