The Geography of Higher Education in Québec, Canada

2. The entrepreneurial HEIs in Québec

Abstract

This chapter focuses on entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial education practices of higher education institutions (HEIs) in Québec. It discusses the way in which entrepreneurial education has developed within the higher education system in the province, the impact of entrepreneurship on innovation ecosystems, and how a broader approach to entrepreneurship can help Québec set up its ambitious innovation policy. In addition, the chapter presents the results from the Entrepreneurial Education survey.

The Québec higher education system is mobilised to encourage entrepreneurial education and skills. The SQRI 2 has catalysed this policy effort and provides direct and indirect benefits to HEIs and their ecosystems. These include additional support and funding to CCTTs (initiative 2), to incubators and accelerators (initiative 7), and to skills and talent development (initiative 9) (Gouvernement du Québec, 2021[1]). Québec is home to a network of entrepreneurship centres, incubators and accelerators that are helping to create entrepreneurship ecosystems, in all 17 regions of the province. Many of these entities are part of HEIs. The provincial government is committed to expanding entrepreneurship and has a specific focus on start-ups and spin-offs operating in knowledge-intensive sectors. These represent the most innovative entities in Québec and in the more knowledge-intensive sectors. As a result, entrepreneurship policy in Québec focuses on deep-tech industries, such as artificial intelligence and life sciences.

This approach reflects the needs and potential of metropolitan ecosystems, like Montréal, which has become a global innovation hot spot. Entrepreneurship, however, features also the rest of Québec, although in more traditional sectors, often based on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and with dynamics that are different from those of deep-tech start-ups and spin-offs.

A recent report from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) shows that framework conditions for entrepreneurship in Québec are improving. The report identifies three overall trends. First, the province is creating opportunities for new entrepreneurs, and pushing for digital transformation. Emerging entrepreneurs were able to seize more opportunities after the COVID-19 pandemic (65.4%) than in 2020. Second, the pandemic prompted 19.6% to adopt new technological procedures for selling their products or services and 31.9% to improve technologies already in place, and generally increased their inclination to use digital technology. Third, team entrepreneurship is more popular in Québec than the rest of Canada: 57.0% of business owners in Québec are part of an entrepreneurial team, and only 36.2% in the rest of Canada. This favourable perception of entrepreneurship in Québec shows a positive trend but is evolving slowly. Throughout the province, people are relatively unfamiliar with entrepreneurs, and perception of the ease of starting a business has progressed only slightly (St-Jean & Duhamel, 2021[2]).

This report provides evidence that unleashing the full potential of entrepreneurship in Québec will require a change in attitudes. HEIs throughout the province can have a positive impact in this respect, generating positive dynamics in labour markets and innovation networks, and engaging more with businesses, including small-medium enterprises (SMEs).

Québec’s HE system is promoting entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial skills

Québec is increasingly placing emphasis on entrepreneurship. From business creation to scale-up support, the people of Québec continue to take risks trying to turn their ideas into profit. In 2019, 1 in 5 people manifested an intention to start a business (Azoulay and Marchand, 2020[3]). Throughout the province, entrepreneurship is often associated with deep-tech. Start-ups focus on tech innovation, engineering or significant tech advances. This focus is reflected in the assistance and funding programmes the province supports. As elsewhere, “unicorns” ignite interest in what is new and are considered innovative and inspirational.1 The province benefits from various entrepreneurial activities, including in the social field.

Entrepreneurship trends in Québec differ from those in the rest of Canada. The driver for starting a business in Québec is often necessity rather than opportunity (Table 2.1) and the average age of start-up entrepreneurs, at 42, in Québec is lower than in the rest of Canada. At the national level, half of entrepreneurs are between 50 and 64, or nearing retirement (Cornell, 2016[4]). “Late bloomers” may face challenges reintegrating into the labour force after changing careers and looking for new opportunities.

Table 2.1. Reasons given for starting a new business or taking over an existing business in Québec

Activity	Intent	Outcome
Desire for personal accomplishment, to realise a dream, a passion	91.5%	87.2%
To be in control of my life	83.4%	81.5%
The need for independence (not to have a boss)	80.2%	80.7%
To increase my income	77.9%	83%
To exploit a good business idea	77.3%	84.2%
To do something useful for society	69.8%	74.8%
The need to have enough income to survive	62.2%	63%
To earn a lot of money	61.1%	61.9%
To better balance work and family	58.6%	61.9%
To achieve a better position in society	54.6%	62%
Insufficient income upon retirement	43.4%	50.2%
Dissatisfaction with my old job	39.6%	47.4%
To follow the example of someone I admired	38.7%	40.5%
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I needed a sufficient income to survive	29.9%	38.9%
To continue the family tradition	22.6%	27.8%
The COVID-19 pandemic allowed me to identify a business opportunity	18.8%	39.6%

