Note: this op-ed was first published in the Hill Times’ Policy Briefing edition on October 21, 2024.
What if we turbocharged today’s students with a toolbox full of entrepreneurial skills and possibilities? Not just for them to start their own ventures. Not just to bring their inventions or ideas to market. Not just to generate more homegrown intellectual property assets. Not just to learn to work together in diverse teams to study, tackle and solve problems. Not just to develop a vast network of like-minded changemakers. Not just because trying and failing might be one of their most important life lessons. Not just for any one reason, but all of these reasons.
These days, entrepreneurial mythos is everywhere – from Shopify to Fullscript, the allure is as varied as it is abundant for our current generation of university students. More than ever, postsecondary institutions (PSI) have an opportunity to help shape a new wave of young leaders, setting them up to be the most entrepreneurial generation in a century. To do so, Canada needs meaningful entrepreneurship strategies to lay the groundwork for life-long entrepreneurial thinking and doing.
That is certainly what our team at the University of Ottawa - uOttawa - (and indeed PSIs across the country) is trying to do. While we are a decade deep into #MissionEntrepreneurship, the last five years have brought transformative results and impact. By far the most satisfying part of my role as Associate Vice-President, Innovation, Partnerships and Entrepreneurship is spending time with highly motivated, engaged and trailblazing students in hackathons, pitch competitions, Idea/Solutions Labs, and particularly in our flagship Startup Garage and its “circuits architecture”.
Growing our reach from 400 students to nearly 4,000 over these five years, we are poised for much more. To start, we must do a better job at reaching and engaging the “missing entrepreneur”, the group of young leaders who have been historically underserved, underrepresented and overlooked by traditional entrepreneurship initiatives. That’s why we brought all four of Ottawa’s post-secondary institutions together earlier this year to intentionally stand up our own regional entrepreneurial network, launching the Capital Entrepreneurship Connection, along with support from 28 partners in the National Capital Region.
uOttawa’s eHub team has graduated more than 150 new ventures through Startup Garage over the past 15 years, many going on to thrive locally and globally. Whether being recognized on North Americas’ Fast50 list (Noibu), graduating from international accelerator programs (Sugar Coated Technologies), being a world-leader in sustainable vertical farming (Growcer), or improved diagnostic imaging (Yellowbird Diagnostics Inc.) our student-founded startups are having a major impact.
Yet just a year ago (October 2023) the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) reported that Canada has less than half the entrepreneurs than it used to. At the same time, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), the largest study of entrepreneurship in the world, points to a significant increase in entrepreneurial activity in Canada in the last 10 years. So what gives? On campus, our students clearly have a growing interest and passion for entrepreneurship and are eager to leverage these skills in a variety of contexts. We are ready to accompany them on their journey, no matter how they wish to exemplify what it means to be entrepreneurial.
While we regularly bemoan Canada’s dismal record of productivity and have tried (with best intentions) to apply waves of strategies and programs over the past three decades, maybe we should start by building up future generations of leaders with a sharpened entrepreneurial mindset. Who want to be difference-makers. Who see problem-solving from a much different perspective. Who want to build Canada.
As each new cohort of students interested in exploring entrepreneurship are ever-more sophisticated, our programs and services must evolve to meet their ambitions. Strategies, programs and incentives are needed. But sometimes, the smallest and simplest contributions have the biggest impact. It also requires long-term thinking, stable investments that outlive political cycles…and patience. Seems that is a big part of the problem today.
Our #MissionEntrepreneurship aims to give every student who wants a taste of entrepreneurship to have the opportunity to do so in their time with us at uOttawa. Let’s help inspire and equip the next generation of changemakers to help build a more entrepreneurial, ambitious Canada. uOttawa is hard at work doing just that.
As Associate Vice-President, Guy Levesque leads the University of Ottawa's #MissionInnovation, which focuses on the creation of transformative partnerships for the institution, drawing on the strengths of partners from all sectors, both local and global. His team seizes every opportunity to enhance and strengthen innovation, partnerships and entrepreneurship on its campuses and across all disciplines. Levesque is a regular commentator on innovation and partnerships, and a champion of innovation for the National Capital Region.