- 19 July 2024
- Posted by: Ben Garrett
- Categories: Event News, General News, GRIFFIN Accelerator, SME
On 20-21 June 2024, the Canberra Innovation Network (CBRIN) welcomed fifteen ambitious SME owners to participate in the SME-24 Business Accelerator. The Accelerator, is the cornerstone of the Canberra Innovation Network’s support to local small businesses to use innovation methods to create better business outcomes.
The SME-24 Business Accelerator was a two-day intensive workshop, aimed at leaders and founders of small-medium sized businesses (SMEs) to engage in entrepreneurship and innovation methods in a supportive peer-group cohort to accelerate their growth.
The core content was activities to help participants identify what’s limiting the growth of their business and create new plans or ideas to develop further. Facilitators introduced key concepts and a challenging process to help participants bring fresh thinking to understanding the challenges and opportunities for their business. The goal was for them to create new approaches using these tools. A mix of individual feedback and small-group conversations between peer business leaders are at the heart of this process. Participants documented their progress through the activities to enable them to reflect on and implement the outcomes afterwards.
The Accelerator also included a 2-hour session with guest speaker Jarrod Deaton, founder of Three Mills Bakery. Jarrod shared in a very candid and personal way, his journey as a founder and SME leader. This led to insightful conversations about leadership, accountability and self-care with the participants.
AusIndustry, generously provided sponsorship towards a session which featured a resources panel. The consistent support from AusIndustry shows their belief that fast paced, immersive learning experiences are so important for the growth of SME’s in Canberra and the broader region.
This AusIndustry sponsored panel was held to highlight and represent the range of resources available to SMEs in the ACT. Panellists included Robert Holgate representing Austrade, Anna Pino representing Canberra Business Advisory and Support Services and Lighthouse Innovation, Robin Fieldhouse representing the Industry Growth Program and Craig Fairweather representing The Mill House Ventures.
One of the most highly rated sessions by participants was held on day 2. Participants were provided with an opportunity to have open table session with a range of mentors from a variety of backgrounds. The mentors engaged for this session included Anne Moore, Harry Hoang, Harold Dimpel, Hugh Whalan and Ellen Samuels.
Existing companies within the CBRIN coworking space, such as FlexiPhone and Overflow, took part in the accelerator, gaining clarity on their business and developing actionable goals for growth.
Additionally, new companies like Proactive Labs and Capital Wines, which hadn’t previously experienced such event/workshops, found the program highly beneficial.
Matthew Belvedere of Proactive Labs remarked, “If you’re vaguely aware of a sales pipeline or don’t know what your cost of customer acquisition is, you should be doing this event. It covers everything you should know, and I don’t know why we didn’t do it sooner.”
Since 2014, the Canberra Innovation Network has been active in helping local SMEs grow their ideas and accelerate sales and development.
If you are an ambitious SME looking to grow, make sure you reach out to the SME team at CBRIN and book in a chat to see how the SME program can support you and your business growth.
Small & Medium Enterprises – Canberra Innovation Network (cbrin.com.au)
Cbrin is a environment where you can join with others, facing similar issues, across a wide variety of industries. Often, your problem can, or has been, solved somewhere by someone through their experience. Also having facilitators that have have first hand experience in business building is very valuable
Taking time away from my desk to concentrate on strategy has been something I’ve been meaning to do for years… but it inevitably never happens. Thank you, CBRIN, for forcing me to step away from the day-to-day to think about the big picture for two whole days. I’ve left the workshop with a plethora of future business plans and an exciting new To Do list.