This text is part of the special section Higher Education
The bee is Polytechnique Montréal’s emblem. This very busy insect also inspired the new name of the school’s entrepreneurial service: Propolys. An evocative name accompanied by new services that will help students and entrepreneurs “pollinate” society by bringing their brilliant ideas to life.
This incubator, created three years ago, supports entrepreneurial projects with a technological component in the early stages of their development. It is aimed at Polytechnique Montréal students, but not only. “Some of our programs are open to all entrepreneurs in Québec. We want to put the strengths of Polytechnique Montréal at their disposal in two key sectors today for our societies, our economies and the environment: clean technologies and cybersecurity,” says Cléo Ascher, Director of Propolys.
From engineer to forager
The new name of the service (which was previously called the Entrepreneurship Support Office) was chosen in a nod to the Polytechnique emblem, after a survey. “Propolis is the substance that bees create from resin from certain plants and wax to solidify their hive. We play a similar role: we provide the essential ingredients for entrepreneurs to solidify the foundations of their project and to be able to navigate between the different technological business and research ecosystems to go and pollinate the whole of society with their innovative projects. “, explains Cléo Ascher.
More than 150 entrepreneurial projects have been supported by Propolys since its creation, such as that of the CAPsolar company, which received the Startup-company collaboration award of the year at the 2022 Startup Community Gala for its project with the Company of Parc Jean-Drapeau. “This company is developing a solar module designed for low-speed electric vehicles, such as golf carts or neighborhood vehicles used for microtransit. It increases the autonomy of these vehicles (the lifespan of their battery) by compensating for the parasitic current to which they are subject”, describes Thibault Bloyet, advisor to entrepreneurs at Propolys, who accompanied the project at its inception.
Giving the entrepreneurial click
According to an internal survey, 70% of Polytechnique Montréal students plan to one day create their own business, 20% of whom want to start during their studies, the majority preferring to acquire professional experience first, indicates Cléo Ascher. “We want to help them move from these intentions to the first concrete steps, so that they can use their time at Polytechnique to develop entrepreneurial skills that can be useful to them throughout their careers,” she explains.
To complete its incentive programs developed over the past three years, which include training workshops, individual coaching, mentoring and the granting of scholarships, Propolys drew inspiration from the University of Utah, in the United States. United, by setting up a new ambassador service, currently in the pilot project phase. “We rely on a network of student entrepreneurs who themselves set up awareness-raising activities with their peers. The community, and in particular the meeting with inspiring role models, is very important to get started, ”describes Mme Asher. This is all the more true in the engineering community, whose culture does not necessarily predispose to the risk-taking inherent in entrepreneurship, underlines Thibault Bloyet.
The incubator also plans to open a new location soon: the Propolys Entrepreneurial Space. “We will be able to welcome the entrepreneurs we support, but also the entire community that revolves around entrepreneurship,” says Cléo Ascher. Its objective: to promote exchanges between people with multiple and complementary profiles (entrepreneurs, researchers, industrialists, etc.) through events, to allow sharing of experience and to offer a testing ground for entrepreneurial projects. This new hive should be buzzing in the spring of 2023 on Chemin Queen-Mary.
This special content was produced by the Special Publications team of the To have to, relating to marketing. The drafting of To have to did not take part.