Source: (Azoulay and Marchand, 2020[3])

Entrepreneurial education and students’ entrepreneurial mindset

In Québec, entrepreneurial activities can have a positive influence on students’ entrepreneurial mindsets. The European Entrepreneurship Competence (EntreComp) Framework 2 suggests that an entrepreneurial mindset typically involves seven different types of skills, including: financial and economic literacy; creativity; working with others; motivation and perseverance; information management and creative thinking; self-awareness and self-efficacy; collaboration, planning skills and ethical thinking/behaviour. As HEIs increasingly offer entrepreneurial education, students can expand their entrepreneurial mindset, which can be useful not only for starting a business, but in the labour market and society at large.

Results from the Entrepreneurial Education survey (Annex A) confirm this trend in five out of seven skills categories (Table 2.2). Students who reported that they have participated in formal and informal activities offered by their HEIs rate themselves more collaborative, motivated, organised and proficient in managing financial budgets. Students who had been exposed to entrepreneurial education reported engaging more with others, actively pursuing help and advice from others, and demonstrating a stronger will to work with others. However, in creativity, information management and self-awareness and self-efficacy, there was little difference between the two groups of students. This suggests that entrepreneurial education may only have a limited influence on these groups of skills. The next section provides practical examples of formal and informal entrepreneurial courses offered by HEIs in the province.

Table 2.2. Results of the Entrepreneurial Education Survey of Québec

Students not-exposed/exposed to entrepreneurial education: standardized difference between the average score of the answers given to each of the categories of the “entrepreneurial mindset” (only statistically significant results)

Categories/results	Cohen’s effect size (d)	95% confidence interval
Overall Entrepreneurial Index	-.36	-.09	-.63
Financial and economic literacy	-.26	-.03	-.48
Working with others	-.35	-.077	-.63
Motivation and perseverance	-.37	-.13	-.60
Collaboration skills, planning skills, and ethical thinking/behavior	-.33	-.08	-.58

Note: The results are based on 277 observations. The value of the standardised differences reported in the table correspond to Cohen’s effect size (d). As we computed the difference between (i) the average scores associated with the answers of the students not exposed to entrepreneurial education and (ii) the average scores associated with the answers of the students exposed to entrepreneurial education, negative values indicate that entrepreneurial activities have a positive association with students’ entrepreneurial mindsets. The results presented in this table were also confirmed through a weighted regression analysis. The methodology for the analysis above is presented in Annex A.

Source: Entrepreneurial Education Survey of Québec, 2022 (Annex A)

Québec-based HEIs offer informal and formal entrepreneurship education, including for lifelong learning

To stimulate entrepreneurship in the province, Québec HEIs offer entrepreneurship education and support (Box 2.1). Most HEIs, including Cégeps, have developed entities and activities promoting entrepreneurship education. These are located all over the province, including in rural areas. Support structures, such as incubators and accelerators, have also been created to encourage entrepreneurs and enrich local ecosystems. Entrepreneurship education is offered through both formal and informal activities and is becoming increasingly attractive for students and faculty. It is also provided to adults to improve their productivity or offer them new career opportunities.

Box 2.1. What is entrepreneurship education?

Entrepreneurial education provides academic communities (i.e. teachers, staff and students) with a set of cognitive and transversal skills associated with starting and running a business, including cognitive skills such as finance, business plan development, accounting and human resources, for example. Transversal and non-cognitive skills, however, are key. Entrepreneurship education is practical education that empowers students to conduct business. Entrepreneurship pedagogies and practices are designed to improve leadership, creativity, self-insight, self-efficacy or attitudes such as perseverance, risk-taking, pro-activeness and tolerance of uncertainty, often understood as the “entrepreneurial mindset” (Lackéus, 2020[5]).

A majority of individuals who engage with entrepreneurship education in their tertiary studies will not create or run a business. Nonetheless, the entrepreneurial skills they acquire during their studies will help them make the transition into the labour market. The transversal skills of entrepreneurs can be useful in any career path, including in SMEs, family firms and large companies where intrapreneurial individuals can generate innovation in businesses they did not create or run. In addition, entrepreneurship can also play a role in solving societal challenges and creating value for the public good (OECD/EC, 2015[6]). The outcomes of entrepreneurship teaching thus extend far beyond start-up creation or science-based high-tech companies (Saraiva, 2016[7]) (OECD/EC, 2015[6]).

