Ivey's LEADER Project helping young entrepreneurs

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Thursday, July 19, 2007
From wedding planning to a chestnut farm, Ivey graduate Jenny Hui recently took her entrepreneurial talents to Moldova to develop the business plans among the young entrepreneurs of the Eastern European country.
 
 
Ivey MBA graduate Jenny Hui assists a student during her recent trip to Moldova.
 
Hui, a recent graduate of the MBA program at the Richard Ivey School of Business, joined three other Ivey students traveling to Moldova, one of the most densely populated European countries nestled between Romania and the Ukraine.
 
As part of Ivey's LEADER Project (Leading Education and Development in Emerging Regions), the group spent two weeks teaching classes and working with young entrepreneurs. In total, 25 Ivey students, both undergraduate and MBA, traveled to seven sites with developing and transitioning economies to help students identify opportunities with their projects, tweak details of existing business plans, identify market size, explain how to attack or identify a market, and discuss what skills to look for when putting together a management team. 
 
After returning from her two week stay in Moldova, Hui says she's grateful for Canada's more mature economy. Having recently broken away from a state controlled system, Hui found that it takes more effort to get things done in Moldova compared to Canada.
 
“For most public and private sector services, including healthcare, education and business, the ways things are done [in Moldova] often rely on bribes," she says.  “The bribes are made to officials in higher positions and are used for securing everything from jobs to preferential shelf space." 
 
This form of corruption was a huge shock to Ivey participants who are taught business ethics and have business experience under more transparent conditions. The need for projects like LEADER stems from the high demand for business education in developing countries as young entrepreneurs look for guidance in starting their own businesses.
 
LEADER gives students the chance to gain a more global understanding of how business works, taking business skills and practices learned in classes to a different environment and applying them.
 
“The business plans ranged in quality and scope," says Hui. “The best plan was developed by a group consisting of two sisters who had previously started a business together. They understood the risks and opportunity, target markets and had a clear go to market strategy. Their passion and enthusiasm were infectious."
 
Just as the economies in the region are developing, LEADER itself is changing with the times.
 
The program originally focused on teaching students a “mini-MBA" covering general courses in leadership, accounting, finance, marketing, strategy, and operations.
 
Now, LEADER has a more specific focus on developing local entrepreneurship. Classes include entrepreneurial finance, concept development, market recognition, opportunity and execution, entrepreneurial marketing, and entrepreneurial management.

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