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Document Library

Our document library includes whitepapers, articles and presentations addressing topics of interest to you.

Featured Documents

How Much is Your Pre-Revenue Company Worth?

The issue of valuing pre-revenue companies is often raised when entrepreneurs are looking for external investment. Unfortunately, it is more of an art than of a science. There are formulae that can be used to provide a company valuation, but these generally just provide a base number from which negotiation can start and most of these valuation techniques limit the potential upside of the venture. Ultimately, about 50% of the businesses that receive investment offers turn them down, as they cannot agree on company valuation.

This paper looks at alternate methods of calculating the value of a pre-revenue company and provides tips for entrepreneurs as they prepare to negotiate with potential investors.

Harness the Power of Networking to Grow Your Business

To a small business, personal networks are one of the most valuable assets. But how do we develop our networks? And how do we best utilize them?

Some people are natural networkers however, many of us are not. As well, there are a dizzying number of networking tools available. Fortunately, there are best practices in networking for business growth and these techniques and tools can be employed effectively by most business people.

This whitepaper looks at how to expand your network and how to use it to grow your business by using both online tools and face-to-face interactions.

This document was based on a session from the Ready Set Grow series of free educational webinars for entrepreneurs produced jointly by the Canadian Innovation Centre and the Technology Marketing Resource Centre.

The Essentials

Critical Factors Assessment: Planning for Venture Success

What are the secrets to making it to market successfully?

The Canadian Innovation Centre has assessed over 10,000 new venture initiatives. Based on our research we have identified 42 factors that have a significant impact on the likelihood of venture sucess. A critical gap in one or more of those 42 facors can seriously weaken a venture’s chances of success. The Innovation Centre offers a service, the Critical Factor Assessment, that evaluates a new venture against the 42 factors and provides recommendations on how to increase the likelihood of success.

This whitepaper looks at the 8 most important factors for new ventures and explains how the Critical Factor Assessment suite of services can increase the likelihood of success.

Maximizing the Opportunity: Creating High Performance Business Models

Technology companies thrive on innovation, but did you know that the greatest successes are often due to innovative business models rather than innovative technology.

This whitepaper, based one of our Ready Set Grow educational webinars, looks at the different purposes of business models, how to focus your business model on making money, alternate revenue models and how to generate recurring revenues.

This document was based on a session from the Ready Set Grow series of free educational webinars for entrepreneurs produced jointly by the Canadian Innovation Centre and the Technology Marketing Resource Centre.

Using Customer Input to Design Winning Products

Your customer is your partner in product design

Why do we love using some products and hate others? We all have our favourite things: a well worn knife, a beautiful fountain pen or the perfect non-stick crepe pan. But in the world of software, it’s hard to find good examples of software that people love using. Is it because we don’t ask our customers what they want? Or because we don’t know what to do with what they tell us?

This whitepaper looks at the the science of User Expereince Design and provides advice on how use customer input to design & build software products that people love to use.

This document was based on a session from the Ready Set Grow series of free educational webinars for entrepreneurs produced jointly by the Canadian Innovation Centre and the Technology Marketing Resource Centre.

How the Inno-Gate system can boost your rate of Innovation Success

A proven process to ensure your best innovations are implemented
Management decisions on whether to proceed and how to execute a specific innovation strategy can seem arbitrary and emotional. They rely on informal processes and limited feedback.

In this whitepaper, Andrew Maxwell looks at a formalized process to make the innovation process more predictable.

Ready Set Grow

The Innovation Centre has been running this series since 2008. Each webinar features Canadian tech executives and subject matter experts addressing issues of critical concern to tech entrepreneurs.  Each recording is accompanied by a whitepaper capturing the content of the event in an easy-to-reference document.

Harness the Power of Networking to Grow Your Business

To a small business, personal networks are one of the most valuable assets. But how do we develop our networks? And how do we best utilize them?

Some people are natural networkers however, many of us are not.  As well, there are a dizzying number of networking tools available.  Fortunately, there are best practices in networking for business growth and these techniques and tools can be employed effectively by most business people.

This whitepaper looks at how to expand your network and how to use it to grow your business by using both online tools and face-to-face interactions.

This document was based on a session from the Ready Set Grow series of free educational webinars for entrepreneurs produced jointly by the Canadian Innovation Centre and the Technology Marketing Resource Centre.

The Silent Partner: Using Customer Input to Create Winning Products

Why do we love using some products and hate others? We all have our favourite things: a well worn knife, a beautiful fountain pen or the perfect non-stick crepe pan. But in the world of software, it’s hard to find good examples of software that people love using.   Is it because we don’t ask our customers what they want?  Or because we don’t know what to do with what they tell us?

This whitepaper looks at the the science of User Expereince Design and provides advice on how use customer input to design & build software products that people love to use.

