Paris, the Rising Hope for a European Silicon Valley | OZY 🇫🇷

Aix/Marseilles, Bourdeaux, Lyon, Paris, and Toulouse Are All Thriving French Tech Innovation Hubs

This article and others have focused on the recent meteoric rise of Paris as an emerging high technology innovation hub. However, there is much more to it than just Paris. There are thriving La French Tech Hubs all over France and in international locations around the World.  Both KPMG’s annual global Technology Industry Innovation Survey and the 2019 Startup Genome Global Startup Ecosystem Report have validated the significant advance of France and Paris as a leading innovation center.

 

Source: Paris, the Rising Hope for a European Silicon Valley | Fast Forward | OZY

Nick Fouriezos, Reporter

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE ABOUT THE RISE OF FRENCH TECH

The French, with their 35-hour workweek and café culture, might be poised to attract the next great tech talent.

Rand Hindi has the quintessential tech guru genesis story. He started coding at age 10 and built a social network by 14. After getting a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence, the entrepreneur set his sights on Silicon Valley. But that’s where the narrative began to fray. Despite all the hype, the Bay Area, known for innovation, felt like a bust. “When you [speak] to people, everybody says they want to do something great,” Hindi says. “But what people really want is to work at Google or sell their company to Google.” So Hindi returned to his native France, started Snips, a company specializing in AI voice technology, and watched his company flourish from three employees in 2013 to 80 today.

As a growing souring on Silicon Valley sinks in, young tech workers aren’t just leaving hot spots like San Francisco and New York, as OZY has previously reported. They are also leaving the country altogether. And while Asia’s — and in particular China’s — tech advances are drawing the world’s attention, it turns out that a growing number of startups are swooning for the City of Love.

For the first time, more than half of respondents to KPMG’s annual global Technology Industry Innovation Survey in 2019 believed that Silicon Valley will no longer be the technology innovation center of the world in four years — due to questions around its escalating cost of living, lack of diversity and troublesome corporate cultures. Cities like Beijing, Tokyo, Shanghai and Taipei are best placed to replace it, the survey suggests. But it’s Paris that is gaining the most steam. After not being ranked in last year’s KPMG survey, it moved up to No. 14 — behind only London among European cities. Other analysts are even more bullish: Paris ranked fourth in the A.T. Kearney Global Cities Report and third in the IESE Business School Cities in Motion Index.

IT MAKES PERFECT SENSE THAT PEOPLE WHO ARE THINKING ENTREPRENEURIALLY WOULD WANT TO BLAZE A DIFFERENT PATH.

ANDREW RUSSELL, SUNY POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE

Driving this shift is a growing contrast in France’s approach toward global tech innovations to the U.K. and the U.S., experts say. On the one hand, London’s status as a financial and innovation hub stands challenged by Brexit’s enduring uncertainties. And America and Britain are tightening up on immigration. On the other hand, the French government is aggressively courting tech entrepreneurs and investments — a strategy that’s showing results. Paris rents are also 61 percent cheaper than San Francisco’s, according to Numbeo, the crowd-sourced global database of statistics such as consumer prices, perceived crime rates and quality of health care.

In 2017, the Emmanuel Macron government introduced a program that fast-tracks four-year residence visas for tech entrepreneurs and their families. Since then, French tech startups are witnessing a dramatic increase in funding: There were 743 French startups raising money in 2017, a 45 percent increase from 2016, according to CB Insights. Global giants are taking notice, with both Facebook and Google opening new AI research centers in Paris. Google has even announced plans to create local “hubs” to teach digital skills in other French cities, such as Rennes, with the goal of getting more people online (and using Google products).

The private and nonprofit sectors are pitching in too. Since June 2017, Paris has hosted the 366,000-square-foot Station F, the world’s largest startup incubator, backed by French billionaire Xavier Niel and Iranian-American executive Roxanne Varza. In October 2018, nonprofit StartHer hosted Europe’s biggest startup competition in Paris explicitly catering to female founders, with a record 363 applications from 30 countries. And this March, the French government further expanded access to its tech visa, from around 100 qualifying startups to more than 10,000.

“It makes perfect sense that people who are thinking entrepreneurially would want to blaze a different path” given the high rent, cost of living and income disparities emerging in the Bay Area, says Andrew Russell, dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at SUNY Polytechnic Institute. Cities like Paris see “an opportunity to capture some of the energy” of Silicon Valley “without falling into some of the excesses and toxicity,” Russell adds.

