Mentoring

There is a lot of interest in mentoring these days, both from people who want to be mentored and those who want to give back and be mentors. Mentoring isn’t exactly new, though. UNSW’s Chancellor, David Gonski, was mentored by the late Kim Santow in the 70’s. We should be able to learn lessons about mentoring from our past before reinventing the wheel.


Before looking at different types of mentors, let’s take a step back and compare mentoring to coaching. If you think of a coach, you probably get the image of a sports coach, running up and down the side-lines, yelling very specific instructions to the players about where they should be and what they should do, or who they should keep an eye on. Mentoring, on the other hand, isn’t so much about providing specific instructions, as it is about asking the right questions to get the mentee to draw their on conclusion about what course of action is best. For years I volunteered with the NVBC, and co-mentored start-ups in the competition alongside Peter Parrish. Back then there was not much structure to the program other than us asking the entrepreneurs a million questions and getting them to think about what they would say to judges in the competition who might ask the same questions. These days, the NVBC mentoring program is complemented by a very structured mentoring program, operated by the regional innovation council (NVBC's title sponsor), for which Peter is now training to be a “lead mentor”.

Even though some people prefer being part of a structured program and being assigned mentors, the reality is that you (yes, you) can go out and find your own mentors, too. Having one mentor doesn’t mean you can’t have another. You don’t even need to let the person know you consider them your mentor. David Lerner’s blog has an interesting post describing varying degrees of formality to mentorship, from free and informal, through to very structured for-fee programs. Another excellent source for what it means to have or be a mentor is Nature’s guide for mentors, which even includes a self-assessment tool, to see how good a mentor you are.

This past semester, I created the opportunity for 15 teams of 5-6 students to be mentored for their business idea as part of a course I teach, STRE2010. Part way through the course, students created short youtube clips of their business pitches (e.g. Detect to Protect, much like the recent TED talk on concussions), which I then sent out to about 30 entrepreneurs who had previously expressed interest in mentoring. Within a few short days (over a weekend!), mentors had signed up to all of the teams. Teams were mentored for another 5-6 weeks through to the final pitch, done in front of a live panel of judges, consisting of entrepreneurs and investors. The feedback from the mentoring program was great. Both students and mentors really enjoyed the opportunity and engagement.

This term, we are tweaking the mentoring program and probably increasing it, due to the fantastic uptake of the revised Diploma in Innovation Management and increased enrolment in my course. Rather than pairing teams up with mentors, we will get teams to find their own mentors. This will help students learn to step outside their comfort zone, network, and pitch their business ideas to real people outside the classroom. We will of course have our own list of people we miiiiiiiight be able to put them in touch with if they really are stuggling to find mentors on their own (please let us know if you want to be added to our list). And, there are also related organizations like TiE Sydney, through which students may find mentors. (SME mentors may be found through Enterprise Connect's ELM program)

That’s all for now. Don’t forget to read our recent B-HERT article on teaching innovation and entrepreneurship in high-school, subscribe to our news and events, and follow us on Twitter.

Dr. Martin Bliemel
Director, Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship
School of Strategy & Entrepreneurship
Australian School of Business, UNSW

Peter Farrell Cup winners WIN AGAIN!

First-place Peter Farrell Cup Competition winner TaxiApps has won again, this time at the John Heine Entrepreneurial Challenge at the University of Adelaide (in partnership with Queensland University of Technology) on 9 & 10 December 2010. Taxi Apps is a mobile phone-based taxi booking and fare payment platform.
Team TaxiApps not only won First Runner-Up, which comes with over $7,000 in cash and prizes, but also the Outstanding Showcase Display Award, and the i.lab technology incubator Award. 

Team member Andrew Campbell says, "[We] embarked on this journey because we perceived it would be a great process to go through to refine the business plan. And you know what? It has been remarkable as a way of doing this. The prize money was perceived as a bonus...If we had just tried to write a plan and a model ourselves, I can imagine how crap it would be. 

"By going through the PF Cup and the JH Challenge we have received so much in-put, energy, critique and motivation. The TaxiApp plan is now really well refined and we believe that it now has a much greater chance of success as a business. In addition, we now also have some great contacts, we learned lots, we pitched and pitched and pitched this thing & we know it backwards." 

TaxiApps has developed a mobile phone-based taxi booking and payments platform. One of the application's main features is to connect passengers and taxi drivers directly by broadcasting their location using mobile phone technology: passengers save time and effort finding cabs, while drivers get more fares and revenues. 

In Australia, large taxi network operators and the highly monopolistic payments firm, Cabcharge, wield enormous influence and control over other players in the industry. The Taxi Apps business is founded on the principal of applying emerging technology to disrupt a highly monopolised market, redefining in the process how this market operates.

For more information on the John Heine Entrepreneurial Challenge, click through on the following link: http://www.johnheinechallenge.org/competitor/prizes.jsp

Peter Farrell Cup competition RESULTS!!

