Preface by the OECD and Council of Innovation
There is an obvious bond between entrepreneurship, innovation, and places. Entrepreneurs and innovators belong to communities and networks that generate the conditions for success. These communities can be entrepreneurial ecosystems, and they are essential to enable creation and innovation. They host innovation commons where groups of passionate innovators connect, learn, share insights and know-how, decipher market needs, and create new solutions.
Higher education institutions (HEIs) can, and must, play a pivotal role in entrepreneurial ecosystems by developing talents & skills, promoting mindsets, spawning discoveries, generating spin-offs, and conducting collaborative research activities to create innovation opportunities and address needs in different localities.
Québec is adopting new policy approaches to engage HEIs and drive innovation and new ventures in their entrepreneurial ecosystems. Within the Stratégie québécoise de recherche et d’investissement en innovation (SQRI2) 2022-2027, the province has invested to empower or create organisations connecting publicly funded research with innovation and entrepreneurship, in all of Québec, including rural territories. For example, the NGO Axelys was created in 2021 to accelerate the development and transfer of high-potential innovations resulting from public research. The Council of Innovation works with the government on new and improved policies and on various initiatives to drive innovation and augment the impact and use of all programs and resources available in the province.
This, however, represents only a part of the broad innovation ecosystem that Québec has been able to grow over the past two decades. The ten HEIs included in this study have embraced innovation and entrepreneurship in different ways and adopted different approaches to teaching, research, and collaboration, based on their location and specialisation. They display a range of good practices that can inspire other HEIs at the provincial, federal, and international levels. Actions range from the delivery of comprehensive and widespread entrepreneurship education to engagement in collaborative activities with external stakeholders, for example through the new innovation zones, put forth by the Québec government and led by groups of local community leaders. Québec HEIs can increasingly maximise their potential by becoming “place-responsive” institutions and tapping into the needs and opportunities of their territories.
We hope this report will highlight some of the best practices deployed in the Québec innovation ecosystem and inform the nascent international community of OECD’s platform supporting Entrepreneurship Education, Collaboration and Engagement, EECOLE, of which the Council of Innovation is a founding partner.
(Head of Council of Innovation)
