​Seeking Solutions to Fill Service Gaps? 
Feeling Squeezed by Budget Cuts?
Want to Engage Your Target Community?
How About Integrating Those "Silos"?

As an economic developer, civil servant, or politician, you have a mandate - a vested interest - to foster innovation, social development and economic growth. Yet leadership efforts within public institutions are hindered by structural impediments, conflicting agendas and cultural barriers that impede your ability to accomplish stated objectives with ease. Despite the noble aim, implementation of public policy is mired in internal political strife, conservatism, rigidity, risk-aversion, and formal management structures (aka red tape and bureaucracy). This issue is not personal, it's systemic. Researchers agree that innovative endeavors fail in this environment.  As someone who works tirelessly to implement public policy, you yourself must go home on occasion feeling utterly exhausted! 

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Practical Solutions

What made the Nobel Peace Prize-winning concept of micro-finance a global phenomenon was the practical and understandable way it was presented as an exchange of value among ordinary citizens. People got it; the learned and the unschooled.  It was not professor Yunus' academic thesis that stimulated economic growth. It was the first $20 loan given from Muhammad Yunus' pocket, along with clear communication of expectations, that grew into the Grameen Bank. Each transaction was simple, relationship-based, and uncomplicated. Yet the cumulative impact of small wins was profound.

We offer customized professional development programming for government leaders and staff: 

And Peer-lead program implementation for the employers and small business owners you serve:

• Innovation leadership training
• Strategic development facilitation
• Education-based webinars & seminars
  
• Community-based action research
• Systems leadership training
• Inspiring keynotes

Building (industry co-management) bridges since 1998.

• Entrepreneurial leadership training
• Business incubation and business development programs
  
• Workforce development workshops for employers
  
• Implementation of business retention & expansion programs (BR&E)

Small Businesses Want One Thing: RESULTS

Small business owners want a return on the tax investment they make to government. They want a healthy business climate, education that produces practical workplace skills, policy that is understandable, and public services that are accessible and easy to navigate. But they also want to be acknowledged for the difference they make in communities by creating jobs, supporting social causes, and generating opportunity.

• Government pays no overhead
  
• No operating costs charged in service contracts
  
• Pay only for results on a per participant basis

• Connect education to emerging industry jobs
  
• Connect industry to community development
• Integrate service delivery at the grass roots
  

Discovery Centre for Entrepreneurship gives you access to a simple, relationship-based platform for achieving public policy "ends goals"  through an exchange of value with the target community that your agency serves.  Possibility.ca is a conduit to engage the community in learning and growing together through active participation.

How it Works

Discovery Centre for Entrepreneurship ("DCE") is a talent pool of private sector leaders whose systematized programs and services have been peer reviewed and "discovered". Once discovered the small business owner, the owner of the intellectual property, is invited to serve as a delivery partner. DCE then assists them in scaling their business solution nationally. These leaders are certified to meet DCE's Conditions of Readiness.  We govern ourselves according to DCE's Code of Honour.

Learn About Systems Leadership

The structural design of Possibility.ca and Discovery Centre for Entrepreneurship is rooted in Action Research. It is a powerful problem-solving approach that engages both researcher (DCE), and the target community (small business owners) in working together to resolve everyday problems. 

Possibility.ca is proprietory technology to powerfully engage intrinsically motivated leaders from the private sector in the collaborative flow of knowledge, new ideas, and plug and play systems across organizations, geographic regions and industries. This workplace-based education system incentivizes small businesses to produce creative solutions, useful products, and professional services that bridge the "knowing-doing gap".   Big system change occurs in real-time through demonstration projects, rapid prototyping and action research. The cumulative impact of each small win is profound.

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What are the Criteria for "Discovery"?

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Win/Win/Win
Sustainable solutions support knowledge transfer, collaboration and social development.

• Drive growth
• Create jobs
• Mobilize local assets
• Add value to BR&E programs 
• Inspire workforce development
• Cultivate community ownership, leadership, and responsibility
• Support growth where  jobs are created - in private sector businesses.

Pℨ Systems Integration:
People | Performance | Profit

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Peer-Lead Learning

Peer-lead activity is key to developing leaders with untapped potential.  As peers, we can challenge one another to create effective strategies to innovate, scale and grow in a manner that salaried consultants and contractors cannot. Here's what entrepreneurs told us:

“Expediting startups, educating entrepreneurs, supporting business growth - these are areas where the greatest contributions can be made by other entrepreneurs, not academics”

“Economic development agencies have the right intentions but use the wrong people. They hire internally to create staff positions instead of involving entrepreneurs”

"Business training is the wrong training. What serves people with an under-developed idea better is to examine their self-knowledge, fear, procrastination tendencies, emotional responses and avoidance strategies"

“Entrepreneurs feed off each other creatively”

“Healthy business ‘ecosystems’ have the potential to nurture all the people within them in ways most people are not getting at school, at work, or even at home" - Technology entrepreneur, Vancouver, BC

Making the Invisible - Visible

DCE uses proprietary tools called Discovery Wheels™ to make intangible factors, systemic gaps, inconsistencies, and unintended consequences tangible, visible and understandable to the participants themselves. These are not sophisticated psychological profiling tools, they are simple tools to guide a reflective process that fosters self-awareness, objectivity, motivation, and creative thinking. In turn this fuels the desire to take action - both individually and collectively.

Free Yourself from Bureaucracy

Current models of public service delivery, including legislated requirements for inter-agency coordination, is not enabling your agency to meet the needs of ordinary Canadians as effectively you'd like. A systemic service “gap” exists. Despite your best efforts, regulations, public-private partnerships with big business, RFP processes, and service contracting requirements are perceived by private sector leaders as structural impediments to innovation and small business growth.

Discovery Centre for Entrepreneurship can help your agency empower citizens, engage workers, and help communities grow viable businesses by making small incremental investments in the community you serve. 

Find Out More