Mobile phone-based taxi booking and payments platform developer TaxiApps took first place in the 10th annual Peter Farrell Cup Business Plan Competition last Thursday. The event was hosted by the Centre of Innovation & Entrepreneurship (CIE) in the School of Strategy & Entrepreneurship at the Australian School of Business (ASB). 

The competition offers teams of students the opportunity to create and develop an innovative business idea,  then present it to a panel of five judges comprising business founders and venture capitalists.

“The whole process, from coming up with idea and then thinking through what we wanted to do and how we were going to do it – the whole thing just gathered momentum and then I started thinking `Hey, we could really do this’ and now it’s just really exciting that we’re going ahead with this,” said TaxiApps team member Ned Moorfield, a student of the AGSM. “The contest really gets you going.”


Dr Peter C Farrell with 1st place winning team, TaxiApps. From L to R:
Trung Nghi Tiet, Ned Moorfield, Dr Farrell and Andrew Campbell

Other winning ideas were: on-site toxic halogenated waste recycling, hangover and osteoporosis medications, and an online social network for casual workplaces.
“I was really impressed at the sophistication of not only the presentations but the ideas themselves,” commented Axelle Marjolin, UNSW student and spectator, at the evening’s events. “I certainly wasn’t expecting so many technical ideas with that much development behind them.”

Judge Gareth Dando, founding Managing Director of Southern Cross Venture Partners, also expressed surprise at the ideas presented, saying, “I’m quite impressed with the calibre of the ideas and businesses [the teams] put together. There are some quite good ideas here, and not just for students.”

Teams were judged not only on their written business plan – which determined, from the initial 25 applicants, who would go on to win one of the ten spots in the finals presentation roster – but also on live presentation and their ability to field questions from a tough judging panel.

“The Peter Farrell Cup is about articulating a business idea, and doing that through a brief written plan and verbal pitch. It provides an opportunity to experience what it’s like to actually have an idea, develop a business model around it, and then solicit interest and feedback about the opportunity from real investors - people who know what they’re talking about and evaluate such opportunities on a professional basis,” said Dr Martin Bliemel, CIE’s Director. 

“Sure, the judges are looking for a unique selling proposition, a clear market and risk analysis, and investment attractiveness, but what else they really want to see is that spark in the eye of the person telling them about it, they want to see that passion for the idea,” he explained.

Dr Peter C Farrell, AM, Founder and Executive Chairman of ResMed Inc, sponsor of the competition, was on-hand to announce the winners and present awards.

Ernst & Young and TiE also sponsored the event by offering full membership with the TiE and attendance at Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur Of The Year ™ awards dinner to the winners.

A special addition to this year’s competition was the unveiling of the new Peter Farrell Cup competition trophy. Jointly designed by Selena Griffith, Lecturer at UNSW’s College of Fine Arts (COFA), Dr Miles Park, Senior Lecturer in UNSW’s Faculty of the Built Environment (FBE), and Industrial Designer Hugh Worthington (BSc. Design UNSW) of Vert Design in Redfern, the uniquely stylized cup is representative of the “crucible” effect of the competition on rough business ideas that are distilled and concentrated through participation in such competitions.

New Peter Farrell Cup trophies by UNSW's COFA and FBE, and Vert Design


Made from recycled aluminium bicycle tire rims, the outside of the hollowed half-sphere has a roughly mottled surface created by a process called lost-foam casting. As the surface turns the edge from the outside, the level of polish increases until it reaches the centre of the hollow, which is almost a mirror. 

“We wanted it to represent the ideas [in the competition] needing to be polished, and be something of value to hold. The polished texture changes the form, and it looks different and feels lighter as the texture changes,” said Andrew Simpson, Principal Industrial Designer at Vert.

First, second, and third place winners each receive a smaller replica of the Cup engraved with their team name to take home. The original Cup will remain on display at the CIE with the first-place team’s name engraved on the highly polished steel plate on which the trophy rests.  

“Although it’s a long evening with ten 15-minute presentations, the level of activity and networking at the event was tremendous,” stated Dr Bliemel. 

“One participant, Sampath from Solbij, which is a provider of solar chargers for mobile devices, did not make the finals but still came to the event and guerrilla-pitched the judges in their break to demonstrate the massive progress he made since his initial submission. Now that’s taking initiative and being entrepreneurial!” said Dr Bliemel with a laugh.

In addition to the prizes initially offered, the winning teams have also been invited to pitch to more investors at Seed Accelerator’s upcoming Sydney Startup Networking event on 9 December. TaxiApps is also going on to compete in the John Heine Entrepreneurial Challenge in Adelaide, and Solbij has received further advice from one of the founders of Sydney Angels. 

Winners were:

1st place - TaxiApps (mobile phone based taxi booking and fare payment platform)
2nd place - ACIRO (on-site toxic halogenated waste recycling) 
3rd place - OsteoPlus (osteoporosis medication)
4th place - Resaca de Borrachera (hangover cure at the molecular level)
5th place - Shiftr (online social network for casual workplaces)

Winning teams of the 10th annual Peter Farrell Cup Entrepreneurship Competition

For more information please contact the CIE at +61 2 9385 9730.