Admittedly, the European market does not hold the same kind of stratospheric (and, to this point, largely unrealized) potential of Asia. But the new buzz around France’s startup scene simply didn’t exist just a few years ago. Hindi remembers the policies of François Hollande being “anti-startup” when the former French president first took over in 2012. But a rising backlash driven by business leaders led to significant change, says Hindi, a former member of the French Digital Council advising on AI and privacy issues.

Before, if your company went bankrupt, you were banned from starting another one for nine years, making students from French business and tech schools risk-averse. That policy has since been scrapped. Tax credits for hiring people were created, and up to 30 percent of a startup’s technology and salary expenses are reimbursed by the French government, allowing French companies to operate at a fraction of the cost of their foreign competitors. Then there’s the tech visa and its expansion.

Those incentives are sorely needed, considering the obstacles France does have. While the country has enough angel investors — and a de facto investor with the government — there isn’t much of an exit market. Unlike American companies, European companies have a tradition of more of a revenue-profit mindset and less of a willingness to take on the (substantial) risk of acquiring a mid-tier player and turning it into a massive, industry-defining giant, Hindi says. They also prefer to invest in goods and services over potentially groundbreaking technology that needs a few years to develop before producing, he adds. The even bigger challenge? The language, which is why London has typically reigned supreme in the European market.

Some of those issues are more perception than reality, say entrepreneurs and tech workers in France. Snips engineer Allen Welkie — who moved to Paris after working at startups along the East Coast of the United States — says many French-based companies are bilingual and that the visa process was simple. A better work-life balance than in the U.S. helps boost retention too, Hindi says. “In Silicon Valley, everybody is fighting for the same few talented people. … If you’re lucky, they’re going to stay a couple of years. How can you build a company if people are constantly leaving?” As San Francisco becomes more and more untenable for everyone but the highest earners, it’s worth asking whether you can build a city that way either.

Engineer to Entrepreneur

For the last few years, I have been invited to speak with graduating classes of university engineering students. I call my lecture “Engineer to Entrepreneur.”  From my background in teaching management and entrepreneurial mentorship, I focus on the unique challenges engineers face in entering the business world, particularly those who may consider starting their own new business. I discuss a full range of issues, but my personal emphasis from my experience is the “character” issue.  Some excellent engineers have successfully made the transition to entrepreneurship and executive management, but for others, the Odyssey is a bridge too far. Engineers must learn to think differently than when they are solving an engineering problem.  Consequently, I place significant emphasis on honest self-analysis and appreciation of one’s strengths and weaknesses.  Listening is a priceless skill. If you have experienced Google’s Larry Page in public, he is an excellent example of an engineer who has very successfully transitioned into a senior management role. Sergei Brin, on the other hand, opted for a CTO-like role, which I think was the right choice for him. That is the point of my lecture. I hope that many who view my YouTube Channel will find it helpful. You can find the complete lecture on my website.

Remember that my website, mayo615.com has over 400 posts on a wide range of management and technology topics.

Canadian Tech Out of Touch With Global Entrepreneur Ecosystem

Canadian Tech Industry Still Not Confronting Its Infrastructure Issues

This is yet another excellent article questioning the Canadian tech industry’s appreciation of its significant deficiencies and challenges. It reflects my own view after much research and many interviews. It is also the view of UoT Professor Richard Florida who published a similar article in the Globe & Mail recently. Venture capital is anemic, but many also believe that there is a lack of scale-up management talent. Another factor is deeply-embedded Canadian conservatism, as evidenced by the bizarre entry of high street commercial banks’ debt offerings to entrepreneurs.

Source: Canadian tech needs to redefine its sense of scale

CANADIAN TECH NEEDS TO REDEFINE ITS SENSE OF SCALE/BetaKit

If like me, you spend a lot of time poring over the latest in Canadian tech, chances are good that you see both the huge potential of our technology companies and the simultaneous challenge: too often, they’re being held back by Canada’s scale-up deficit.

This, of course, isn’t news. In all the years I’ve participated in this sector, it’s been an ongoing challenge—one that has been the topic of countless discussions, panels, and debates. It’s an issue that has long challenged our innovation and technology sectors, and though it’s been talked about at length, it’s a conversation that deserves our full attention until we get it right.

Canada has become a launch-pad for early-stage companies, but, with a few notable exceptions, we are largely still lacking later-stage success stories.

PwC Canada’s recent MoneyTree report shows that our technology sector has seen a significant increase in funding deal volume in the last year—up 30 percent from 2017. But when one reads between the lines, it’s also clear that our homegrown tech companies are still largely stuck in a middle ground. In fact, of all the companies raising seed or early-stage funding during 2015-2017, only roughly 10 percent of them raised expansion or later-stage funding during 2016-2018.

