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News
MTBI
Macquarie University Hospital
As you will have noticed, ASAM has begun relocating to the hospital and are thus opening up a lot of available space. If you’re interested in a bigger office, please let Casey know. If you know of someone who could be interested in moving in, again please let Casey know.
GOVERNMENT
Small business micro-credit scheme expands
The NSW Government is injecting a further $100,000 to help foster small business growth in the State and expand its micro-enterprise credit program in 2010. The micro-loan program for small businesses will also expand from two to six regions.
Minister for Small Business, Peter Primrose, said at the launch of the expanded scheme that "This is a great program for entrepreneurs with low income and little or no security to get access to affordable business capital up to $20,000."
The National Australia Bank partners the program. It has committed more than $100 million in credit to expand the program. The loans have supported 136 businesses so far with about $1.9 million currently on loan.
The Government has committed an additional $100,000 to top-up the loans to support recipients with training, business planning and mentoring.
Businesses eligible for loans received further in-kind support from the Government to the value of about $1,200, which was matched by NAB. This means eligible small businesses can get assistance worth up to $2,400, on top of their loan, towards practical services to help develop their business skills and grow their enterprise.
For more information contact the Eastern Suburbs Business Enterprise Centre
Commercialisation Australia grant applications
The six people who are sitting on the board of Commercialisation Australia. Note the wealth of powerhouse women on this board. In a field like tech, where it’s not unusual to go to events and see wall to wall men, it’s refreshing to see so many innovative and business savvy women breaking into the boys club.
Dr. Katherine Woodthorpe
Katherine is the chief executive of venture capital group AVCAL, and has a varied background is in science, technology, HR, change management, government interaction and mergers and acquisitions. For several years, Katherine was the Chief Executive of the Technology Industries Exporters Group, an industry peak body she helped establish to assist technology companies improve their export performance and has also worked as a CEO mentor with The Executive Connection.
Specialties: Climate and ecology, private equity
Dr. Susan Pond
This woman has a long list of accomplishments. She was the first woman to be appointed to a Personal Professorial Chair in the Department of Medicine at the University of Queensland, the first woman to receive the Wellcome Australia Medal, and the first female Managing Director of a Johnson & Johnson Company in Australia. She is concurrently a Director of AusBiotech Ltd, which facilitates the commercialisation of Australian innovation.
Specialties: research collaboration with universities, bioengineering and nanotechnology, Queensland
Dr. Bruce Whan
Bruce directs Swinburne Knowledge, Swinburne University of Technology’s commercialisation unit, and is also CEO of Swinburne Ventures Ltd. Bruce is Chairman of INNOVIC, the Victorian Innovation Centre Limited, which hosts the international Next Big Thing awards and helps Victorian businesses with everything from grants to mentoring. He’s had close links with Swinburne’s Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship for many years.
Specialties: innovation, Victoria
Nixon Apple
Mr Apple is the Industry and Economic Adviser for the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union.
Specialties: manufacturing, government and policy
Jan Bingley
Jan Bingley works as General Manager of IP, Licensing and Technology at CSIRO . She also handles the company’s equity portfolio of around $100 million.That portfolio presently contains businesses like Avipep, Windlab Systems and more.
Specialties: commercialisation
Dr. Laurie Hammond
Laurie is the founder of Gold Coast incubation and investment group InQbator. InQbator has a number of tech investments including WindLab Systems, Ivolve and Mantara. He has a storied past with venture capital and seed stage investing on behalf of a number of companies. Laurie has been a member of a number of boards and committees on Australian tax, business and innovation.
Specialties: Venture capital, Gold Coast
New Ausinvent website to help inventors, entrepreneurs and innovators
Inventors, entrepreneurs and innovators now have a new website to guide them through the steps to commercialising their ideas.
Small business owners and operators can get help to build on their bright ideas through the new website, provided by the NSW Innovation Advisory Service.
The new website is designed to be a resource-rich information portal to give practical support and assistance to start-up companies, inventors and entrepreneurs.
People in small businesses often have ideas about new or improved products, services or processes. Generating ideas and being innovative are important contributors to business success.
The NSW Government funds the NSW Innovation Advisory Service to provide a range of professional services for innovators who are ready to take their ideas to the next stage. These activities include:
- Providing independent and practical advice and assistance
- Educating and developing innovation skills
- Helping to fast track viable new ideas
- Supporting innovators as they progress through the commercialisation process
- Linking innovators with patent attorneys, designers, prototypers, manufacturers and many other specialists.
The NSW Innovation Advisory Service is contactable on phone 1300 411 417 or visit their website.
INTERNATIONAL
Promising Australian technology companies seeking lower-risk entry to UK and European markets are being offered up to 12 months free accommodation and support packages in Welsh innovation centres in a new ‘try before you buy’ initiative. More information available on the EUCommerz website.
EVENTS
MTBI Events calendar for 2010:
- Reminder! New Strategies for Innovative Business Growth Workshop - 24 February 2010. This will be a hands on workshop with the aim of participants having a preliminary plan to take away and apply to their business after the training. Registrations are full. Please use the Seminar registration form to express you interest for another date.
- Next up: A government grants for small business Workshop is to be held on the 17 March by AusIndustry. This informative seminar by grant expert Damian Preradovic of AusIndustry will help you navigate your way through the maze of government grants that are available to entrepreneurs and small businesses. You will receive detailed information and practical advice so that you can make an informed decision about what grant to apply for and when.
