Montreal Tech Watch

Montreal International, whose mission is to promote Montreal and its international status, has published this week Attractiveness Indicators 2007, a study which compares Montreal and other major cities in Canada and in the US. It highlighted quality of life, competitive costs, and also research:

Among major North American metropolitan areas, Greater Montréal ranks:
- 1st for the number of university students per capita
- 1st for the competitiveness of overall business operating costs
- 2nd for the quality of life
- 2nd for the quality of its healthcare system and level of sanitation
- 3rd for the rate of attraction of patented inventions
- 4th for the concentration of high-technology jobs

Among major Canadian metropolitan areas, Greater Montréal ranks:
- 1st for funds granted to university research
- 1st for the total number of university students and the number of
foreign university students
- 1st for the number of university diplomas awarded to all students and
to foreign students
- 1st for the number of research centres
- 1st for the number of researchers and the funds invested per researcher
- 1st for the number of patents held
- 1st for the number of scientific publications arising from university / private sector partnerships
- 1st for venture capital investments

Quite impressive, isn’it? Now, everything you just read comes straight from the press release, and I think this needs to be discussed a little. My reaction, although I might be wrong, is that I don’t have the feeling that Montréal is the number 1 university center in North America. Sure, the student population is huge, but I have been tracking technology news locally for 6 months now and the only innovation I have seen comes from Université de Montreal, namely uMind, a e-learning company, based upon Artifical Intelligence research*. I also got in touch with their respective entrepreneurship centers and all I have to say is that they don’t really look or network beyond their own faculty or local laboratory. As you might have noticed, the figures shown above highlight academic research and its results. It’s a prerequisite but not synonymous of innovation. Innovation is defined as such when it makes citizens’ lives better off, and when it grows the whole economy. I think Pierre Brunet, who heads Montreal International, nails it by claiming there is a “huge innovation potential” for Montreal. Which, in other words means we need actual research to be transformed into innovation, we need more entrepreneurs, and more importantly we need more support for entrepreneurs. Let me rephrase this again. inconditional support for entrepreneurs.

* note: there was also Clixconnect, which was started by Mitch Cohen, straight from McGill University. But I believe McGill had nothing to do with the new company. It had a lot do with Mitch’s entrepreneurship.