Even if we leave room for successful shops that don’t need to raise further VC, that still doesn’t account for all of it. Many stall, naturally. They don’t continue to climb the curve and thereby miss the opportunity to hit scale. Of course, some companies shouldn’t scale and falter for good reasons. But many should and, for one reason or another, don’t. As a result, it seems that Canada has become a launch-pad for early-stage companies, but, with a few notable exceptions, we are largely still lacking the later-stage success stories we see in many other ecosystems.

Addressing this begins with challenging our very definition of scale. When we talk about Canada’s scale-up dilemma, we tend to focus on the obvious: raising capital, multiplying sales, and increasing market share in large, global, addressable markets. All of this is important but, in my experience, it’s only a part of the equation. Whether founders are on their first venture or their fifth, early-stage companies face many challenges to growth, and mature technology ecosystems support them by ensuring they see the bigger picture, beyond raising capital and increasing sales. It’s time to redefine our collective understanding of what scale means, and arrive at a new recipe that touches on all the moving parts companies need to master if they’re going to level-up.

To redefine scale, we need to take a closer look at the state of our ecosystems, which can become global hubs for highly skilled digital, creative, and leadership talent, and at the roadblocks that are currently preventing companies from scaling up. Let’s start by looking to the key stakeholders who will inevitably play an important role in shaping the future of the tech sector, including our government, VCs, and the public and private sector buyers of technology.

Government, of course, has several levers to pull when it comes to helping companies scale, like shaping policies and regulations that work to benefit our technology sector, while ensuring tax dollars are well spent through targeted incentive programs matched with data and IP policies that achieve the right balance.

Government(s) of all levels need to re-commit to working with Canadian technology companies at all stages of their evolution. They need to commit to procurement policies and practices that produce a real and predictable market for our tech companies to address and sell into. Federal and provincial governments of all stripes have made promises in this regard, but the velocity of, and commitment to, local sourcing hasn’t yet translated for our entrepreneurs.

Our government can also work to modernize our federal and provincial processes that foster the development and retention of IP, and continue to evolve tax incentives that support later-stage companies. These improvements would also encourage greater global investment in the Canadian ecosystem. According to the World Economic Forum Executive Opinion Survey, two of the most problematic factors of doing business in Canada are inefficient government bureaucracy and tax rates.

Data regulations and privacy policies, too, are of particular focus for governments worldwide. Ours can help us ensure that Canadian technology shops want to stay here, to do their important work, while being intentional about our data protection policies. After all, scaling does not mean scaling by any means, and protecting our data sovereignty is important.

Beyond government support, we should also look to VCs and other sources of private capital to enable companies to scale. Here, we often turn to Silicon Valley for inspiration, as investors there tend to be more willing to place big bets and write big cheques. Canada can learn from this. Any investor is going to have more misses than hits and, without higher risk tolerance, we won’t be able to finance the technological sophistication that will propel us to the next level.

According to the 2019 Canadian Startup Outlook Report, 56 percent of companies state that their long-term goal is to be acquired.

There is good news for Canada: CPPIB recently announced investments of $1 billion in venture funds, much of which will focus on technology companies. I’d love to see our wider investment community follow their lead. Funds like Novacap, Georgian Partners, OMERS Ventures, and more occupy the unique position of helping shape the future of Canada’s innovation economy. They’re already investing in some great home-grown companies, and their continued willingness to take bigger risks on innovative, growth-stage companies will help create the culture we need.

There’s even more good news when it comes to talent in Canada: we’re well positioned to become a hub for top tech and innovation talent. Our immigration policies, like BC’s Provincial Nominee Program and the federal Global Skills Strategy, are helping to draw the global talent stream north; our colleges, universities, and research hubs are world-renowned. Still, as I’ve seen with the corporate boards and senior leadership teams I’ve been involved with, companies need seasoned global talent if they want to become truly global players. It’s time we cast a wider net, finding ways to incentivize governance and executive talent from technology hubs like Boston, New York, Shenzhen, Dublin, Tel Aviv, and beyond to help Canadian companies reach their next stage and deliver on the promise of scale.

Established Canadian corporates have a big role to play here too. While our market is small by comparison to our neighbour, there is big buying power in our financial services, energy, retail, healthcare, automotive, and other major industries. Without a hint of protectionism, we can look to the Canadian innovation and technology markets each and every time we are procuring a solution, looking for new technologies or even looking for a problem to solve. In fact, according to the 2019 PwC annual CEO survey, 52 percent of Canadian CEOs surveyed see collaboration with start-up entrepreneurs as a key growth strategy.

