Growth Compass

In 2017 Associate Director, Dr. Simon Raby, published a report titled “What Drives SME Growth: Introducing the Leader’s Growth Mindset” bit.ly/2QrTbbf. This seminal report revealed insights to the growth challenge facing Alberta businesses and the roles that leaders need to champion to catalyze high growth. Only 7% of Alberta business leaders were found to be employing a Leaders Growth Mindset bit.ly/34wIFrg.

From this research Growth Compass was launched; a community-engaged learning and scholarship initiative that delivers evidence-based insights and intelligence on how companies successfully scale. Growth Compass collaborates with experts and engages students to deliver scholarly and industry outcomes. To learn more visit: growthcompass.org

Impact:

117

students engaged

76

community leaders engaged 11 business leaders engaged

2 visiting scholars

6 community events

6 scholarly publications and presentations

Innovation Accelerator

This year, as part of Mount Royal’s concentration in innovation and entrepreneurship, a new credit course, Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship was launched. This course is a work-integrated learning experience and runs in parallel with the Growth Compass Innovation Accelerator.

“The Innovation Accelerator was the perfect catalyst for us during this time. By pivoting, we have sold $250,000 in PPE, such as sneeze guards/partitions and floor decals. We have also moved our full business online. What we learned in the program was invaluable”

- Brain Kroeker, President, Little Rock Printing

“Thanks again for facilitating the innovation accelerator – our company learnt A LOT and we really enjoyed our time in class!”

- Frances Teves, Digital Marketer, Virtuoso Energy

18 senior entrepreneurship students worked with 6 companies dedicated to seeking out new growth opportunities for their organizations.

“This ENTR course is probably the best class that I have taken in my university career. In this class you work with real companies to go through the innovation cycle from dilation to sales.The impact that you have with companies is real and changing, I felt this was a great class to sum up my entrepreneurship journey at Mount Royal.”

- Anonymous ENTR Student

Small-Business Growth Roundtable

Alberta, like Canada, has a scale-up gap. While half of all startups survive over 5 years, only 0.1% of small firms become mid-sized, and only 2% of mid-sized firms become large. The 2019 Small Business Growth Roundtable was organized to examine why.

The event brought together 35 business leaders from High Growth Firms, those scale-ups with at least ten employees, sustaining an annual growth rate of 20% or greater over a minimum of three consecutive years.

Keynote speakers Dr. Mark Hart, Director of the UK’s 10,000 Small Businesses Program and Dr. Norris Krueger, renowned entrepreneurship educator and scholar joined to share insights and best practices to fuel the conversation.

This event resulted in a convergence on the ‘scaling success factors’ and the innovative and strategic actions leaders prioritized to successfully scale-up. The event also explored the competencies that graduates require to become ‘growth enablers’.

Podcast - Scaling Alberta Businesses

In November 2019, the Institute released the first episodes of the Scaling Alberta Businesses podcast. Hosted by Ray DePaul, the podcast tells the startup and scaleup stories of Alberta born companies. The podcast dives into origin stories, past and present struggles related to expansion, and overall entrepreneurial practice.

The first few episodes feature Attabotics Founder and CEO Scott Gravelle, Fiasco Gelato CEO James Boettcher, and Burgundy Oak Founder and CEO Zachary Hartley.

Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts: bit.ly/scalingalberta

BounceBackYYC Hackathon

In March, COVID-19 led to the closing of all non-essential organizations in Alberta. One of the hardest-hit sectors is the experience economy, which accounts for 15,000 organizations in Calgary. It is this sector that faces one of, if not the toughest challenge in restarting.

At the same time, the COVID-19 restrictions led to the employment rate for those under 25 dropping by 20%. Moreover, the restrictions led to the widespread cancellation of scheduled postsecondary experiential education initiatives, including work placements, co-operative education, field schools, clinical practicums, and apprenticeships. The result: tens of thousands of students in Calgary who were unable to work and develop their skills.

BounceBack YYC saw the challenging closure of the experience economy and postsecondary experiential education as an opportunity to leverage the creativity and innovation of Calgary’s postsecondary students to support the restart of the Calgary experience economy.

The BounceBackYYC Hack was an intense multi-day virtual hackathon that brought together the brightest minds and future leaders of our city to build impactful solutions that will accelerate the restart, recovery, and return of the Calgary experience economy.

Impact:

130+ applications from Calgary-based postsecondary students

80 student participants

50

volunteer mentors 250+ hours of learning consumed

1 winning project launched in 2020