Global e-Week
Lighting the Global Path to Innovation
In celebration of Global Entrepreneurship Week WPI's Collaborative for Entrepreneurship & Innovation will host many events. November 16, 2009 marks the beginning of thousands of worldwide celebrations which will inspire young and old alike to embrace innovation, creativity, and imagination through events, competitions across the globe .
It is said that more that three million people and almost 9000 organizations will celebrate between Nov 16-22. As the world's largest foundation dedicated exclusively to entrepreneurship, the Kauffman Foundation co-founded Global Entrepreneurship Week to inspire young people to embrace innovation, creativity, and imagination through various initiatives, events, and competitions.
(Please note: Due to the flu season, topics and speakers may change. We will make every attempt to notify attendees of any change.)
Visit the official Global Entrepreneurship Week web site.
Directions to WPI.
Please register at least one day in advance of each workshop.
Agenda, Speaker Profiles and Workshop Descriptions
Monday, November 16 - 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Marketing Your Business with No Money
WPI Campus Center - Hagglund Room
Register
Laura Briere – Vision Advertising
Laura is the CEO and founder of Vision Advertising. She is an award-winning marketing expert with approximately 10 years in the field where she has also been an experienced and trusted consultant for over 300 different domestic and international companies. Her session will cover ways to market your business using low cost/no cost resources.
Monday, November 16 - 2:00 - 3:00 p.m.
Learn to Use Hoovers, LexisNexis and more online Business Resource Tools
WPI Gordon Library - Anderson Lab A
(For WPI community only) REGISTER
This workshop will provide information on using online business tools for choosing a career path launching a new business or joining a firm. Christine Drew leads WPI's information literacy initiatives and provides research education to students, faculty and staff. She coordinates outreach to promote library resources and services and serves as IT Liaison to several departments. Maggie Becker is an Assistant Director in the Career Development Center and is the lead student counselor for helping them make the right academic major choices.
Monday, November 16 - 5:00 - 6:00 p.m.
Minimizing the Risks of Manufacturing a New Product
WPI Campus Center - Mid-Century Room
Register
Darlene Flaig - Product Solutions International, Inc.
No Surprises! The complexities and costs involved with bringing a new product concept to fruition demands the highest level of attention to detail. As with any new venture, planning is imperative, and knowing what questions to ask is more critical than searching for a particular or absolute answer. Darlene's presentation will cover the risks of manufacturing in today's global economy. Darlene Flaig is President of Product Solutions International, Inc., a Product Development and Contract Manufacturing firm which enhances the procurement of consumer goods through customized systems and collaborative agreements. Darleen Flaig brings nearly 30 years experience in global procurement, manufacturing, quality assurance and logistics. She has conducted business and worked with manufacturing and quality systems in over 25 countries. Currently, Ms. Flaig serves as the CEO and President of Product Solutions International, Inc. PSI acts as an out-sourced purchasing department by managing the global manufacturing, quality control, and logistics for its clients. Prior to PSI, Ms. Flaig served as the Senior Director, Global Product Development and International Distribution for Princess House, Inc a division of Colgate-Palmolive (NYSE: CL). In this role, Ms. Flaig directed new product development and procurement for the $130 million USD division of Colgate-Palmolive's multinational business. Her experience includes strategic planning, global quality standards performance assessment and monitoring, international contract negotiation, cost monitoring and manufacturing production scheduling. In 1993, Ms. Flaig earned the Global Achievement Award for Global Sourcing. Additionally, Ms. Flaig served as Senior Manager, Import Product Development and Procurement for Florists Transworld Delivery (FTD), one of the largest floral companies in the world. In this role, Ms. Flaig directed the operation of a $75 million USD division with primary responsibility for procurement and quality oversight with products from 10 countries. Prior to this position, Ms. Flaig was an International Group Product Manager for Amway Global. Her achievements include strategic design and implementation of a Japanese personal care line with first year sales exceeding $60 million USD. Ms. Flaig earned a Master's Degree in Communication from Western Michigan University, graduating with the highest honors. She has taught various undergraduate and graduate University courses, including International Business, Small Business Management, and Logic + Critical Thinking. Ms. Flaig is an active member of the Boston Chamber of Commerce and WPI Venture Forum and currently resides near Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Monday, November 16 - 6:00 - 8:30 p.m.
Making Your Small Business Look Really Big
WPI Campus Center - Hagglund Room
Register
How important is a business address or an answering service? How important are web sites, PR, and business cards? How important is the persona you convey during presentations and networking? You won't want to miss this session whether you are an existing small business or considering launching one.