Another way for companies to level-up and scale quickly is to reconsider some elements of the growth strategy playbook. Not surprisingly, according to the 2019 Canadian Startup Outlook Report by Silicon Valley Bank, 56 percent of companies state that their long-term goal is to be acquired. However, we should consider a shift in mindset that focuses on growth by acquisition rather than looking primarily at exit strategies or organic growth. This approach works well in dynamic sectors like fintech and healthcare. I’ve seen companies enjoy success by expanding into international markets or adjacent spaces, growing horizontally through acquisitions. Our tech leaders need to be thinking long-term so that, whether they’re building to grow, to expand, or to sell, they have the right structures and systems in place.

I am hopeful that these thoughts are provocative and assist some in considering strategies and actions that will lead to the scale Canada needs. True scale is critical if we want our technology companies to drive our GDP, provide high-paying jobs, and spur the innovations that will elevate us on the world stage.

This article was originally published on LinkedIn. Photo courtesy @dingle.

Could Macron and Brexit make France Europe’s tech capital? 🇫🇷

Source: Could Macron and Brexit make Paris Europe’s tech capital?

FRANCE 24

Date created : 13/04/2019 – 18:14Latest update : 15/04/2019 – 08:23

Ludovic Marin/AFP | French President Emmanuel Macron speaks as he visits the start-up campus Station F on October 9, 2018.

This article’s original headline and content focused only on a very large, high profile startup incubator in Paris, but frankly, there is a lot more going on in other parts of France as well.

Text by:Charlotte WILKINS

Shortly after his election in May 2017, President Macron said he wanted France itself “to think and move like a start-up” – a vision of the country’s digital future that is gaining traction as Britain wrestles with Brexit.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s vow to make France a ‘start-up nation’ amid the uncertainty over Brexitis raising the question of whether Paris could supplant London as the capital of European tech.

Since his election, Macron has wooed tech entrepreneurs with a string of initiatives in the form of lavish tax breaks, subsidies, and credits for research. In March 2018, he promised to invest €1.5 billion into artificial intelligence research through 2022.

Some of these initiatives, in addition to Macron’s dynamism, have lured British tech companies who are looking to gain a foothold in Europe.

“It made sense to have a European base,” said Cedric Jones*, a Briton who recently launched a start-up at Station F, the cavernous old train station that is now home to the world’s largest start-up campus. “If I’m going to make waves in continental Europe… I wanted to get here before Brexit happened.”

Jones is among dozens of foreign entrepreneurs who have recently launched their start-up at Station F, whose 3,000 desk hub has seen spiraling applications from English-speaking nationals in the last two years.

Some cite political woes back home, the burgeoning French tech sector, or are inspired by Macron’s bid to make Paris the innovation heart of Europe.

“There’s an air of optimism and a can-do spirit in France that I feel we’ve lost somewhat in the US,” said Mark Heath, a New Yorker, who stayed on in France to launch a start-up after studying at INSEAD in 2017.

The Macron effect

Much of the investment in French tech predates Macron’s reforms. The state investment bank Bpifrance, launched by former French president François Hollande in 2013, has been widely credited with developing the sector. Hollande also set up new foreign visas for start-up entrepreneurs.

But Zahir Bouchaary, a Briton who works out of Station F, credits Macron with injecting dynamism into the sector.

“Macron has installed a [start-up] mentality within the French ecosystem itself,” said Bouchaary, adding that it has become much easier to do business in France in the last few years.

“French customers are a lot more willing to work with start-ups than they were before,” said Bouchaary. “France was a very conservative country and our clients were used to working with big old-fashioned companies that have been around for a while. For the past few years, they’ve opened up a lot more to working with younger companies and seem to take more risks than they did before.”

Jones agreed that Macron was “the single variable”. “When he [Macron] goes, the dynamism will go too. I absolutely would not expect that to remain the case if he’s not the president.”

However, although Macron has moved to ease labour laws, Jones said that navigating the country’s labyrinthine bureaucracy in French remained “very burdensome”, and that it was far easier to build a business in the UK. “Whether it’s from a tax perspective or from a legal perspective it’s just so much more complicated.”

UK tech ‘resilient’

The tech scene in London appears to be just as vibrant as ever, explained Albin Serviant, president of Frenchtech in London, who said many UK-based tech entrepreneurs are adopting a “wait and see” approach to Brexit.