Various pedagogical approaches to entrepreneurship education have been adopted in universities. Lackéus (2020[5]) has classified these into three different categories:

• Idea and opportunity creation pedagogy, aimed at teaching students how to develop and seek out opportunities to act on new ideas;

• Venture creation pedagogy, focused on the creation of a venture or new organisation. Universities using this approach focus on following students as they create a venture, through mentoring, courses, accelerations and incubation programmes;

• Value creation pedagogy, focused on the creation of value, which exceeds the scope of venture creation, since it is a broader activity meant to create societal value in whatever form it takes (physical, economic, social or ecological).

Source: (Lackéus, 2020[5]); (OECD/IDB, 2022[8]); (Saraiva, 2016[7]);; (OECD/EC, 2015[6])

Formal activities in entrepreneurship education

Québec HEIs have many formal activities for teaching and learning about entrepreneurship. They include: credit-based courses at different levels, including undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral studies; guest lecturers; and class projects. Formal activities are most common in universities, and less common in Cégeps.

HEIs can take an interdisciplinary approach to formal activities, promoting entrepreneurship education in connection with different disciplines. This is often helpful to reach out to a large number of students (Box 2.2). Québec offers several examples of formal and interdisciplinary entrepreneurship. The University of Sherbrooke (UdeS) is an exemplary case of an HEI that is mobilised and pragmatic about entrepreneurship education, with 20 years of experience. The UdeS approach focuses on promoting interdisciplinary platforms and putting together students from different faculties. Entrepreneurship students engage with real case studies in the area, functioning like a “student clinic”, and helping firms to resolve their challenges. The interdisciplinary approach allows the clinic to offer services in different subjects. They try to avoid competition with local professionals, actively trying to involve them in their efforts. The “clinic” – the capacity of entrepreneurship students to engage with the stakeholders – represents a great value for the community.

Box 2.2. Case study: Linköping University’s (Sweden) formal entrepreneurship education

Linköping’s doctoral course Entrepreneurship in Theory and Practice (ETP) was launched in 2006 by the Department of Management and Engineering. It primarily targets research students at the Institute for Economic and Industrial Development, but doctoral students in other fields at Linköping and from other universities may also apply. ETP has enrolled more than 200 PhD students in the 15 years of its existence. The course is an elective and has relied on “market pull” to meet enrolment requirements each year. The objective is that by the end of the course, participants shall be able to:

• discuss and reflect on the meaning of entrepreneurship in various settings and situations;

• formulate, develop and present a business idea for a new firm, organisation, process or project;

• co-operate with colleagues in other disciplines and fields of research during concept development;

• understand how an entrepreneurial approach can contribute to the development of the student as a researcher and teacher.

Evaluations of ETP courses in the last 15 years suggest there are four key components of good practice in entrepreneurship education: entrepreneurial teaching must i) offer inspiration, ii) provide learning tools, iii) assemble boundary-spanning networks and iv) take advantage of interdisciplinary activities. Experience has shown the importance of balancing theory and practice in attracting students from a wide range of scientific and technological fields.

Source: (OECD / EC, 2021[9])

Within UdeS, entrepreneurship education is becoming especially sought after by doctoral and post-doctoral students. Since only a small percentage of doctoral students will become academics (18%), it is important for them to acquire a more diverse set of skills, including entrepreneurial capabilities that may help them develop their own business. Entrepreneurship education is emphasised by the UdeS organisation, and the current rector is promoting entrepreneurship activities. An entrepreneurial HEI like Sherbrooke must face the challenge of mainstreaming entrepreneurship education throughout its different faculties and departments. The rector has experimented with a variety of ways to describe entrepreneurship education, to attract more students and create a neutral learning environment. This is a common challenge even in the US, where some HEIs use different terminology to increase the appeal of the subject.3

Polytechnique de Montréal (PolyMTL) offers a specialised programme in entrepreneurship for engineers, through the Bureau de soutien à l’entrepreneuriat (BSE). The BSE was created in 2018 at the specific request of the institution’s leadership. At PolyMTL, 70% of the students aim to become entrepreneurs and in three years, the BSE had already attracted 1 200 students. BSE is open to all PolyMTL students, but can also accept individuals who are not part of the PolyMTL system. The specialised service for entrepreneurship in the institution offers students the advantage of proximity to engineers. Specialisation of education can help formalisation, since students belong to the same discipline and share the same culture, for example entrepreneurship for the health sector, artificial intelligence and other fields. However, the fragmentation of entrepreneurship education in the Montréal system may reduce the possibility of cross-fertilisation (transdisciplinary networks). Specialisation in entrepreneurship education also physically disperses the students, reducing spill-overs and the opportunity to create an entrepreneurial community.

