Newsletter - Institute Buzz
November 2011
By Stewart Thornhill
Executive Director, Pierre L. Morrissette Institute for Entrepreneurship
Inflection points indicate that there’s been a change in a growth trajectory. It’s a term sometimes used by executives to explain why earnings weren’t as strong as forecast; the implication is that things are about to get much better. In our case at the Entrepreneurship Institute, the inflection signals a pause in the incredible growth we’ve experienced in the past three years. During that period, we’ve added new faculty every year, Ivey has grown its HBA program by three sections, the M.Sc. program has joined the curriculum and Entrepreneurship has become part of our EMBA curriculum. And that’s in addition to the tremendous participants in our New Venture Project since Ron Close became our John Currie Executive Entrepreneur in Residence and built a stellar team of Virtual Entrepreneurs in Residence to work with our students. Also worth mentioning is the Ivey Entrepreneurs Index, Powered by KPMG Enterprise .™ This semi-annual economic bellwether, which surveys Quantum Shift Fellows, was released for the third time earlier this month and we celebrated the launch by opening the markets for trading at the TSX.
As we progress through what will be our penultimate year in the “old” Ivey building, the feeling is one of taking a deep breath in preparation for even greater effort. Once we complete the move to the new building on Western Road (and work our way through the inevitable challenges of such a transition), we’ll have our programs, faculty, and staff together under one roof and, for good measure, we’ll add yet another HBA section to bring the total to eight. So we’re not done growing, but we are taking a brief rest before the next stage. And this gives us an opportunity to streamline our programs, refresh our materials, and get ready to continue our mission of growing Canada’s next generation of entrepreneurs.