“The UK ecosystem is quite resilient,” said Serviant.

“In the first quarter of 2019, there were about €2 billion invested in tech in London. That’s compared to 1.5 billion last year, which is plus 30 percent. And that’s twice as much as France – which invested 1 billion. France is catching up very fast but the investment money is still flowing in the UK,” he added.

Serviant cited London’s business-friendly ecosystem and international talent pool as reasons for why London remains the capital of the European tech sector. Barcelona and Berlin are also contenders for the UK’s tech start-up crown.

Nonetheless, Serviant cautioned against the effects that a hard Brexit would have on the tech sector in the UK.

“‘If Brexit happens in a bad way and if people like me and other entrepreneurs have to leave, obviously that’s very bad for the UK because what makes it very different is the international DNA of London.”

Hard Brexit would not just damage the UK tech sector but would also pose challenges for British developers, who post-Brexit may need a carte de séjour to work in the country, looking to find work in France.

Sarah Pedroza, co-managing director of Hello Tomorrow technologies, a Paris-based startup NGO, said that if she had to choose between hiring a British national and an EU citizen with the same skillset, she would opt for an EU citizen because there would be less paperwork involved.

Brexit aside, others suggest that France is snapping at the UK’s technological heels.

“I do think France has the potential under Macron to close the gap with the UK,” said Jones.

“The single biggest factor in what’s going on for France is that France is developing a sense of confidence in itself, in its start-up scene, as a tech hub, that’s being helped by France and that’s also being helped by Brexit.”

Mayo615’s French Odyssey Week 2: Networking Tips

Welcome to a bonus Week 2 Update of Mayo615’s Odyssey to France.

I want to talk a bit about networking with new acquaintances or renewing old contacts.  Networking is often dreaded because it sounds like being disingenuous or insincere. Good networking is genuine and sincere. I made the point in Week 1 that communication skills are crucial, and they can be learned. Warren Buffett has said that “public speaking” is the most important skill he ever learned.  So let’s discuss a few ideas on how to make networking less stressful and more successful.  In this video, I will list three key things to remember when networking and expand on why they are so important. My UBC Management students will remember this from my Management Communication course.

 

Mayo615’s Odyssey to France: Week 1 Update

Welcome to Mayo615’s Odyssey to France and the first of our Tuesday weekly updates

We invite you to subscribe to our YouTube Channel and to follow our weekly updates

In this Week One update we will focus on my first Big Idea, and how I achieved it.  I will also discuss my three most important key takeaways from that experience. We hope that you find this video helpful in achieving your own Big Ideas and goals. So here we go.

See The Launch Of The MAYO615 YouTube Channel Trailer Here

 

The launch of the Mayo615 YouTube Channel Trailer

 

 

On this YouTube Channel, we will share our Big Idea: our personal goal and invite you to participate with us, share your comments and questions and perhaps motivate you to achieve your own Big Idea. We will post an update on our project every Tuesday. We invite your comments and questions about your own Big Idea while you follow ours. We will both reply to all comments and will feature the best questions in our YouTube update videos each week.

So click SUBSCRIBE and let’s get started!

 

 

 

 

How business schools are adapting to the changing world of work | CBC News

How business schools are adapting to the changing world of work

Creativity, adaptability are now cornerstones of business education

Brandie Weikle · CBC News · Posted: Dec 27, 2018 4:00 AM ET | Last Updated: December 28, 2018

Students chat in a hallway at Western University’s Ivey Business School in London, Ont. Business schools say they’ve adapted

their programming to fit a changing work world that prizes creative, agile workers who can adapt to rapid change. (Ivey Business School)

Forget about accounting class and marketing 101.

Canadian business school leaders say soft skills such as creativity and agility are now cornerstones of business education, as universities and colleges adapt to a world where many of the jobs graduates will hold don’t even exist today.

They say there’s still a role for those business basics, but they’re no longer enough to satisfy workplaces that prize employees who can adapt to swiftly changing industries, disruptive technology and the thorny issues facing humanity in the years to come.

“The goal of a university education is to teach people how to deal with uncertainty, how to be a critical thinker, how to be okay when things are changing,” said Darren Dahl, a senior associate dean at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business in Vancouver.

• Meet the business leaders happy to admit to their mistakes

“The notion of going to work for the big corporation, and the jobs that we traditionally do, are evolving and changing,” said Dahl. That’s put a lot of pressure on business schools to change what and how they teach, he said.

