Le Moyne programs help entrepreneurs, family businesses

SYRACUSE — The Madden School of Business at Le Moyne College is home to programs that focus on helping young entrepreneurs and the area’s family businesses.

The Keenan Center for Entrepreneurship, Creativity, and Innovation is one of three “centers of excellence” within the business school, according to Le Moyne.

The Keenan Center includes the Family Business Center (FBC). Founded in 2009, the FBC entered into a partnership with the Madden School in the fall of 2013.

No one agrees on a concrete definition of the term “entrepreneur,” says John Liddy, who has served as interim director of the Keenan Center since last November.

He has also served as the school’s entrepreneur-in-residence since late 2012.

In his mind, the word entrepreneur represents three elements. “It’s innovation. It’s business management, and it’s new venture creation,” he says.

The Keenan Center focuses on five areas to help Le Moyne students who are interested in entrepreneurship and pursuing the idea of starting a business.

The areas include a focus on curriculum so students understand the role innovation plays in entrepreneurship, says Liddy.

They also include involvement with co-curricular activities, including clubs and visiting local organizations.

The Keenan Center is also home to business-related programs, such as the Family Business Center; StartFast Venture Accelerator, LLC, a mentorship-based program for seed-stage software, mobile and Internet companies; and on-campus events such as those organized through the nonprofit Famous Entrepreneurs Series, Inc.

Established in 2006, the Famous Entrepreneur Series incorporated into the Madden School last fall.

Keenan Center activities also involve entrepreneurship coaching and mentoring of any student that might say “Hey, I have an idea. I want to consider moving it forward,” says Liddy.

When asked the most important advice any entrepreneur should follow in building a business, Liddy says, “Know what you know. Know what you don’t know, and that which you don’t know, go out and seek assistance to get that done.”

Liddy is a “big believer” in team work. In class, he says groups need to have “the hacker, hustler, and the hipster.”

“You have to have the subject-matter expertise. You’ve got to have the business expertise, and you have to have someone who’s going to design it so that the customers are going to want it,” says Liddy.

Ideas, he adds, are “worthless” without the execution.

Business plans are essential to understanding all the elements of what an entrepreneur has to accomplish, but the execution of that plan is “what’s going to matter.”

Liddy has 20 years of experience as an operations executive, most recently serving as general manager of Suburban Propane, a company serving the oil and energy industry.

His areas of expertise include strategic planning, operational efficiency, profit and loss management, financial analysis, and organizational development.

He began his professional life as an entrepreneur, helping develop and launch multiple start-up businesses and “transforming them into successful, profitable operations,” according to Le Moyne.

In addition to his work at Le Moyne, Liddy serves as director of the Student Sandbox at the Tech Garden in Syracuse, which helps young entrepreneurs put their ideas into practice.

The U.S. Small Business Administration also selected Liddy as an instructor for the organization’s se200 executive education program.

The center is named in honor of Kathleen Keenan, who graduated from Le Moyne in 1981, and her husband, Timothy Keenan. The Keenan Family Foundation’s $1 million gift in 2013 established the center.

Family Business Center
Founded in 2009, the Family Business Center (FBC) moved to Le Moyne in September 2013 after functioning as a stand-alone organization in the Tech Garden.

“Moving to Le Moyne made a lot of sense for the infrastructure, for the name recognition, and for the ability to collaborate with students and faculty,” says Tracy Cuoto, who became the FBC director in July.

Family businesses comprise between 80 percent and 90 percent of the national economy, and the FBC caters to the “unique” needs of a family business, says Cuoto.

The FBC offers programs to help family businesses deal with their business needs, but that’s not all.

“We [also] offer programming to help family businesses navigate the terrain of working with … your father or your son or your mother or your spouse … all of the different generations,” she adds.

The FBC views its emerging-generation peer group and a senior-generation peer group, both roundtable discussions, as the center’s “signature programs.”

“It’s safe space, a confidential space for members of that generation to come to talk about the issues that they’re having with their businesses with their families and for others to offer support and to ask some strategic questions to help them solve their problems,” says Cuoto.

The FBC has 35 member businesses, each of which averages between 20 and 100 employees and are “very well known companies within the region,” says Cuoto.

“Our biggest member is Welch Allyn, Inc.,” she adds.

Cuoto, who serves in a part-time capacity as the FBC director, also works as a grant writer in the Division of Institutional Advancement at Le Moyne and she continues in that role.

Cuoto is the daughter of Jack Webb, the former chairman and CEO of Alliance Financial Corp. before it merged with Norwich–based NBT Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ: NBTB).

Webb now serves as an executive vice president with NBT Bank.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com