Informal education and life-long learning in entrepreneurship

Informal learning opportunities can enrich an individual’s understanding of entrepreneurship, outside the traditional format. They can complement formal activities or offer a direct link to the labour market, through internships and competitions. Most HEIs in Québec offer extracurricular activities in entrepreneurship, but they are most commonly found in Cégeps

McGill University has mainstreamed entrepreneurship throughout its faculties by offering formal and informal teaching and learning opportunities. For example, entrepreneurship education activities can be co-curricular (instead of extra-curricular). Co-curricular education involves practitioners; it does not generate credits but offers direct access to the labour market and operational businesses. The Engine Centre, the entrepreneurship centre of the Faculty of Engineering, is a good example of informal support to entrepreneurs. The faculty and staff involved in these activities, including the entrepreneur in residence, meet every two weeks to demonstrate how their activities promote entrepreneurship and innovation. The Engine Centre's entrepreneurial activities are co-ordinated with the university’s Technology Transfer Office, to generate linkages with external stakeholders and enhance the impact of McGill on external communities and networks. This practice is aligned with international trends (Box 2.3).

Box 2.3. Imperial Enterprise Lab (UK)

The mission of Imperial Enterprise Lab is to help students think outside the box, cross boundaries and dare to be different. It provides a space for activities such as student competitions, speaker events, hackathons, skills seminars, co-working space and expert mentors. It brings together people from different disciplines, cultures, backgrounds and life experiences to look at situations from new angles and solve problems. It supports the next generation of entrepreneurs and innovators at Imperial College London and promotes and nurtures entrepreneurial idea development from the student community through to the start-up level. Students become part of energetic and passionate teams, helping to generate the growth of new entrepreneurial ideas from science, engineering, medicine and business.

Source: (Imperial College London, n.d.[10])

Similarly, the Cégep of Trois Rivières co-operates with OSEntreprendre, which organises the “OSEntreprendre Challenge”, a large-scale entrepreneurial competition at the local, regional and national levels. With its Student Entrepreneurship component, which recognises young people from elementary school to university, and its Business Creation component, which supports new entrepreneurs, it reaches more than 40 000 participants annually (CÉGEP Trois Rivieres, n.d.[11]). This is supported by the “Plan Québécois en entrepreneuriat 2022-2025”, whose goals are to support entrepreneurs and encourage an environment that favors business growth (Gouvernement du Québec, 2022[12]). In particular, the OSEntreprendre initiative provides support for growing businesses.

In addition, some HEIs organise entrepreneurship education programmes in connection with lifelong learning activities and as part of collaboration with external partners. The Cégep of Victoriaville offers entrepreneurship education courses in agriculture. It maintains a close co-operation with ITAQ,4 an institute specialised in agri-food technology, through teaching management skills for farmers. The programme focuses on management skills. It attracts considerable interest, but it also has high drop-out rates, because of the complexity of some subjects and also because farmers leave education once they acquire the competences they are looking for. Given the demand in the labour market, drop-out students are likely to be offered a job immediately. In addition, farmers do not necessarily need to fully develop their management skills, but to identify the business services they need and be able to evaluate their quality.

Entrepreneurship education adapts to the geography of the province

While entrepreneurship education has become quite common in all the Québec-based HEIs, there are differences in the way it is designed, organised and delivered, depending whether the HEIs are based in metropolitan or non-metropolitan regions. The regional typology of surrounding ecosystems can thus influence HEIs’ collaborations (see Chapter 3).

Entrepreneurship in Montréal features through a metropolitan setting

Montréal is a post-secondary education hub, and one of the most important in North America, given its concentration of higher education institutions and post-secondary students. The Grand Montréal network includes four general (research-intensive) universities, and, notably, four institutes of engineering and scientific research (CCMM, 2016[13]). Montréal was the first-ranked Canadian city for students for 2023 by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) (QS, 2022[14]).Montréal has become an innovation and entrepreneurial hub in Québec. Its relevance is also increased by its proximity to other entrepreneurial hubs in Canada and the United States (Toronto and Boston are Montréal’s main benchmarks, and it has numerous collaborations with these and other metropolitan areas in the region). In the last ten years, the city has been increasingly developing its research and innovation potential. Montréal is specialised in several knowledge-intensive sectors, such as artificial intelligence; engineering, life science and medical technologies. It also benefits from the presence of different agencies supporting entrepreneurs and start-ups. As of 2020, it had more than 1 300 start-ups and 3 000 funders (Aduette-Lagueux et al., 2020[15]).

