Providing a top education key to growth, summit told

04/09/2008

Providing students with a world-class education is the key to economic growth in the province, two panelists told the Fullsail venture capital conference Monday in Saint John.

"We don't have oil in the ground. Our oil is brain," said Barry Bisson, president of Shad International, a company providing a program called Shad Valley that is designed to encourage entrepreneurship learning amongst students.

Also an adjunct professor in engineering at the University of Waterloo, Bisson returned to New Brunswick for the summit to share his expertise in teaching entrepreneurship to young people. He agreed to act as panelist because, he said, "New Brunswick is very close to my heart."

So is education in New Brunswick: Bisson spent eight years obtaining a bachelor and a masters degree in engineering and 21 years teaching with the faculty of education in New Brunswick before he moved on to his current Ontario posting.

During Monday's early morning panel, moderator Ian Hanomansing from the CBC posed a question to Bisson: "Can you teach entrepreneurship?" Without a doubt, you can, was Bisson's response. In fact, you have to. Education is the only way to change.

When Bisson was teaching in New Brunswick, he said he too often saw students who didn't know how to think big.

"I saw a lot of business plans for a lot of restaurants in Moncton. We have to get these students thinking 'the world is my market', as opposed to 'Fredericton is my market.' I call it grantrepreneurship, the idea students have had that they have got to get a government loan or a government grant."

Shad Valley takes students beyond that line of thinking and moves them toward thinking about how to build a business plan or a concept that will attract investors.
Bisson said that New Brunswick is fourth nationally in terms of student participation rates, which is a good sign.

"My goal is to see between 40 and 50 each year and get them connected to New Brunswick businesses to show them you can have a great career in the province. That can stem the brain drain. If one or two every year stay here and begin a business, the impact can be huge."

Key, however, is for students to receive a first-rate education in mathematics and engineering, so they have the skills needed to build the gadget that everyone in the world wants to buy.

"I'm so, so optimistic about this province right now," said Bisson. That's something the technology manager with the University of Waterloo's Intellecutal Property Management Group, Scott Inwood, has seen first-hand. Inwood, who also acted as panelist at the summit, explained that Waterloo has a reputation for the amazingly profitable business spinoffs that have been created from its strong academic core.

There are three things the University of Waterloo has done to encourage an entrepreneurial way of thinking, Inwood said. Firstly, he said that the university focused on science and math education - because those are the streams that generate products, systems or concepts that lead to businesses. Secondly, the university moved ahead with a co-operative education program, which matches students with real-life businesses in their chosen field in order to move their creativities toward solution-based entrepreneurial ideas. Thirdly, the university allowed inventors to own the intellectual property developed at the school.

The school has been working on this since 1957, Inwood said. "It takes time, but it grows. As students see success it becomes contagious."

Michelle Porter
Telegraph-Journal
Published Tuesday April 8th, 2008
Appeared on page B3