The next decade will offer several strategic opportunities for entrepreneurship and innovation, particularly technological. Several scientific advances, once considered fundamental, are now transiting at lightning speed to real applications. These new applications must act as a catalyst for concrete solutions to meet our climate challenges and improve the quality of human life. Their arrival is undeniably disrupting and transforming our societies and industries, and we must be prepared for this.

Québec can consider itself fortunate to be a world-class research force in cutting-edge fields such as artificial intelligence, quantum, energy, telecommunications, life science and many others. As in many countries, more and more investments are being made to stimulate the development of innovative start-ups from science and engineering. Quebec is part of this movement and the breeding ground is fertile for the commercialisation of innovative projects.

Centech, specialized in supporting start-ups that commercialize deep technologies, has experienced tremendous growth over the last 5 years by the arrival of this new wave of entrepreneurs. It is now considered among the world’s top 10 most successful university business incubators, according to UBI-Global. Every year he supports hundreds of promising companies that want to change the world. Some of its jewels are the envy of many because of the quality of their innovations in the fields like manufacturing, supply chain, telecommunications, energy and industrial clean technologies, as well as in medical devices and digital health.

To accelerate the integration of these impactful technologies, the key lies is the adoption of these innovations by the industry. This is why Centech has developed in recent years an open innovation program that aims to support established companies to work and effectively incorporate start-up solutions for their own benefits.

Today’s innovation cycles are so fast that it is impossible for these established companies to keep pace without the input of start-ups. Sometimes their survival is at stake. They must therefore multiply their sources of supply of innovation and add to their bow the contribution of start-ups. This is the role that Centech has given to play.