- Late inclusion: Alchemy Equities are coming in to MTBI for a day on 10 March 2010 providing a free hour of advice.
Alchemy specialises in capital raising strategies, business models, building value into a company, IP protection etc. Alchemy is supported by NSW Industry & Investment which pays for the one hour session.
If you want further advice from Alchemy following the session you would need to come to a commercial arrangement with them. They have come highly recommended.
The sessions will be run by Kate Ingham. Please see their website for more information and contact details.
External events:
Women in Global Business Seminar Series 2010 - Connections. Strategy. Success.
Austrade and Westpac is provideing advance notice to register for the fourth national seminar series focused on women in global business.
Use this half-day seminar to make the right connections and discover strategies that can help you grow your business internationally.
Why you should attend:
- Build networks that can help you grow your business.
- Learn from other women’s experiences - hear from local case study speakers and prominent international business women.
- Consider strategies for growth through outward or inward investment and/or developing export markets.
- Hear about the business opportunities and challenges that exist in tapping into global supply chains.
- Gain first-hand insights from Austrade Trade Commissioners n the ground in regions around the world
To register and for more information visit their website.
CLIENT OF THE MONTH
Get to know your neighbours - The third in our series of featured MTBI clients is the newest; Mercurien.
Mercurien’s main service is the provision of Parking Transaction Systems (PTS) via Software as a Service (SaaS) to owners and operators of car parking facilities. The service is unique in that it is revenue accretive, cost discontinuous, is comparatively easily deployed and globally scalable.
The Parking Transaction System (PTS) is customizsble and can be configured to meet a wide variety of customer needs in a variety of situations from large scale facilities with or without retail centre co-location.
At the core of the Mercurien platform is a native to the web accounting engine and book of records. This means that the process of accounting for transactions is infinitely scalable, deployable globally (as it is on the Web) and very cheap to run when compared with enterprise systems.
The transaction layer that we have designed processes financial transactions in parallel using an approach similar to that used by Google resulting in performance and price standards that are discontinuous to current methods.
The outer layer consists of a Vehicle Recognition System (VRS) that captures the ‘visual DNA’ of the vehicle as it crosses the threshold. The image is converted into a file format that allows for storage and retrieval in milliseconds.
The net result is a parking system that recognises the car as the unique identifier and allows for multi-lane free flow parking without tickets barriers or ticket issuing machines.
ADVERTISING
The most recent MTBI advertising efforts include:
Macquarie Business Directory – Summer 2010, page 4 (view Flipbook)
Gumtree
TIPS & HANDY HINTS
THE COMPETITION COMPONENT OF YOUR BUSINESS PLAN
Copyright 1997 by Richard T. Meyer
Whom You Need to Know Better Than Yourself
Know Your Competitors! - Do not assume under any circumstances that you have no competitors! There are always other entrepreneurs or existing companies playing in the same market with similar or identical products or services to yours. You need to find them and identify their strengths and weaknesses in comparison to your enterprise.
You can count on their knowing of your existence and of planning how to out-do you in the market place.
The common fields of competition are price and performance at which all companies compete with each other. Other factors of competition include product tailoring or customization, delivery times, technical support, customer relations, service and maintenance agreements, availability of sales and service personnel, product literature, web site content, etc.
You need to exceed at one or more of these competitive factors in order to gain and retain a favorable position with your new customers.
What Do You Mean – “You Have No Competition”
So many times I have heard MBA students and first-time entrepreneurs declare in their business plans that their new enterprise has no competition; that their innovation is so unique that no competing product or competitor exists.
That is just not true. It most often is a consequence of the entrepreneurs taking a narrow and shallow view of the market they intend to enter. They have not conducted a full-fledged due diligence exercise.
When one considers that there are tens to hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs, prospective and existing, in the United States alone, and that there are hundreds of wellfinanced, established companies always developing new products and markets, the probability can be very high that the same or a similar innovation is in the works
somewhere.
How can one track down those competitors and their innovations? Probably the best sources are venture capital firms, since the VCs tend to communicate with each other across the country as well as with their peers in other countries. They tend to keep track of what’s going on in various market sectors and which of their peers are investing in which innovations.
GOOGLE may be the next best source of information on innovations. GOOGLE tracks all sorts of publications, press releases, conferences, companies, individuals, and products.
National laboratories and universities are another good source of information.
Australia: the #1 Social Networking Country in the World! (The Economist)
In a special report on social networking in The Economist, fact is that Australians are leading the way in the number of hours people around the world are spending on social networking sites: Since February 2009 they have been spending more time on social-networking sites than on e-mail, and the lead is getting bigger. Measured by hours spent on them per social-network user, the most avid online networkers are in Australia, followed by those in Britain and Italy (see chart 2). Last October Americans spent just under six hours surfing social networks, almost three times as much as in the same month in 2007.
Feedback
We hope you enjoyed our second Newsletter. As we'll be working on finding the optimal format, you might see some changes in upcoming newsletters. Please feel free to send any contributions and/or ideas through to us.
To share your thoughts, just click on this link or the one at the bottom of the issue.
‘This is an Australian Government Funded initiative under the Building Entrepreneurship in Small Business Program’
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