To keep on top of what employers are looking for, the staff at the Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ont., recently completed 250 interviews with leaders in government, business and non-profits around the globe, said acting dean Mark Vandenbosch.

Mark Vandenbosch, acting dean of Ivey Business School, seen in this March 25, 2015, file photo, said today’s job market prizes soft skills. (Ivey Business School)

“Although people do need to have technical literacy that’s probably higher than before — the skills that are really demanded are the soft skills that will allow them to adapt,” said Vandenbosch.

‘Embracing creativity in a big way’

These include the ability to bring alternative viewpoints to a problem, he said, as well as things like creativity, grit, teamwork, communications effectiveness and decision-making skills.

At UBC, Dahl said the MBA program includes a required course in creativity. “That surprises some people,” he said. “Traditionally, you might think of a business school as beating out the creativity in students.”

The creativity class curriculum isn’t centered around business innovation, such as coming up with a new product. “It’s more base creativity,” he said.

Creativity is a muscle.  How do we strengthen that muscle for you as a leader, whether you work in corporate or a non-profit or your own entrepreneurial venture?– Darren  Dahl , associate dean, UBC’s Sauder School of Business

“Creativity is a muscle. If you stopped exercising it years ago — some people say you’re the most creative when you’re five or six years old and then it’s just downhill —  how do we strengthen that muscle for you as a leader, whether you work in corporate or a non-profit or your own entrepreneurial venture?

“That’s a fundamental tool in the toolbox, and I think society has just woken up to that in the last five years,” said Dahl.

Joe Musicco, who teaches at Sheridan College’s Pilon School of Business in Toronto, said: “business is certainly embracing creativity in a big way.”

• The latest millennial trend? Buying a franchise business

There are a number of factors contributing to the business world’s increasing interest in creativity, said Musicco.

“You could point to things like technology and AI [Artificial Intelligence]. You could point to things like the changing nature of work and being more of a thinker and a consultant, and expectations of people in general that [graduates] are going to be able to bring innovation and creative problem-solving skills to the table.”

Students have more diverse goals

What students want has changed, too.

“The younger generations today are very much interested in having an impact,” said Dahl.

“That could mean anything from having an impact by building their own business, to having a positive influence on society.”

In the past, most business school students would strive for the same jobs at large, branded international corporations, he said.

While some still do, others want to work for non-profits, and some want to be their own bosses, said Dahl.

Students are seen in class at Ivey Business School. (Ivey Business School)

Preparation for the entrepreneurial world

Dahl said there’s also been “a sea change in respect to the importance of entrepreneurial activity in the economy.”

To meet that need, course material is now taught differently, he said, moving away from “the classic lecturing on the stage” to methods that involve more action and applied learning.

Business school classes could be challenged to partner up with engineering students on a project, or to work with start-ups, for example.

At Ivey Business School, Vandenbosch said “a huge percentage of our graduates run their own businesses.”

The typical route they take, though, is to work for somebody else for a few years after graduation to get on-the-ground experience, then return to the school to take advantage of the entrepreneurial incubator it offers for alumni, he said.

“We provide a lot of support post graduation for those who want to come back at a later time to start a venture two, three or four years later.– Mark Vandenbosch, acting dean, Ivey Business School

“We provide a lot of support post-graduation for those who want to come back at a later time to start a venture two, three or four years later.”

One of the ways Ivey prepares graduates for a more entrepreneurial world is by throwing out the traditional undergraduate schedule where students make their own course selections then keep that schedule over a semester.

Instead, starting when they join Ivey in the third year, students show up at expected times each day, then programming is varied all year long, said Vandenbosch.

“Our focus is primarily on building experiences for students so they can build the capabilities to adapt to a future world, rather than, ‘Here is what you need to know about subject X.'”

Source: How business schools are adapting to the changing world of work | CBC News

Financial Times ranks UBC Sauder’s Master of Management program #1 in North America

 

Source: Financial Times ranks UBC Sauder’s Master of Management program #1 in North America | UBC Sauder School of Business, Vancouver, Canada

September 10, 2018

Tagged: 

All News, Master of Management, Press Release

The Financial Times, one of the world’s most influential business news outlets, has ranked UBC Sauder’s Master of Management (MM) the leading program of its kind in North America for 2018. Offered by the school’s Robert H. Lee Graduate School, the nine-month MM gives recent non-business graduates the skills they need to gain a competitive edge in the job market.

Published today, the annual “Global Masters in Management Ranking” placed the UBC Sauder’s MM program 1st in North America, up from 2nd in 2017, and 49th in the world, up from 58th in the world last year. Among the ranking’s highlights, the UBC Sauder program stood out for the career success of its students, with 95 percent of grads achieving full-time employment within three months of graduation.

