School targets Quebec's flagging entrepreneurial spirit

Article publié dans le Globe and Mail par Bertrand Marotte le 6 octobre 2010

Marcel Côté, founding partner of management consultants Secor, and Michel Leblanc, head of the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal, are among leaders calling for an entrepreneurial renewal in the absence of a sufficiently large cadre of high-profile business role models. Regenerating that drive, they say, must become a top priority

A study published last year by the Fondation de l’entrepreneurship found that there are half as many entrepreneurs in Quebec than in the rest of the country.

And the Business Development Bank of Canada recently released a poll indicating Quebec is last among the provinces when it came to the percentage of respondents who said they intend to start their own business: 6.9 per cent compared with 11.1 per cent in Ontario, for example, and 16.9 per cent in the West.

For years, Quebeckers bought into the notion of a can-do entrepreneurial ethos, a homegrown culture nurturing a bevy of by-the-bootstrap businesspeople disdainful of the old collectivist, risk-averse mindset. The story of a bold, fresh-faced business class took hold, reaching its apogee in the late 1980s. Among the province’s popular heroes were Pierre Péladeau, founder of media and printing empire Quebecor Inc., and the Lemaire brothers of forestry products giant Cascades Inc.

These days, the legend of Quebec, land of enterprising derring-do, is fraying around the edges. A sense of fatigue has set in.

Enter the École d’Entrepreneurship de Beauce, billed as North America’s first private school of entrepreneurship.

Described by founder Marc Dutil as the “anti-MBA” school – light on case studies and theory, heavy on the practical, including rubbing shoulders with seasoned entrepreneurs – the institution is intended to help bridge the perceived enterprise-creation gap. Mr. Dutil is the president and chief operating officer of Canam Group Inc., the Beauce company once headed up by his father, business legend Marcel Dutil.

Among the high-powered backers of the school are the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, which is funding an audio-visual technology lab and two scholarships worth $12,500 each, CIBC chairman and former telecom baron Charles Sirois, and drugstore king Jean Coutu, all of whom will contribute their time as “coaches.”

Once a quaint, rustic hotel nestled in the rolling hills of the Beauce, an hour’s drive south of Quebec City, the Auberge Benedict Arnold has been rebuilt as a well-appointed retreat packed with all the latest communications gadgets – fibre-optic wiring, Wi-Fi, flat-screen TVs – plus a gourmet kitchen and dining room and cozy accommodations for visiting CEOs and the student body.

“The model for all this is Princeton and the influential university in that New Jersey town,” director Nathaly Riverin said. If Princeton can be home to such a distinguished educational facility, she explained, then surely the Beauce region, long held up as the embodiment of “can-do” entrepreneurialism and self-reliance in the province, can become the go-to place for top-notch learning in enterprise-creation.

The school, which launched its first sessions last month, is carefully tailored to the needs of promising business people, Mr. Dutil said.

Instead of the professor taking command of the class, it’s the visiting entrepreneurs front-and-centre during intensive sessions aimed at dealing with the day-to-day challenges of building a business, he added. Unlike MBA students, who come from all walks of life and don’t share a common entrepreneurial background, the students in the École’s program have very specific, detailed questions. Who better to answer them, Mr. Dutil asks, than seasoned individuals who have been through what their pupils are struggling with?

“It’s for someone like the daughter of a CEO I know who bought a business but doesn’t want to go back to school for an MBA, where there would be all kinds of people – a vice-president of a big corporation, a city management official, and so on. What she needs she won’t get in the regular MBA program. She has to be with other people who have taken on risk, who have mortgaged their houses to start a business.”

Pascal Pilon, the co-founder, president and chief executive of Montreal high-tech company Averna Technologies, is one of the guest entrepreneurs who leads interactive sessions with students. “I go through the strengths and weaknesses of a student’s particular business, as well as the challenges they face in terms of external forces,” said Mr. Pilon, 39. “The goal is to generate a new entrepreneurial wave in Quebec. We need this kind of mentoring and coaching.”

For student Denis Pichet, president and CEO of Boucherville, Que.-based water-treatment firm Magnus Chemicals Ltd., the course is already paying off. He is making adjustments to his company’s organizational structure to make it more solutions-oriented after hearing about more innovative approaches at some of the school’s sessions.

“You’re learning directly from successful entrepreneurs who have a wealth of experience. The payback is very quick,” he said.

Ms. Riverin, whose own background is in regional economic development, says successful candidates must have an existing business or startup project in hand, and the $25,000-a-year tuition fee for training spread out over a 24-month period, concentrated in intensive four-day sessions every two months.

The need for a strong garde montante in Quebec business is a crying one, said Ms. Riverin on a recent tour of the facility.

Yves-Thomas Dorval, the head of Quebec’s employers’ association – le Conseil du Patronat – echoed Ms. Riverin’s analysis. “There isn’t a sufficiently positive attitude toward risk-taking in Quebec,” he said.

Quebec society has made great strides in terms of developing a strong cadre of managers and academics, he added, but more work needs to be done to develop an entrepreneurial culture that pervades all layers of society.

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