KINGSTON, Jamaica (JIS) — Entrepreneurs are set to benefit from the Jamaica Business Development Corporation (JBDC) Lean Start-up Strategy Workshop series, which will be held from March 7-8 at the Institute of Chartered Accountants, Ruthven Road, in Kingston.

The workshop, which is being held for the second time, will focus on topics such as ‘Testing and Validating Your Business Model’ and ‘Financing Your Start-up’.

In an interview with JIS News, Manager of Business Advisory Services at the JBDC, Althea West Myers, said the Lean Start-up Strategy is about enabling the participants to create a minimum viable version of their product and taking it to the market in order to gain valuable earnings.

 “It also helps business owners to know how to respond to the market; how to drive demand in the marketplace; how to interpret and reinterpret what the market is saying to you; and how to be efficient in your business operations,” West Myers explained.

She said focus will also be placed on participants understanding their cost structure for their businesses and the efficient use of capital within businesses.

The workshop is targeted at, but not limited to, persons who have been in business for a while but have not been making any measurable or significant progress, and persons who might be grappling with the uncertainty of the start-up period of their businesses.

West Myers said so far, registration has been going well and is advising entrepreneurs to register as quickly as possible.

“Last year was excellent in terms of the feedback, the attendance and the progress that we see people making in implementing what they have learnt,” she told JIS News.

Meanwhile, West Myers said it is hoped that at the end of the workshop, participants will realise that failure of a start-up business is a part of the process.

“The start-up failure rate is said to be high. We hear numbers of 80 and 90 per cent. We want people to understand that failure is a part of the process, but we want people to understand that the learning and the risk that is associated with the level of failure, we want to reduce that,” she said.

“We want people to fail fast and take the learning from the failure and put it into the business in order to improve and grow. We want people to reduce inefficiencies in the business and we want them to understand the value of speed and the value of learning,” the manager added.

She further noted that the workshop aims to increase competitiveness among small businesses and reduce long-term failure.

West Myers is encouraging persons who are genuinely entrepreneurial and who have an interest in growing their businesses to sign up.

The cost to participate in the event is $10,000 and includes course materials and refreshments.

Interested persons are required to register online at www.jbdc.net/ by February 24. Participants also have the option of attending one or both workshops.

Payments may be made through a National Commercial Bank deposit via account No 351859067, Knutsford Boulevard Branch; or at the JBDC offices at 14 Camp Road, Kingston 4, or Unit 10a, 76 Marcus Garvey Drive.

The JBDC goal is to help businesses to survive and prosper by providing them with business advice, consultancy and training of the highest professional standard on both generalist and specialist business subjects.

More than 2,000 businesses have benefited from the JBDC’s services over the years.