TRIUM… an Incubator, Boardroom and Think-tank

 

The TRIUM Global Incubator Capstone is at the heart of the TRIUM Global Executive MBA program.

For this project, our students are encouraged to leverage the TRIUM resources, faculty, classmates and alumni to incubate an idea from inception to launch. That innovative idea they’ve envisioned but had to put on hold? Now’s the moment to nurture it. Here TRIUM executives have the intellectual space, resources, and mandate to strike out in a new direction -- the opportunity to take their vision, expertise and experience and make something new, to identify a niche and create a business to fill it.

Student teams can opt to become entrepreneurs or intrapreneurs. Either way, they have access to TRIUM’s unmatched resources: top-notch faculty from three of the best schools in the world and a global network of alumni and classmates.

Along the way, the team can test ideas off a set of built-in venture capitalists in the form of the Global Incubator Board of Advisors, TRIUM faculty, alumni and industry experts, who act as potential outside investors or partners being approached to provide seed money.

Each year, one or more teams could well be on the road to creating a valuable new business that they will continue to develop after they’ve graduated. Several new businesses and ventures have been born in TRIUM.

Building a team, identifying a project.

The road begins with a team of four to six compatible classmates. Their first challenge: to identify an idea that falls under one of three broad categories: 1) The development of a new business within an existing firm; 2) the development and evaluation of a completely new business; 3) or the design of a project for an NGO or social enterprise.

For all three categories, the teams do a significant amount of preliminary research. They need to know their markets inside and out, conduct a thorough analysis of the resources available to them, and consider the social, political, and economic factors, as well as the classical business issues. Realistic economic assumptions are a sine qua non.

For intrapreneurs, the mission is to transform their idea into a profitable venture while operating within a larger organization, with access to, and consideration of, that organization’s culture, resources, strengths, and limitations. Along the way, they have a sounding board: the Global Incubator Board of Advisors, comprised of faculty and alumni with subject matter expertise, acts as the executive management committee or board of directors of the parent organization.

The challenge for students going the entrepreneur route, in addition to performing the same market analyses as intrapreneurs, is to make realistic economic assumptions from day one. These include assumptions underlying financial projections, risk management strategies, and human resource considerations. The final business plan doesn’t have to be immediately viable, but team members should identify “triggers” that need to be reached before investment would be justifiable.

Socially responsible projects have to meet similar criteria, with the distinction that generating revenue may be just one of several different objectives. For instance, a microfinance organization that is primarily designed to minimize the cost of access to loans for recipients might sacrifice some potential profit. That kind of tradeoff must be explicitly described and justified, and the project should eventually be self-financing. In this type of project, the team is accountable to the Global Incubator Board of Advisors as to an NGO’s board of directors or financial sponsors.

A final grade is awarded and the capstone project is evaluated by the academic directors of the program.

The TRIUM Global Incubator Capstone integrates all the core competencies our students have accumulated. It’s an incubator, a boardroom and a think tank. And it’s the ultimate TRIUM challenge: to go forth and innovate!

Several examples of recent ventures follow:

PARENTSTROIKA

is a long-term investment project for the creation of high-quality aged care in Russia, something that has never, until now, been addressed in this nation.

GREENESYS™

is a consulting firm that provides affordable, midsize equipment and solutions to under-resourced rural farmers so they can generate energy locally for their own needs while creating an additional source of income from the surplus.

GROWTHTEK SYSTEM LLC

is an agri-food nutrition company specializing in growth stimulant technologies designed to deliver farmed fish to market faster, more profitably and with minimal environmental impact.