Barbara Finer, Founder of QuiVivity Marketing Partners, provides assistance in evaluating businesses, writing business plans and marketing plans, and leading teams to launch well-positioned technology-based products. Prior to founding QuiVivity, she founded three other startups and held senior marketing roles at companies that include Net- Genesis, WebPresence, 3Com, Keithley Instruments and Synoptics. Finer has been active on several non-profit and for-profit Boards and has taught Marketing and Entrepreneurship at Emerson College, Babson College and Suffolk University. Barb's session will cover effective, shoe-string marketing including public relations, web site development, social media, direct marketing and more.
A resident and big fan of Worcester, Lisa Kirby Gibbs is the owner Highland-March Office Business Center in Westborough. With an appetite for change and a broad range of abilities, Lisa has spent the past 20 years in a variety of roles: entrepreneur, organizational consultant, family therapist, career management consultant, and most recently, consulting to family businesses and family foundations. With a Master's Degree in Counseling Psychology and extensive Post-Masters training in Family System's Theory, Lisa relies on her psych. and systems background and solid sense of good business, but she attributes the bulk of her success to a sincere interest in people and an ability to cultivate and maintain productive relationships. Lisa will be speaking on the importance of setting your business up for success, how critical it is to appear solid and successful to customers and/or investors, the significance of networking with other professionals, and the necessity of having a work environment where you can focus on innovation and profit.
Frank Damelio is a professional development trainer at Target Intellect. Their panel provides important information on both personal and professional resources for small businesses to create a competitive presence in the market.
Tuesday, November 17 - 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Cheating Death by PowerPoint
WPI Campus Center - Chairman's Room
Laura M. Foley - Laura M. Foley Design
Have you ever sat through a lousy PowerPoint presentation where the speaker reads the slides to you, or the colors are so loud they give you a headache, or there is so much stuff packed onto each slide that you don't even know what's going on? Or maybe you're guilty of creating your own bad PowerPoint...? If you want to avoid making "Death by PowerPoint" presentations, this workshop is for you. This discussion of PowerPoint design will help you transform your presentations into powerful marketing tools.
In this free workshop you'll learn about some common PowerPoint mistakes and how to avoid them. You'll also learn how to create effective leave-behinds that will reinforce your message long after your presentation is done. At the end of the workshop, you'll view some participants' PowerPoint presentations and use your new skills to brainstorm ways to improve them. (If you have a PowerPoint presentation you'd like the class to critique, please send it to laura@lauramfoley.com by November 13.)
Laura Foley has been making PowerPoint presentations less lousy since 1989 for organizations such as Atlas Venture, Kodiak Venture Partners, Polaris Venture Partners, and Tufts New England Medical Center. As the principal of Laura M. Foley Design, Laura helps her clients communicate their messages visually with effective branding and marketing materials.
Tuesday, November 17 - 2:00 - 5:00 p.m.
Developing a Sales and Marketing Program That Really Works
WPI Higgins House - One John Wing Road, Worcester, MA
Norman Brust - NTB Associates
Presidents, CEO's, marketing managers, sales managers, product managers, salespersons and anyone else involved in the development, management or implementation of a sales and marketing effort should attend this seminar. Time will be allocated for attendee questions and answers.
Profitable cash flow is the lifeblood of a successful company. This session will describe the elements of an effective sales and marketing program that will ensure profitable cash flow and show you how to tailor them to your company's needs. Topics to be covered will include 1) Product and Market Definition - Defining target markets; Determining market need; Defining needed products; Evaluating the competition; 2) Product Promotion -Creating a corporate image; Telling the market what you have to sell; Drip Marketing; 3) Pricing and Profit - Methods for pricing a product or service; Evaluating a product's business potential; and 4) Product Distribution - Types of distribution channels; Metric-based sales; Supporting product distribution.
Norman Brust has over thirty years of successful management, marketing, engineering and manufacturing experience with such technology based companies as General Dynamics, RCA, EG&G, Racal-Dana, Datel-Intersil and Amistar. He founded NTB Associates in 1988 to help manufacturing and technology based businesses increase profitable sales. Mr. Brust is a recognized authority on consultative, business-to-business sales and marketing and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering from Brown University and a Master of Science degree in Electronic Engineering from Northeastern University.
Postponed to a later date: Tuesday, November 17 - 6:00 - 8:30 p.m.