Centres for entrepreneurship, incubators and accelerators compose the Montréal ecosystem…

The Montréal ecosystem connects a wide variety of actors that support entrepreneurship in different phases of business development. The different actors specialise in different phases and tools. These support structures include (but are not limited to) Québecor’s Millennium Initiative and the Centre for Entrepreneurship of Campus Montréal Université de Montréal, CENTECH and District 3, among others. These Montréal-based organisms are discussed in turn below.

The entrepreneurial activities of the Campus Montréal

At the University of Montréal, Millénnium Québecor is working to create a distinctive entrepreneurship support programme. Millénnium Québecor will support entrepreneurship in UdeM’s student community and its pool of graduates, faculty and professionals and may also support projects from outside the university. The programme will have three main components. The first is awareness-raising; the second focuses on credit and non-credit courses to develop the entrepreneurial skills and knowledge needed to bring projects to fruition; the third is a support component, including a business incubator and an accelerator (Quebecor, 2021[16]).

The Centre for Entrepreneurship (CEuMontréal) serves all universities in Montréal and in particular the Campus Montréal. Established in 1998, it employs entrepreneurs who have decided to become coaches. The centre does not offer formal (curricular) education in entrepreneurship, and participating in CEu activities is free of charge. It has three main programmes: Datapreneur (AI); Innovinc RBC,5 and Technopreneur. CEU is particularly active in supporting entrepreneurship for nurses, pharmacists, medical and paramedical professions, in which entrepreneurship or self-employment is common. It is also active in social entrepreneurship, for which demand has increased sharply since the COVID crisis, transforming the social dimension into one of the main pillars of CEu.

Centech

Centech started as the incubator of the École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS), the second-largest engineering school in Canada. The world-class business incubator, based in downtown Montréal, focuses on deep-tech and medical technology companies with high growth potential, particularly in the business-to-business market (including medical technology, manufacturing, telecoms and microelectronics). Centech is a non-profit organisation open to everyone (Open Innovation Challenges) and offers two connected support programmes for start-ups: the 12-week Acceleration programme, which is associated with the two-year “Propulsion programme”, accessible to the best performers in the previous year.

Centech operates by focusing on technology readiness levels (TRLs) 4-6.6 It adopts a “market pull” logic, in which inventors identify existing needs and problems and, based on their analysis, create ventures to solve these problems. This is the opposite of “market push”, which attempts to introduce a given innovation to the market without considering existing needs or problems (Réseau Capital, 2022[17]). Centech identifies innovation with potential and tries to bring them to industrialisation and commercialisation, to solve a problem on the market. In Québec, the focus is on lower-level TRLs (R&D), with little activity in levels 4 to 6 levels and above.

Since 2018, Centech has also had its own open innovation lab, the Collision Lab (CL). This helps large companies and corporations to set up technology projects by interacting with start-ups and the local entrepreneurial ecosystem. Its choice of modus operandi is due to the fact that the pace of innovation is now so rapid that large companies need to connect with start-ups to keep up. An innovation policy that revolves around start-ups is more open than a system based on patents. In 2019, Centech was recognised by UBI Global as one of the most successful university incubators in the world. Centech has also worked with start-ups and large companies on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A collaboration with the Port of Montréal focused on innovations to reduce pollution.7

District 3

District 3 (D3) is a community dedicated to collaboration, innovation and entrepreneurship in Concordia University in Montréal. It is not a formal entity of the university, but Concordia has consistently invested and developed the accelerator, which has become an important element in Montréal’s entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem. The innovation hub strives to: create a hub for all players in the Montréal innovation ecosystem to collaborate; help develop innovation and entrepreneurship skills for students, faculty and alumni; support teams and product development; and collaborate with Concordia’s alumni as experts and mentors (Concordia University, 2022[18]). Financing for The Hub comes from three sources: investments from the university; from provincial entities; and from private grants.

Entrepreneurship education activities characterise also non-metropolitan Québec

Entrepreneurship also features in the province in the cities and rural areas outside the Montréal metropolitan area. HEIs are located in Québec City and Sherbrooke, and in rural regions like Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean (Chicoutimi), Gaspésie and Bas-Saint-Laurent (Rimouski). HEIs located in cities often have a close connection to Montréal, and in some cases, have a secondary campus located in the Montréal functional areas. HEIs located in rural areas operate in local ecosystems that are much more spread out. Their role is often more relevant in stimulating innovative and entrepreneurial dynamics. A peculiar feature of Québec are Cégeps and their network of college technology transfer centres (CCTTs). Many Cégeps and CCTTs offer entrepreneurial education and have created support structures to encourage entrepreneurship in the province.

The maturity of an ecosystem like Montréal’s comes with a certain frame of reference and a way of evaluating the elements. Considering that the regions of Québec present levels of different maturity, it is not surprising to spot differences in entrepreneurship and skills (MAIN, 2020[19]).