This document was based on a session from the Ready Set Grow series of free educational webinars for entrepreneurs produced jointly by the Canadian Innovation Centre and the Technology Marketing Resource Centre.

De-Mystify Your Banker

For most people, applying for a bank loan is probably one of their least favourite things to do (aside from public speaking) even though most businesses require a good working relationship with a bank just to survive.   Bankers are a different breed and they don’t see things the same way as entrepreneurs.  How can you bridge this divide?

This whitepaper explains out what your banker is really looking for and how you can create the presentation and package that will get you access to the capital you need.

Using the Internet as Your Primary Business Development Tool

Over 90% of buyers now start their buying cycle by researching solutions and suppliers on the internet.  That shift in buyer behaviour has created a tremendous threat to traditional businesses, and a huge opportunity for newer, smaller organizations. Today, smaller companies with limited resources can use their website to outperform their competition, gain priceless market insight, and generate high-quality prospects at lower cost than possible using traditional sales and marketing.

This whitepaper looks at how you can build an effective online sales funnel, by attracting, engaging, converting, and nurturing your prospects with minimal resources, and turn your website into your most effective business development tool.

This document is based on a session from the Ready Set Grow series of free educational webinars for entrepreneurs produced jointly by the Canadian Innovation Centre and the Technology Marketing Resource Centre.

From Push to Pull – Creating Demand for your Offering

Almost everybody hates coldcalling, and the statistics confirm that it is a pretty low percentage game. But what if you didn’t have to go out and beat the bushes for prospective customers? What if you could get customers to come to you?

It’s not a pipedream. Many companies are doing this. But it’s not a slam dunk either. Creating“Pull” for your offering requires analysis, strategy and planning. You need to start right back into the product design phase to ensure that your offering will have strong appeal to specific market segments and that your marketing campaigns will reach those prospects and incent them to come to you.

This whitepaper examines the strategies and techniques that can be used to create pull for your product.

This whitepaper is based on a session in of the Ready Set Grow series of free educational webinars for entrepreneurs produced jointly by the Canadian Innovation Centre and the Technology Marketing Resource Centre.

Maximizing the Opportunity: Creating High Performance Business Models

Technology companies thrive on innovation, but did you know that the greatest successes are often due to innovative business models rather than innovative technology.

This whitepaper, based one of our Ready Set Grow educational webinars, looks at the different purposes of business models, how to focus your business model on making money, alternate revenue models and how to generate recurring revenues.

This document was based on a session from the Ready Set Grow series of free educational webinars for entrepreneurs produced jointly by the Canadian Innovation Centre and the Technology Marketing Resource Centre.

Additional Documents

  1. Critical Factors for Venture Success

    Why are some businesses successful while others seem destined to fail? Are there things you can do to improve your chances of success?

    The Canadian Innovation Centre (CIC) has worked with thousands of new ventures over its 35 year history and its research has revealed that there are 8 critical factors that strongly influence whether a particular venture will succeed or not.

    In this presentation, Andrew Maxwell, Chief Innovation Officer of the CIC, explains the 8 critical factors for new venture success.

    This presentation is part of the Ready Set Grow series of free educational webinars for entrepreneurs. Visit our video library to see a recording of this session.

  2. Valuing Pre-Revenue Companies

    The issue of valuing pre-revenue companies is often raised when entrepreneurs are looking for external investment. Unfortunately, it is more of an art than of a science. There are formulae that can be used to provide a company valuation, but these generally just provide a base number from which negotiation can start and most of these valuation techniques limit the potential upside of the venture. Ultimately, about 50% of the businesses that receive investment offers turn them down, as they cannot agree on company valuation.

    This presentation looks at alternate methods of calculating the value of a pre-revenue company and provides tips for entrepreneurs as they prepare to negotiate with potential investors.

  3. Twitter in the Classroom

    This presentation describes some best practices for the use of Twitter as part of a university level educational environment based on the experiences of the entrepreneurship class at the University of Waterloo.

  4. 10 Best Practices for Enterprise Innovation

    Most companies recognize the need to become more innovative, but don’t know how to get there.  The Canadian Innovation Centre has acquired a great deal of practical experience in enterprise innovation through working with many companies to address their innovation challenges.  Some of our insights are captured in this new mini-guide.

    Creating an innovative enterprise is a complex endeavour and there are many elements that must be in place to successfully generate, select and implement valuable innovations on a consistent basis.  Still, it is not rocket science (or at least it needn’t be).   Many companies have become successful innovators and this provides them with important benefits in terms of growth rates, profitability and competitive strength.

    Check out “10 Best Practices for Enterprise Innovation” for practical recommendations on how to increase the innovation capacity of your organization.

Talk to one of our advisors about your specific needs!

The Canadian Innovation Centre has a wide range of services to help entrepreneurs, innovators and inventors transform their ideas into reality.