- Handling Employment to Minimize Risk of Legal Liability and
- Interviewing and Hiring Best Practices
Wednesday November 18 - 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Legally Structuring Your Business Entity
WPI Campus Center -Chairman's Room
Register
Michael Refolo, Esq. - Mirick O'Connell, LLP
Review the reasons for forming a business entity, and the advantages and disadvantages establishing a sole proprietorship, partnership, limited liability company and corporation.
Wednesday, November 18 - 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Building Effective Surveys or How to Mess up Your Survey Research
WPI Campus Center -Morgan Room
Register
Erin DeSilva and Professor Erwin Danneels
This session will review common pitfalls with survey research such as sample choice, non-response bias, using appropriate statistics, and writing questions. Exquisite examples of poor questions and questionnaires will be discussed. Presenters will also review a series of free electronic survey tools, discussing the benefits, as well as the potential time-wasting problems with each. Erin DeSilva is an Instructional Technology Specialist in WPI's
Academic Technology Center. Erwin Danneels is an Associate Professor in the Department of Management at WPI.
Wednesday, November 18 - 2:30 - 4:00 p.m.
Savvy Elevator Speech and Networking Skills
WPI Campus Center - Chairman's Room
Register
Norman Brust - NTB Associates (see above bio)
A hands-on workshop to help you create an elevator statement that will attract attention and show you how to meet and build relationships with people who can help contribute to your success.
Wednesday, November 18 - 6:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Social Entrepreneurship Panel
WPI - Fuller Labs (academic building) Perrault Hall, Lower Level
Register
Amber Chand is the Founder of The Women's Peace Collection, a social enterprise that supports women's enterprises primarily in regions of conflict and post-conflict. Her company offers high quality, meaningful gifts created by talented craftswomen who are rebuilding their lives in the shadows of war, genocide, civil unrest and crippling poverty. A major focus of Amber's work is to support peace-building initiatives in regions of conflict, offering craft as a symbolic expression for reconciliation. She is one of the original architects and designers of the Jerusalem Candle of Hope and Candle of Peace & Prosperity, a remarkable collaboration taking place today between Palestinian and Israeli craftswomen. She has more recently launched The 100 Women: 100 Hopes Campaign in Darfur, an initiative that supports women who are struggling to earn a dignified livelihood, under extremely challenging circumstances, in one of the largest refugee camps in Western Darfur. The Darfur Basket of Strength and Darfur Peace Baskets created by these women, while symbolizing the artisans' hopes and dreams for a secure future, provide them and their families with income vital to their well-being. The Women's Peace Collection currently works with artisans in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Burma/Thailand, Cambodia, Israel and Palestine, Colombia, Rwanda, Kenya, Sudan and Nepal. To support this work further, The Amber Chand Foundation was created in 2008, as a vehicle to offer women in these regions micro-finance grants to create and grow their enterprises. Amber has been widely recognized for her work around the world and her humanitarian business model. She was inducted into the Business Women's Hall of Fame by Baypath College in 2008; received the Vagina Warrior Award by Eve Ensler's organization, VDAY in 2007; has had her Rwanda journals published by Marie Claire Magazine in July 2004; was voted Entrepreneur of the Month by Inc Magazine in June 2003; and has appeared on CNN News; NPR with articles about her in the Herald Tribune (European Edition); Chicago Tribune and Boston Globe. Born in East Africa of Indian parentage, and expelled from her country during a time of political turmoil in her youth, Amber has developed a profound and personal interest in issues affecting women's empowerment and economic security around the world. As a refugee-entrepreneur herself, Amber is keenly aware of the challenges that women (and men) face when they have lost their possessions and homes. Central to her work is her belief in the role of small business as a transformational agent for social change and peace building, a topic she has frequently been asked to speak on. Amber is currently working on her book, The Gift of Collapse: A Woman's Journey into Awakening – a narrative about the ways in which she has had to rebuild her life in the face of numerous challenges and the tools she has cultivated to navigate her life. Amber is a founding member of the Business Council for Peace, an entity that grew out of the Global Peace Initiative for Women Spiritual and Religious Leaders and a partner of UNIFEM (United Nations Development Fund for Women). She is an active member of the Business Advisory Council for Women for Women International, a global organization supporting women in regions of conflict. She is a Board Member of Barka Foundation, an NGO that works on indigenous enterprise in Burkina Faso and sits on the International Advisory Group for Spirituality in Business Network based in Copenhagen, Denmark. She was recently invited to be an Ambassador for AWE – Accelerating Women Entrepreneurs, an organization that works with women entrepreneurs around the world. In 2006, she was invited to join the Wise Women Circle at the World Bank/IFC, an advisory group that supports micro craft enterprises around the world.