Entrepreneurial and innovative HEIs are located in different cities in Québec. The Université Laval (based in Québec City) and Université de Sherbrooke, with about 40 000 and 30 000 students respectively, are relatively large, with a broad range of R&D activities, including in connection with Montréal-based institutions.

Québec City is the provincial capital (Capitale-Nationale). Because of its administrative status, the city attracts public and private investment and has become an important start-up hub. Various companies in Québec City make up its ecosystem, in sectors such as electronics, life sciences, communications technologies, artificial intelligence, financial technology, agricultural technology and photonic optics.8

Université Laval is the oldest higher education centre in Canada and one of the main research hubs in the country. The university mentions entrepreneurship in connection with its overall mission and conducts entrepreneurial activities through an entrepreneurial programme, Entrepreneuriat Laval, and an Entrepreneurship Centre. Initially, the entrepreneurial programme started supporting business creation. More recently, it has been transitioning towards a more inclusive approach to entrepreneurial education, aiming to develop the entrepreneurial mindset.9

The entrepreneurial ecosystem of Québec City can also count on several incubators and accelerators, such as Quantino and Le Camp (Box 2.4). It also hosts ECOLE 42, a private school that does not charge fees to enrolled students and provides training programmes in developing digital skills.10 The school is known for its innovative approach to teaching, which is based on gamification of the curriculum, and for its admission criteria, which are not based on the curriculum or specific competences of applicants but on their personality and attitudes (mindset). ECOLE 42 provides students with tasks to solve through teamwork, incentivising transversal skills such as teamwork and planning, among other things, and connects students to jobs through internships in partner firms, which represent the clients of the school.

The University of Sherbrooke (UdeS), another HEI that has made entrepreneurship the core of its teaching, research and collaboration activities, is known for innovation. Its entrepreneurial trajectory has been influenced by the success story of Algebraic Code Excited Linear Prediction (ACELP), and the resources it has generated for UdeS have helped create a “culture” of collaboration and entrepreneurship. ACELP is used in more than 95% of cellphones on the planet, representing more than 6 billion users. The technology was developed at the University of Sherbrooke, whose Speech and Audio Research Group provided researchers in digital signal processing (Université de Sherbrooke, n.d.[20]).

Box 2.4. Incubators and accelerators and other entrepreneurship support structures present in Québec outside metropolitan Montréal

MAIN (Mirabel)

MAIN is a not-for-profit organisation that aims to strengthen the ecosystem of incubators and accelerators in Québec and increase its impact in the entrepreneurship and innovation development chain. It plays a pivotal role by: promoting collaborations between accelerators and incubators, in particular by ensuring more efficient management and sharing of resources, knowledge and practices created and mobilised in its network; increasing the number and quality of supported entrepreneurial projects, the level of service offered and the value created by the network; and by strengthening the representation of the network and the understanding of the role and impact of business acceleration and incubation in its entrepreneurial ecosystem (MAIN, 2022[21]). Among other activities, MAIN runs the Espace de recherche project in collaboration with the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Santé (FRQS). It is important i uncertainty n supporting a convergence of efforts in common spaces.

LE CAMP (Québec City)

Le Camp is an incubator/accelerator that focuses on support for technological start-ups. It draws on a wide variety of actors, including local and international businesses and organisations that support entrepreneurship. A network of high-level experts and mentors provide the support and knowledge necessary for the growth and sustainability of the province’s start-ups (Camp, 2022[22]).

AED – Accélérateur entrepreneurial Desjardins (Sherbrooke)

The Desjardins Entrepreneurial Accelerator (AED) supports UdeS students to carry out concrete projects. As part of its coaching activities, it offers everyone the chance to realise their entrepreneurial projects. It focuses on collaboration, innovative pedagogical approaches and dynamic events.

Espace.inc (Sherbrooke)

Located in Sherbrooke, Espace.inc is an accelerator that identifies and accelerates the development of emerging entrepreneurial talents. Its network of entrepreneurial peers helps to support them over the long term in building innovative and sustainable businesses. The Espace-inc supra-regional accelerator model, recognised for its innovative practices and its impact on the entrepreneurs it supports across Québec, grew out of an economic development initiative by the city of Sherbrooke and a private non-profit organisation (NPO), the Comité de promotion industrielle de Sherbrooke (Sherbrooke Industrial Promotion Committee) in 2015.

ACET (Sherbrooke)

ACET is a technology business accelerator that helps entrepreneurs build the world of tomorrow by promoting innovative technologies with a positive impact on society. It focuses on young entrepreneurs, along three axes: i) identify and build innovative ideas; ii) support development; and iii) propel start-ups that have a positive impact on society.

