Entrepreneurship
Purpose
Agility assists, connects and educates student-entrepreneurs along their journey towards becoming successful entrepreneurs in Southern Alberta. By providing hands-on experience and appropriate education, students will be able to exercise their entrepreneurial spirit in an environment where failure is a place to learn.
The RBC Family and Small Business Summit
is hosted annually and features a distinguished keynote speaker and accompanying seminar series related to family and small business. The goal of this conference is to expose students to the opportunities associated with family and small business and to present opportunities for southern Alberta businesses to participate in an annual conference on valuable, timely topics related to family and small business issues.
The Agility Award
The Agility Award intends to bring experiential learning to the forefront of the student experience by providing new innovative learning opportunities for students. Recipients of this award will work to support Agility initiatives, student entrepreneurs, support prototyping in the Agility Innovation Zone, and/or bring their own ideas to life.
Trailblazing
Trailblazing is an entrepreneurship cohort that allows you to develop your skills and develop your ideas.
Launch Point Pitch Competition
The Judges will be evaluating entrepreneurs on their story pitch. This means that your job is to tell a story and captivate your audience. You can be as creative as you like. However, you are required to build a pitch deck and present your idea yourself (no celebrity endorsers!). You will be evaluated on 4 components of your pitch: desirability, viability, feasibility, and delivery.
Entrepreneur Consultations
are available to be scheduled with the Agility Entrepreneurial Strategist for all student entrepreneurs. We will work with you no matter where you are along your endeavour. We will continually work with student entrepreneurs to assist them along their pathway. Agility works closely with community partners like Economic Development Lethbridge, Community Futures, and Tecconnect to help connect students with the right people at the right time.
150 Startups
Aspiring first-time Entrepreneurs, who are a student taking at least 3 courses at one of Alberta’s publicly funded post-secondary schools, are invited to participate in the landing page competition.
The student with the highest overall ranking from the three different landing competition categories, from each publicly funded post-secondary school in Alberta, will be eligible to participate in both the 150 Startups Kick-Off Weekend and this summer’s Lean Startups Challenges.
Donors
RBC
is committed to supporting endeavours that empower organizations to make a difference and inspire others. Through funding form the RBC Foundation, donations are intended to create social and economic opportunities that strengthen the health and quality of life in the communities in which we live and work.
RINSA
The Regional Innovation Network of Southern Alberta (RINSA) is here to help businesses bring new products or processes to market. RINSA also networks with other innovation systems in Alberta to maximize efficiency and province-wide collaboration.
The purpose of RINSA is to offer entrepreneurs, and small and medium-sized businesses access to:
- Innovation support, technology transfer, and commercialization programs
- Marketing, business development, training and export development services
- Networking, match-making and business incubation opportunities
- Funding at various stages (vouchers, angel investment, venture capital)
- Funding through Community Futures’ lending services for start-up and/or expansion
RINSA is a collaborative partnership of Lethbridge College, Economic Development Lethbridge, Blood Tribe Economic Development and the University of Lethbridge, with support from Community Futures Lethbridge Region, SouthGrow Regional Initiative, Alberta Southwest Regional Alliance and NRC-IRAP.
Heil Family
In celebration of innovation, liberal education and the entrepreneurial spirit, this award has been established by the Heil Family. Entrepreneurship and innovation go hand in hand with liberal education and they have the potential to promote resilience and open minds as students search for solutions to everyday challenges.