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The Imagination Catalyst is OCADU's entrepreneurship center.
It's sort of the hub or portal for all things entrepreneurship.
Inspiring entrepreneurs, uh, come to the "Take It To Market" program,
which is a year long program, cohort based,
where we teach them business skills
and a lot- provide a lot of one on one coaching,
and access to mentors, uh,
help coach them through, uh, grant applications and funding sources,
help them meet with, um, potential angel investors
or venture capital investors – things like that.
We basically help take them through the journey
of launching their business.
[Robert Tu] I am commercializing my thesis project.
It's basically a wearable LED panel that can display text and graphics.
[Julie Forand] It's been a really great,
uh, stepping stone for my business, Sprout Guerrilla,
um, which enables guerrilla gardening with moss graffiti.
[Jessica Knox] This is a tool that we work with in our products.
So we build software that uses hardware devices like this
to plug biofeedback into gaming experiences.
[Petra] So after one year, they should in fact,
have their business launched and to us the definition
of launching your business means that you're customer ready.
In other words, your product is working,
you've figured out your supply chain,
you know what target market you're going after,
you've worked out your financial scenarios,
and you're ready to go and take on customers.
[Robert] Imagination Catalyst had helped me a lot in terms of, um,
moving forward and developing a business plan,
in getting mentorship services,
and also allowing me to work in a space
where I can get feedback from other members
and, uh, to get support as well.
[Julie] Incubator has been a great place to workshop, uh,
the business plan and the business model.
Um, I've spent a lot of time reworking it
and getting advice from people on how to best proceed.
[Jessica] Talking to people at different points
in their commercialization process can be really valuable
'cause you st- you can, you know,
share a lot of, kind of, best practices and mistakes
and, uh, and then you also get psychological support
for the adventure that is starting your own business.
[Petra] You probably have also done some customer validation work,
which is part of what we, uh, work through in the program as well.
Where customer validation is- means that you take your product or your idea
and you try to get a couple of customers
to either maybe, pilot it or try it out,
use it, get some feedback and be able to integrate that feedback
into improving the product until you're ready to go.
[Jessica] We came in with a product idea and a proof of concept.
And it's interesting,
throughout our time at the Imagination Catalyst
it's actually shifted a fair bit.
So we started off with a team building product, uh,
and are now focusing more on stress reduction.
[Petra] In a short period of time, learn a lot about business
in a very applied and a very real-time way.
The other benefit is your ability to actually launch a company.
[Julie] I want to launch Sprout Guerrilla
into a sustainable business.
Um, not just that I work in the area of sustainability,
in urban sustainability, but also a,
uh, growing, sustainable business.
[Robert] I'm hoping to scale up,
uh, with the help of the Imagination Catalyst.
And the way that, um, we're planning to do that
is through a lot of business planning, a lot of market validation.
[Petra] Becoming an entrepreneur with the Imagination Catalyst
is that it will help you develop a life skill
that is- will be so important to both you
and the resilience you might have in the workplace
and also, uh, the econ- the emerging
innovation and entrepreneurship based economy.
[Jessica] So get out there, talk to potential customers.
See if it's something that, uh, that they would buy,
that they think satisfies a need that they have.
[Petra] If entrepreneurship is an essential life skill,
and I believe that it is, in the innovation
and entrepreneurship economy going forward,
there is no better place to learn about entrepreneurship
than here at the Imagination Catalyst at OCAD U.
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