Quantino (Québec City)

Quantino is a high-tech incubator specializing in optics, photonics, hardware, and medical and quantum technologies. It works with innovative high-tech, providing its incubatees access to first-rate facilities, state-of-the-art technology and world-renowned experts.

The province features a vast variety of incubators and accelerators, amounting to around 50 in all.

Source: (Quantino, n.d.[23]; Espace-inc, n.d.[24]; ACET, n.d.[25]; LE CAMP, n.d.[26]; MAIN Québec, n.d.[27]; AED, n.d.[28])

…and other HEIs operate in more rural settings

Québec is also home to HEIs that operate in rural areas with no large urban centres, where population densities are low. The University of Québec at Rimouski, UQAR, actively promotes entrepreneurship, providing entrepreneurship education to students, alumni and adults looking for new professional opportunities. Entrepreneurship education is based in the business school and has a relatively narrow focus. The UQAR has specialised in marine biology and generated a successful local ecosystem in this field (see Chapter 3), but its entrepreneurship education activities do not reflect such specialisation. UQAR also hosts its entrepreneurial centre, Entrepreneuriat UQAR (EUQAR), a University Centre for Entrepreneurship Activities (CEU). The centre offers consulting service and support for the ideation, pre-start-up and start-up phases, offered exclusively to students and recent graduates (within less than two years), for all levels of education studies and for all fields.11

The University of Québec in Chicoutimi (UQAC) is also active in entrepreneurship. Situated where the Saguenay and Chicoutimi rivers meet in the north of Québec, it specialises in the “open air” and research programmes on Indigenous peoples. Through its Centre d’entrepreneuriat et essaimage (CEE), it promotes entrepreneurship and supports business creation in the communities of Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean. Whether to carry out a market study or undertake a business plan, the CEE-UQAC supports future entrepreneurs in their entrepreneurial projects.12 UQAC also offers a programme of intervention plein air, a programme in civil engineering and wood construction, and a programme in éco-conseil (ecological consultancy). It also has programmes on minerals and aluminum. These are typical examples of place-responsive processes for building entrepreneurial capacity and realising business opportunities in economic sectors that feature the community where the HEIs is located and in which its teaching and research activities can specialise.

Cégeps are also very important in rural Québec, as they actively promote entrepreneurship and support innovation. The Cégep of Victoriaville, between Québec City and Montréal, offers entrepreneurship education courses in agriculture. It has a close relationship with ITAQ,13 a Cégep specialised in agri-food technology that teaches management skills for farmers. The Cégep of Saint-Jérôme also offers extracurricular activities through its new entrepreneurship centre, the Quartier Général de l’Audace.14 Since 2020, the Cégep has organised extra-curricular activities through the centre and attracts people from different profiles, including second-generation entrepreneurs, with a specific focus on promoting intrapreneurship and re-start-up (reprise d’entreprise, including outside family ownership). The centre is now monitoring all its activities to collect information and keep track of its own impact. Monitoring and evaluation could help mainstream entrepreneurship education, which is still extracurricular in most Cégeps.

Towards a holistic and broader approach to entrepreneurship education

An ecosystem approach to entrepreneurship can unlock Québec’s potential…

Provincial policy is building on entrepreneurship to promote innovation and sustainable growth in Québec. At the ministerial level, the Ministry of Economy, Innovation and Energy (MEIE) and the Ministry of Higher Education (MES) support entrepreneurship in HE. The Stratégie québécoise de recherche et d’investissement en innovation (SQRI2)² has mobilised provincial investments for innovation and entrepreneurship. The MES is increasingly placing emphasis on entrepreneurship education and activities. The aim of the recent reforms is to facilitate the accreditation of degree and creation of new programmes by reducing bureaucracy. The aim is to generate skills that match jobs and fuel new growth opportunities. Recent efforts already show that the province is heading in this direction. Promoting entrepreneurship education in HEIs (Cégeps and universities) can be a way to better connect teaching and learning activities with the needs and potential of localities. Against this backdrop, local authorities can play an larger role in providing the community perspective and in supporting HEIs and entrepreneurship.

Several cities in Québec have developed their own start-up network. These are not yet structured into a fluid collaborative and connected across the province, since the regions are at different levels of maturity and the points of connection are not formalised. These elements lead to duplications and discrepancies in support actions from the point of view of the start-up, which can have different effects on start-ups in different places.

