The Entrepreneurial Journey

In this joint IET Ottawa LN and IEEE Ottawa section program, our guest speaker (David Mann), will explain the rational of entrepreneurial company creation, its pros and cons and review various metrics that show the extent of entrepreneurship in the USA and Canada.
In opening his talk, David will discuss the basic considerations of being an entrepreneur.

David’s background covers both creating and investing in new start up entrepreneurial companies. He will also address some key concepts that successful entrepreneurs use in their start up and growth phases. The presentation will assume that not many attendees will have experience in starting companies so we will move from basic concepts through to more complex concepts and try to open up the natural roller coaster of being an entrepreneur. Can you be trained to be an entrepreneur? Let’s discuss that! We will examine what can go wrong and where the focus should be. What is nugatory effort? Let’s look at that too. How do you find investors? Let’s dig together in what should be a very interactive discussion for the one hour scheduled.

Speaker Biography
David Mann retired in October 2001 from Nortel Networks, where he was their Vice President of Emerging Business Technology Investments. David has worked for over fifty years in the telecommunications industry, serving numerous multinational companies. He has also been active throughout his career, on boards of telecommunications companies in Europe and North America. David served for several years on the board of and was Chair of OCRI in 1999 (Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation – now Invest Ottawa). David also has served as a volunteer Executive in Residence at Carleton University; coached young Doctoral Graduates in the Technology Venture Challenge (TVC); was Co-chair of the Engage! Program (a philanthropic education program under the auspices of the Community Foundation of Ottawa). David occasionally voluntarily coaches start up companies in Ontario. David has served on a number of Boards in Canada, most recently as Chair of a local Ottawa start up, InBay Technologies Inc. who specialize in developing Mobile Internet security solutions. David also owned and ran his own High-Tech consultancy company in Canada with a focus on emerging technologies within the Internet. He was the industrial advisor to the Canada wide research project “Smart Applications on Virtual Infrastructure (SAVI)”.

David has lived and worked in seven countries during his career: Scotland, England, Zambia, Sweden, Spain and Canada. He was educated in Scotland at Kilmarnock Academy, Coatbridge Technical College, Bell College of Technology in Hamilton (now part of the University of Western Scotland) and also received parallel post secondary education with British Telecom (BT) educational establishments in England.

David is a Fellow of the IET, a Chartered Engineer (UK) and a Life Senior Member of the IEEE.

Please register for this event at this link. https://events.theiet.org/events/the-entrepreneurial-journey