submit-your-idea

Aboriginal women and girls located in Canada are invited to submit their ideas in one of the following categories:

  • Business Entrepreneurship (Starting or Growing a Business);

  • Social Entrepreneurship ( change maker);

  • Looking to start a new career.

There are NO FEES charged to individual Aboriginal Women or girls looking to explore their ideas so they may achieve their dream and enhance their well-being and that of their families. — Ideas are selected by the ICN team for their diversity, broad appeal, and potential for implementation in the short-term.  We invite you to first read our process below. If you like our free offer, if you think that having an opportunity to talk with various experts from across Canada  will help you make better informed decisions towards living your dream, then read-on.  

The Processare-you-living-your-dream

  1. The first step is for you to provide us with  basic information  about you and your idea. We ask that you fill out a form. It will guide you in telling us a little bit about yourself and to describe your idea. For example, provide us with a short description of your idea – how you see its application — why you think it’s a good idea — what difference its implementation would make in your life or in other peoples’ lives.

  1. We also ask that you complete a simple questionnaire that follows. It’s really an entrepreneurial quiz.  There are no right or wrong answers to these questions. Your answers will enable us to learn a little more about your aptitudes and attitudes. Once you’ve finished, submit it.

  1. The ICN team will review all ideas submitted during the previous month and select an idea for a case study. We will then phone the person who has submitted the selected idea, and follow-up with an e-mail to all those who have submitted an idea for a case study exploration but were not selected, and we will make a public announcement.

Steps following acceptance to explore a submitted idea:

  1. Discovery: ICN will produce a closed –circuit video interview to learn a little more about the person wanting support in implementing her dream idea and to learn more about the idea itself. This video interview along with your answers to our questionnaire will be shown to our panel of experts.

  2. Exploration: You will then be invited to participate in a live online panel discussion with experts to explore your idea and the opportunities that could stem from it. The panelists are people with the similar passions, goals, and outlook who have had to build their ideas. Panelists will help you gain some clarity on the opportunities your idea may offer.  ICN will do its utmost to find a willing panelist with experience in the subject area being discussed. Panelists will conclude this discussion by having helped identify one opportunity and having provided things to consider to the person submitting the idea. They will also sketch a few assumptions (hypotheses) of the building blocks to be tested in real time in the market place before decisions are made.

  3. Testing Assumptions:  Testing in this way is an alternative to the age old hit and miss approach of first writing a business plan, investing in resources and then trying to sell as hard as one can to beat the odds of a 75% – 80% risk of failure.  At ICN we will borrow a page from the lean start up methodology which has emerged in the last five years or so. Although the methodology is only a few years old, its concepts, such as minimum viable product and pivoting have rapidly taken root in business schools. It makes the process of starting a company or investment into a new business program/product or service less risky.

In this phase of the case study, ICN will take two sketched hypotheses produced by the panelists and test them in the marketplace with potential customers, users, and/or suppliers, as needed. The idea here is to show, through video, how it’s done in the market place.  We will also conclude by making suggestions to further test your assumptions, to help you better answer a need and reduce your personal risks.

4. Implementation Support:  In this last step, ICN will invite you to participate in two live online productions with subject experts to discuss some facet of your project implementation e.g. ‘Fleshing out a marketing plan;’ ‘raising money;’ ‘sales techniques.’  ICN will determine which topics are to be discussed from its list of typical subjects to be considered.

Asking Questions: You will have several opportunities to ask questions during discussions with experts or through a discussion with your peers in our new Coffee Room (blog).

Is this something you want to do? If you are motivated  and committed to move forward! 

 Let’s Start Now! Click on button     submit-your-idea

If you wish to talk with someone from ICN first —  contact                                                                   Guy Dancause@IdeaConnector.net