The entrepreneurial ecosystem in Montréal, while lively, is somewhat fragmented due to the lack of space and a lack of policies to encourage collaboration between the different entities (Aduette-Lagueux et al., 2020[15]). This fragmentation can pose problems. Montréal-based HEIs have replicated structures to support entrepreneurship, specialising entrepreneurial education for different disciplines (for example, engineering, medicine and business). Dividing up entrepreneurial education in this way can result in further divisions, making it more difficult to generate transdisciplinary platforms, one of the main characteristics and advantages of entrepreneurship education. Moreover, the fragmentation of different actors can also create problems for scale, as this leads to a proliferation of smaller structures.

…while expanding the understanding of entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship policy in Québec may be understood primarily through business creation, in deep-tech sectors. Many of the support structures, such as incubators and accelerators, focus on developing technological and deep-tech start-ups. Structures specialise in different technology readiness levels (TRLs). Similarly, studies of the Montréal and the wider Québec ecosystems focus on start-ups within the technological domain.

The rapid success of the Montréal ecosystem serves as an example of innovation and growth. The experience of the Institut québécois d'intelligence artificielle (MILA), which has achieved international visibility, serves as a good practice for how to connect entrepreneurship education in all fields. However, it is important to consider the commercialisation dimension and to have a broader understanding of the entrepreneurship dimension, beyond deep-tech.

A broader approach may be beneficial to capitalise on the current positive trend in Québec. In particular, increasing the number of individuals with entrepreneurial (transversal) skills can have a positive impact on skills, helping to upskill individuals and reduce turnover of employees. This, in turn, could increase productivity. In addition, individuals of an entrepreneurial mindset can be more tolerant of uncertainty and better able to engage with multitasking.

Widening the perspective of entrepreneurship can allow development of all localities, regardless of their metropolitan or rural characteristics. For instance, investment from provincial government often goes to large research universities, while Cégeps, and connected CCTTs, receive limited funding to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in co-operation with their communities. Regional HEIs are already showing progress in introducing social innovations in their regions.

Mainstreaming and formalising entrepreneurship education can be a way to generate new education programmes and to attract students who would otherwise not go to college. Entrepreneurial training, whether formal or informal, is offered in all case study HEIs, and the evidence shows that they continue to adapt their training to their territories. Further integration of such formal and informal training can provide benefits to students and future employers in the province.

Incentives for collaboration may help to anchor entrepreneurial ecosystems

Incentives to collaborate for researchers and professors, whether financial or in terms of career advancement, are a key way of encouraging collaboration between HEIs and potential partners. From this perspective, Québec faces a challenge that is common elsewhere: linking entrepreneurship to the HE evaluation framework and incentive systems. As the HEI Leaders Survey shows (Chapter 1), the most common form of incentive for CCTTs/Cégeps and universities for external collaboration is by adding collaboration as a criterion in granting promotions. However, while frameworks reward external collaboration in terms of career incentives, HEIs may still be in the process of reflecting this in terms of career support (see results of survey in Chapter 1).

References

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Notes

← 1.  “Unicorns” refers to privately held start-up companies with a value of over $1 billion.

← 2.  For more information on the EntreComp Framework: https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC101581#:~:text=Developed%20through%20a%20mixed%2Dmethods,'%20and%20'Into%20action'.

← 3.  For more information: https://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/faculty/directory/vinayak-deshpande/.

← 4.  For more information: https://www.itaq.ca/.

← 5.  For more information: https://ceuMontréal.ca/nos-parcours/innovinc-rbc/.

← 6.  For more information: TRLs 4-6.

← 7.  For more information: https://centech.co/collisionlab-membres-histoires-a-succes.

← 8.  For more information: https://start-upqc.com/en/.

← 9.  La Centrale is the incubator of the university, consisting of physical spaces within the university (that students can reserve, free of cost). The incubator also offers counselling services, with 24 counsellors available, and focuses on business creation.

← 10.  Ecole 42 is a school providing training programmes for young individuals to develop technical skills (in the digital domain), as well as transversal skills. Based on the French model, it provides a good practice for entrepreneurial education for students. Individuals are asked to solve problems and tasks in group settings, without the guidance of a teacher and/or professor. However, as of now, the programme offered by Ecole 42 is not officially recognised. Participants for now receive a “certificate” for their participation. A working/focus group has been set in place, with the participation of MES and other private actors to establish the legality of certificates and have them recognised officially by the MES.

← 11.  For more information: https://entrepreneuriat.uqar.ca/.

← 12.  For more information: https://ceeuqac.ca/?fbclid=IwAR0OfRkBFo2hMdshnfxVzV2Vr9hcYIkgoSBAWl-sHK3LoVNXq00jQTWBbY8.

← 13.  For more information: https://www.itaq.ca/.

← 14.  For more information: https://www.cstj.qc.ca/quartier-general-de-laudace/.