Jose Gomez Marquez designs medical devices aimed at next four billion patients living on less than $2 a day. As director of Innovations in International Health @ MIT, he leads a group of researchers working at the intersection of appropriate technology, biomedicine, and international development. His technologies include inhalable vaccine delivery systems, smart diagnostics for tuberculosis compliance and medical technology innovation kits for doctors in the field. Jose teaches D-Lab Health at MIT, where students flex their ingenuity and work with partners around the world to create their own developing world medical technologies.
Anna Young is the co-founder of Salud del Sol, Inc, an appropriate technology social enterprise focused on solar technologies that can be manufactured by entrepreneurs in the developing world. The Salud del Sol R&D efforts have developed an array of products including solar box-cookers, food dryers and a solar powered autoclave aimed at rural medical sterilization. During the last two years, Anna has launched Salud del Sol's product line from an R&D project to a business enterprise through partnerships with local women's cooperatives in Totogalpa, Nicaragua. As Director of Development for Salud del Sol, Anna coordinates various strategic initiatives to grow Salud del Sol at the intersection of renewable energy, social entrepreneurship, and global health.
November Sky Freyss-Cole - Sky's involvement with the Artists of Matenwa, Haiti began with a trip to the island village with Ellen LeBow, founder of the initiative to empower the women there with sustainable arts entrepreneurship skills that could be passed on to the next generation. An art center was erected and the women take donated art supplies and turn them into products for sale. Ellen brings them back to Massachusetts and sells them in a store in Wellfleet, MA called RaRa. Sky will tell the story of the Women Artists of Matenwa, Haiti - through a youthful perspective.
Thursday, November 19 - 1:00 - 2:00 p.m.
IP Bootcamp Workshop - Lessons in How to Start an IP Centric Company
Higgins Labs, Room 116
Register
David Schwartz - Productive Education LLC
This workshop will explore how to start an IP-centric company using the licensing model. The "Big Bang Theory" will be used as a way to look at the time line in taking an idea from concept thru the steps of reduction to practice, prototype, and licensed royalty bearing commercial distribution. The barriers to licensing large corporations will be examined by taking a close look at a typical idea submission agreement. The steps that bridge the inventor/founders goals to successful licensing outcomes will be analyzed with real world examples from the process.
Thursday, November 19 - 4:00 - 5:15 p.m.
Intellectual Property
WPI Campus Center - Chairman's Room
Register
Pamela Torpey, Esq. - Hamilton Brook Smith & Reynolds, P.C.
Pamela Torpey is an Associate at HBSR. She has extensive experience counseling clients with the development, management and protection strategies of their intellectual property portfolios. Her practice areas include biochemistry, chemistry, polymer chemistry and pharmaceutical industries. Pamela's workshop will broadly discuss intellectual property and steps for protecting your ideas.
Thursday, November 19 - 5:30 - 7:30 p.m.
Cancelled: WPI Venture Forum Networking Event at Wright Line
Friday, November 20 - 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.
The Dark Side of Entrepreneurship
WPI Campus Center - Hagglund Room
Register
Rick Howell - Howell Product Development
A deep discussion on the contradictions that we are taught in entrepreneurship. We are taught so much about collaboration – everything you do – the mentality. But what you're not taught is that there are times that your get so head strong in this stuff that you fail to see the signals from people that have personal issues where their own self worth is in the gutter, even doing illegal things and trying to take over your company and you are negotiating from a position of weakness. Don't be blind-sided. Open your eyes. Don't be put into a position of being squeezed out. Org behavior related. What are the markers and signals that you have to pay attention to? When should you run counter to your entrepreneurial instincts? If you really believe in the credo that a small percentage is worth more than a percentage of nothing. If you're the founder and you have a lot of value to add to the company and even if you have given up control. The people that have taken your company do not realize that you have value to add and that without you, this is adverse to the company and society who will not benefit from the innovation.
Friday, November 20 - 2:00 - 5:00 p.m.
Celebrate the Installation of Professor Frank Hoy as WPI's
Paul R. Beswick'57 Endowed Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Must RSVP to 508-831-5348
WPI Higgins House, One John Wing Road, Worcester, MA
Please register at least one day in advance of each workshop.
Maintained by webmaster@wpi.eduLast modified: November 18, 2009 22:23:27