This text is taken from Courrier de l’ économique. Click here to subscribe.
We often hear that Quebec is an export economy. It has to be, given the relatively modest size of its domestic market. The province exports a little bit of everything, from the most basic natural resources to the most sophisticated software and digital applications. We realize it less, but Quebec also exports a lot of its talent. And there, it’s less encouraging.
Because exporting talent represents a net loss for the local economy. The resulting expertise and creations benefit their adopted country. In an ideal world, these entrepreneurs and professionals who are successful abroad would return to Quebec to at least pass on the knowledge acquired elsewhere. They don’t all do it.
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week, we met some of these Quebec entrepreneurs who are enjoying enormous success outside the province and who deserve to be better known here. Here are two.
Triotech
The first is Ernest Yale, founder of Triotech. The company designs immersive rides for amusement parks. Rather than building huge roller coasters, it adds interactive multimedia content to its rides that enriches the experience. Its newest project, called Primordial, offers up to eight different scenarios, making the ride more appealing to thrill-seekers.
Last week, USA Today awarded Triotech the prize for the readers’ favorite ride in its 10Best section, which establishes the ten best products or services of all kinds. It’s not nothing : USA Today is the fourth largest national publication in the United States.
The CEO’s dream is now rather simple: to make his products better known in Quebec, where his head office is located. Notice to those interested…
Dcbel
Marc-André Forget is an engineer who left Hydro-Québec to found dcbel, a company that first developed the first residential bi-directional charging station for electric vehicles. Do you see the ads from Ford and Hyundai touting the ability of their electric vehicles to power a home or cottage in the event of a breakdown? Ideally, to do this, this is the terminal you need.
A few days ago, California Governor Gavin Newsom organized a press conference to announce that he was giving US$52 million to dcbel to install its two-way terminals and the alarm system in a few thousand Californian homes. management that accompanies them, which can not only manage the charging of an electric vehicle, but also resell the excess energy stored in its battery to the public network. This technology allows owners of homes equipped with it to pocket a few thousand dollars per year thanks to automatically optimized energy consumption.
The company recently opened a headquarters in San Bruno, California. Marc-André Forget lives in Seattle. He would have liked Quebec to be his first and best customer, but despite the province’s eagerness to electrify its transportation, it has very little appetite to truly innovate in energy management.
Interesting detail, dcbel is the fourth company founded by Marc-André Forget. The other three did not have the same success. Ernest Yale, for his part, was on his third attempt with Triotech.
This time seems to be the right one for the two businessmen. Triotech operates rides on all continents and dcbel has business partners all over the planet.
Their experience is worth gold (quite literally). They found success outside of Quebec. They have a lot to say about the limits of the Quebec economic model, in particular the excessive fear of risk and the lack of recognition of entrepreneurial success.
But you know what they say about the popularity of prophets who return to the country…
This text is taken from Courrier de l’ économique.