Developed to address the evolving needs of today’s most innovative employers, the MM curriculum provides students with a vital grounding in a broad spectrum of business and management disciplines, from accounting to finance and marketing to strategic management. Students are coached to meet their career goals and connected with opportunities in organizations in Vancouver and around the globe.

UBC Sauder’s MM program is consistently ranked among the best in the world and has ranked as the number one program in North America five out of the past six years.

Connect… Then Lead: HBS Professor John Kotter

One of my most popular posts from July 8, 2013

Harvard Business School Professor John P. Kotter

Years ago I was invited to join a newly forming Intel marketing group comprised primarily of Ivy League MBA‘s, with a few of us Intel veterans thrown into the mix to create some cross-fertilization in the group. This was the famous period of Harvard MBA’s belief that they were all marketing gods, and needed only to be ruthless: greed was good. One of my Harvard educated Intel colleagues related a story of HBS students playing an allegedly “friendly” game of football on the green next to the Charles River. One player suffered a compound fracture of his leg.  While waiting for an ambulance, a member of the other team came up and demanded to know when the game would resume.  Everything was about competition and one-upmanship. To this day I remember fondly (believe it or not) that this was also the mantra of our Intel group.  Who got the girl on Friday night: who got stuck with the bar tab. There was a big scoreboard in the sky tabulating the imaginary results.  Perhaps against the odds, our group survived and succeeded famously.  Many of us are still very close personal friends. One is the godfather of my son.

Ray Rund, one of my Intel colleagues, and Harvard MBA told me another story of HBS students eager to take John Kotter‘s leadership class, at the time called “Power & Influence.”  They all thought that Kotter’s course would teach them how to become the meanest “sons-of-bitches in the valley.”  Ray amusingly remembered that Kotter’s course taught them the exact opposite: managers must first learn to be humble, connect and gain the respect of their subordinates, before attempting to lead, or they would be doomed.  The book version of Kotter’s course is now 30 years old, but is still as relevant as ever. It is filled with case studies of “hard asses”  who failed miserably.

I have often explained Kotter’s point to others by using the example of an old WWII film clip of Lord Louis Mountbatten, leading the beleaguered British commandos in Burma against overwhelming Japanese forces.  Mountbatten was standing on a pedestal in some godforsaken Burmese village, with his troops standing at attention in rank. The first thing Mountbatten did was to beckon his troops to break rank and come up near him.  The old film clip speaks volumes about Mountbatten’s intuitive understanding of leadership.

Specialists in organizational behavior probably like to debate these points, pointing out the Peter Drucker “high task, low relationship” approach to change management. Basically, like the George S. Patton “school of management” in the film, kick ass and take names until the organization submitted to his will.  As the film shows, this approach has its drawbacks.

Ironically, I had learned Kotter’s lesson in leadership in my first assignment at Intel, managing 250 people running a semiconductor manufacturing operation.  On my first day, my manager introduced me to my people, half-jokingly saying to them, “Let’s see how long it takes you to break your new supervisor!”  Clearly, I needed to get with their program.  Just for the record, my manager, Dean Persona and I became fast friends. My employees had the knowledge of how to get the job done, and I did not. It is a valuable lesson I have never forgotten. I managed to get the respect of my people by respecting them. When an extra effort was required, I could ask for that extra effort, and it was given willingly.  Others failed miserably in their jobs while I rapidly rose to bigger and better things.

When I noticed this HBR blog post on leadership, titled “Connect…Then Lead,” I thought of Kotter, who is still teaching at Harvard.  I also see another potential case study of failure developing now.  For all of the good intentions of this manager, he is failing to understand Kotter’s lesson about leadership. This manager professes openness. This manager made a point to take a very modest office and leave his door open. But despite these superficial moves,  in reality, the substance of his management style is that of an austere, autocratic manager who isolates himself behind a wall of handlers who manage access to him, even reading all of his emails, which is offensive to many.  It takes weeks to schedule a simple meeting with this manager if you can successfully maneuver the gauntlet of handlers. Then the meeting will typically start late, only to be ended by another handler interrupting the meeting, tapping on their watch, to extract the manager early from the meeting, because he is so “busy” he must move on. He demands that his schedule is cleared for his own priorities.

