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Every so often we have innovators come into the Innovation Centre and say “I have an idea but I don’t know how to actually make it.” Often they need an engineer to draft up their idea which is an expensive road to take. All too often these innovators take a sharp U-turn and I never see them again. In the last 5 years, a new road in the form of a Makerspace has emerged giving innovators hope. For those new, to the idea of a Makerspace they are a co-working space outfitted with a variety of equipment and tools that are used by community members to make something new and creative.

Starting a business is a long road. Through the numerous iterations of validating your idea, tweaking your prototype and all the other building blocks a successful start-up needs surmount it can often feel like you’re alone in this endeavor. But having a solid start-up ecosystem can help alleviate some of those daily concerns. At a micro scale a ‘hub’ means having others around to bounce ideas off of; to challenge your assumptions; and to celebrate your successes big and small. At a more macro scale, a ‘hub’ means a city of region that is inviting to entrepreneurs, one that is open to trying new innovations, and one that has the expertise within to support these start-ups.

We recently launched our 4 th Costarter Accelerator cohort.  This program offers an initial investment of $15,000 and 3 months of support, space and connections to five early stage companies.  The launch of the 2019 cohort caused me to pause and reflect on some lessons learned from previous years.

Whether your business is small or large, the right talent can make or break whether your organization can succeed at the next level. But how do you ensure you’re hiring the right people? In today’s world, prospective employees often have many options; so how do you win the talent war?

The Kenora Office

There are so many useful tools available for your business these days. They can help your business become more efficient and make it appear professional. For this blog I wanted to highlight some of my favourite apps that are out there that can really help your business. The best part is that these tools are reasonably priced and typically have free options for smaller companies. To start, let us look at improving your web presence. Wix is very easy tool that will let you build a professional website with ease. It provides attractive templates for a wide variety of business applications that you can start with and customize. Like with any website you’ll still need attractive photos and good content in place to really make your site pop. One drawback with using Wix is that you lose flexibility that you would get with using other content management systems like Wordpress or having a developer code the site from scratch.

You have this great business idea in your mind, and you’re willing to spend the hours to get it off the ground – but the inevitable hiccups start happening, and eventually your idea runs out of stream.