Constant seeker of new mentors

Learn the strategies behind someone else’s decisions. Keep your focus. Deal with problems as soon as they arise. Listen to your gut, but use your rational mind to find a solution. After just a few years in business, entrepreneur and scientist Jake Arsenault has already learned many such valuable lessons, but the critical one is when to seek help. “If you stay in a bottle,” he says, “you’re finished. You’re toast.”

Arsenault has transformed his PhD thesis into a business opportunity by developing a unique imaging technology called Backscatter Computed Tomography (BCT). “It’s like a CAT scan, so engineers can diagnose a structure as a doctor would diagnose a patient,” says Arsenault. “With DBT you can look at pipes, tanks, or any critical infrastructures to see what’s going on inside.”

In 2005 Arsenault started Inversa Systems and has never been shy about asking for advice from people around him, including his colleagues and professors while he was doing his PhD at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton or the savvy businesspeople at the Wallace McCain Institute, where he is participating in the Entrepreneurial Leadership Program. “Many entrepreneurs get their head down and do things their own way,” says Nancy Mathis, the institute’s executive director. “Paul is very good at asking for advice, and he assimilates the answers from different sources to produce the solution that’s right for him.”

Inversa Systems recently received $670,000 from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, along with the National Research Council of Canada, to help develop and commercialize imaging technology; DBT could be used to detect cracks or corrosion in structures and prevent collapses. Inversa Systems’ newest prototype will be tested this summer and, as always, Arsenault will turn to the experts around him for their suggestions to help his budding company achieve its goals.