Entrepreneur is defined as “a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk” (dictionary.reference.com). And entrepreneurs start by identifying a challenge that needs a solution.
Join us when Matt Poepsel, Covocative; Erin Jackson, Cape Cod Commission; and William Alden, Alden DAVe Systems, will share the challenges they identified and how they found their solutions.
Challenge: inexperienced sales professionals missing their numbers
Solution: Covocative’s Sales Coaching Software
Covocative provides Sales Coaching Software that improves sales performance by as much as 20%. Many companies have moved to a “Sales 2.0” strategy by employing a large number of young, inexperienced sales professionals. More than 60% of these sales professionals don’t meet their targets on a regular basis. They need coaching and development to succeed, but their managers are largely untrained and external coaches are prohibitively expensive. The software provides coaching tools and delivers results in a scalable, effective, and affordable way.
Matt Poepsel is the founder and President/CEO of Covocative, Inc. Before founding Covocative, Matt spent 12 years at Gomez, a Lexington-based Internet startup. While there, he held a variety of increasingly strategic product, professional services, and sales development roles. While pursuing his PhD in Psychology at Capella University (Minneapolis, MN), he conducted pioneering research in Online Coaching effectiveness. Matt holds an M.B.A. from Boston University (Boston, MA), and he served in the US Marine Corps. Matt is also the author of Goals Gone Wild! a personal development book based on his life experiences.
Challenge: confusing information about managing wastewater in a community
Solution: Cape Cod Commission’s WatershedMVP
The Cape Cod Commission, the regional land use and planning agency, is creating a flexible, interactive application (WatershedMVP) used to explore potential wastewater management scenarios. The application utilizes current land use and water use data, a Cape-wide build-out analysis, and cost and rate projection models, and will take advantage of the enhanced capabilities that will be available when Open Cape comes on line. WatershedMVP will provide communities with a visual tool to help thme make smart decisions about managing their wastewater.
Erin Jackson is a Special Projects Coordinator at the Cape Cod Commission, the regional land use and planning agency. Erin coordinates the efforts toward development of the Cape Cod Regional Wastewater Management Plan (RWMP) and will update attendees on their latest initiatives including WatershedMVP. Before joining the Commission staff, Erin worked for 2 years as the Project Assistant at the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System, which oversees the U.S. Academic Research Vessel Fleet.
Erin has a B.S. in Marine Science from Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ) and a M.A. in Marine Affairs from the University of Rhode Island (Kingston, RI).
Challenge: provide a more efficient way to move people from parking lot to destination
Solution: Alden DAVe Systems
The Alden DAVe (Dual-mode Autonomous Vehicle) System eliminates the need of Personal Rapid Transit’s (PRT) costly, unsightly guideways and stations in places like airports and amusement parks. As with Segways and urban bicycles, the DAVe System uses existing roads and paths. By using an area’s many, established rights-of-way, the points of trip origin and destination are many times that of PRT with its fixed guideways and stations. Also the total DAVe System passenger capacity is increased, overcoming one of the drawbacks of PRT.
William L. Alden is co-founder and President of Alden DAVe Systems. He has managed teams working in the areas of systems for the movement of information, materials and people. Alden has launched a number of companies including one that created a semi-automated ocean clam shucking factory and then redesigned the semi-automated “mail-flo system” for the Detroit Post Office. In 1959 he conceived the idea of a self-transit rail and road car that became “StaRRcar” for urban commuting and city distribution of goods and materials. Alden has also lead projects as Alden Computer Systems Corporation in fields including numerical control, automatic parts programming system, theatrical lighting control console, specially designed parking garage computer system, and a central computer system connected to many machine tools.
Alden has a B.A. from Harvard College (Boston, MA) and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School (Boston, MA).