When the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) started to take off in the Fall of 1973, I had to close the Canadian Centre for Entrepreneurial Studies (CCES) at Ryerson. It was a painful decisio, but the Board of CFIB encouraged me to continue my efforts to promote entrepreneurship and new venture formation through a new education arm of the small business organization. We proceeded to develop a new long-term goal for the CFIB and that was to “Strengthen the Entrepreneurial Culture of Canada.”
Working with the network of academics who had come to the world's first Entrepreneurship Research conference in Toronto, I encouraged them to set up their own Entrepreneurship Centres at their Universities and begin teaching entrepreneurship in their business schools. I made it possible by elevating their international prestige and giving them key speaking platforms at the International Small Business Congress functions held each year somewhere in the world, an organization of which I was one of the founders. Then with further CFIB backing, they were able to secure their own funding from private and government sources. Over a period of ten years, the CFIB helped start over a dozen entrepreneurship centres just like my original CCES.
What we had learned about the process of entrepreneurship and new venture formation is that about half of the population is potentially entrepreneurial because they believe success comes from their own efforts, not luck or some kind of blessing from above. But the process has to be psychologically credible. People who work in small firms, children of parents with their own business, all see the process as being credible.
But we can make the process credible through the education system. Good teachers can remove the mystery associated with starting your own business, and that was what the creation of entrepreneurial centres across Canada was all about. In Canada today as a result of our work in the 1970s and 1980s, all the business schools across Canada provide entrepreneurship courses as part of their curriculum.
At CFIB in the 1970s, we also produced booklets on small business for both high school and community colleges. We could not keep up with the demand. Teachers across Canada discovered what I had while teaching basic business finance at Ryerson, and that a massive portion of our youth population are attracted to the idea of becoming their own boss.
The family tailoring firm Bulloch Tailors was only a few blocks away from Ryerson over on Bay Street, and students loved the story of my father preparing to leave Eaton's department in the 1930's to start his own store, making officer's uniforms. And why? Because he was told that if he married my mother, who was Jewish, he would never be promoted.
When I started the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, I was driven by anger and a feeling of being betrayed by the political system that catered only to the power groups in society. And when I started the Canadian Centre for Entrepreneurial Studies, I was driven by a deep and sincere belief that if we can convince a more significant percentage of the population that starting their own business would be a credible option, we would then create a stronger and more diverse society. The message is always to follow your passion, even if you are not sure where it will take you.