Forging better business leaders

By: Gabi Herman

The province has just granted more than $1 million to a project run by McMaster and the Innovation Factory to help young Hamiltonians become leaders in innovative business. The project, called The Forge, is based in McMaster’s Innovation Park.

Successful applicants to The Forge become part of a six-month start-up accelerator program to help them hone their ideas and bring them to market. They are given a space to work in, and educational programming to help them advance and collaborate with other young entrepreneurs. The ultimate goal of The Forge is to make Hamilton a hub for new developments in different sectors of business.

The Forge hosts 8-12 small companies at a time, and each is pushed into a collaborative environment. Weekly meetings demand that teams share their successes and failures, and their goals for the upcoming week. Participants are encouraged to share ideas and brainstorm together.

According to David Carter, executive director of the Innovation Factory, it takes some time for participants to warm up.

“Some people are holding their cards close to their chest,” he says about new participants. “A couple days later you see somebody helping somebody else out with a problem, or suggesting their perspective on someone else’s idea.”

The collaboration is not limited to those with the same expertise. Designers, engineers, artists, and people with small business experience are some examples of people who join The Forge. They can learn from each other and hear differing points of view to fine-tune their projects. Carter calls the process “cooperative competition.”

Past developments include a walker for elderly people with safety precautions, a bike library for disadvantaged youth, and a number of technology-oriented apps. Since The Forge is such a new initiative, much more is expected of its future.

“As new people come in the bar will get set higher and higher,” said Carter. “We’ll have success stories we can refer to, so people will come in wanting to raise their game.”

The grant will be used to help improve The Forge’s physical space with updates such as whiteboards on the walls for collaborative work, better electrical wiring, and more equipment. It will also be used to help fund more educational speakers and workshops, and to fund some business abroad.