The rudeness and distant behavior of this manager is obviously having a serious impact on the manager’s effectiveness with his people, but the manager seems more interested in his own matters. It has been noted by some that it is not uncommon for autocrats to view themselves as being open and welcoming toward their people when in reality the manager’s true behavior exhibits an extreme distance, lack of sensitivity, and the subordinates are intimidated by his overbearing personal style. This is all laid out in Kotter’s books and in the following HBR Blog article.  History seems to repeat itself.

Andrew Carnegie, a scion of the Gilded Age of Monopolists at the turn of the 20th Century, is noted for this quote about the importance of his employees…

“Take away my factories, my plants, take away my railroads, my ships, my transportation; take away my money, strip me of all these, but leave me my men and in two or three years, I will have them all again.”  Despite Carnegie’s megalomaniacal tendencies, he nevertheless seemed to understand the importance of having a strong bond with his people.

Connect, Then Lead

Reblogged from the HRB Blog

by Amy J.C. Cuddy, Matthew Kohut, and John Neffinge

Read More: Connect, Then Lead, HBR Blog

 Is it better to be loved or feared?

Niccolò Machiavelli pondered that timeless conundrum 500 years ago and hedged his bets. “It may be answered that one should wish to be both,” he acknowledged, “but because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved.”

Now behavioral science is weighing in with research showing that Machiavelli had it partly right: When we judge others—especially our leaders—we look first at two characteristics: how lovable they are (their warmth, communion, or trustworthiness) and how fearsome they are (their strength, agency, or competence). Although there is some disagreement about the proper labels for the traits, researchers agree that they are the two primary dimensions of social judgment.

Why are these traits so important? Because they answer two critical questions: “What are this person’s intentions toward me?” and “Is he or she capable of acting on those intentions?” Together, these assessments underlie our emotional and behavioral reactions to other people, groups, and even brands and companies. Research by one of us, Amy Cuddy, and colleagues Susan Fiske, of Princeton, and Peter Glick, of Lawrence University, shows that people judged to be competent but lacking in warmth often elicit envy in others, an emotion involving both respect and resentment that cuts both ways. When we respect someone, we want to cooperate or affiliate ourselves with him or her, but resentment can make that person vulnerable to harsh reprisal (think of disgraced Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski, whose extravagance made him an unsympathetic public figure). On the other hand, people judged as warm but incompetent tend to elicit pity, which also involves a mix of emotions: Compassion moves us to help those we pity, but our lack of respect leads us ultimately to neglect them (think of workers who become marginalized as they near retirement or of an employee with outmoded skills in a rapidly evolving industry).

To be sure, we notice plenty of other traits in people, but they’re nowhere near as influential as warmth and strength. Indeed, insights from the field of psychology show that these two dimensions account for more than 90% of the variance in our positive or negative impressions we form of the people around us.

So which is better, being lovable or being strong? Most leaders today tend to emphasize their strength, competence, and credentials in the workplace, but that is exactly the wrong approach. Leaders who project strength before establishing trust run the risk of eliciting fear, and along with it a host of dysfunctional behaviors. Fear can undermine cognitive potential, creativity, and problem solving, and cause employees to get stuck and even disengage. It’s a “hot” emotion, with long-lasting effects. It burns into our memory in a way that cooler emotions don’t. Research by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman drives this point home: In a study of 51,836 leaders, only 27 of them were rated in the bottom quartile in terms of likability and in the top quartile in terms of overall leadership effectiveness—in other words, the chances that a manager who is strongly disliked will be considered a good leader are only about one in 2,000.

A growing body of research suggests that the way to influence—and to lead—is to begin with warmth. Warmth is the conduit of influence: It facilitates trust and the communication and absorption of ideas. Even a few small nonverbal signals—a nod, a smile, an open gesture—can show people that you’re pleased to be in their company and attentive to their concerns. Prioritizing warmth helps you connect immediately with those around you, demonstrating that you hear them, understand them, and can be trusted by them.

When Strength Comes FirstMost of us work hard to demonstrate our competence. We want to see ourselves as strong—and want others to see us the same way. We focus on warding off challenges to our strength and providing abundant evidence of competence. We feel compelled to demonstrate that we’re up to the job, by striving to present the most innovative ideas in meetings, being the first to tackle a challenge, and working the longest hours. We’re sure of our own intentions and thus don’t feel the need to prove that we’re trustworthy—despite the fact that evidence of trustworthiness is the first thing we look for in others.

Amy J.C. Cuddy is an associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. Matthew Kohut and John Neffinger are the authors of Compelling People: The Hidden Qualities That Make Us Influential (Hudson Street Press, August 2013) and principals at KNP Communications.