Entrepreneurship can come at any age--and often it can come very early in a person's working life. Hoping to give a leg up to some of the country's youngest and most promising entrepreneurs is
The Next 36, a nine-month program that provides intensive mentorship and support to 36 undergraduates and recent graduates. They've just opened up applications for their 2014 cohort.
Program participants work in teams of three, each of which will develop a business aimed at the mobile technology market.
That doesn't mean that only developers and the technologically-oriented should apply though: participants come from all disciplines. The key quality applicants should demonstrate is leadership, explains marketing and events director Jon French.
It's not the sector that matters so much as the characteristic, someone with the ability to "look at an opportunity or challenge and turn it into a positive," he says. To that end, "a track record of excelling at at least one thing" is the single most important factor Next 36 looks for when selecting its finalists, which have included top athletes and musicians as well as coders and engineers. (In previous years participants have been split into roughly one-third technology majors, one-third business and commerce majors, and one-third students with a background in the humanities.)
While program participants spend their time with Next 36 developing a new business, immediate impact matters less than establishing the skills for long-term success, French says. Their main goal is that in 10 or 15 years, some of Canada's leading entrepreneurs will have come through the program, having learned the hard and soft skills they need to build viable businesses throughout a long entrepreneurial career.
Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Jon French, Director of Marketing and Events, The Next 36