Louis Jacques Filion

Louis Jacques Filion (born 1945 in Trois-Rivières, Quebec) is a Canadian teacher and researcher in entrepreneurship. Working from systems theories, his interests focus on understanding the thinking structure underlying the design and implementation of innovative activity systems. He has studied agents of innovation, mainly entrepreneurs but also facilitators and intrapreneurs. L.J. Filion obtained an M.A. in political science from the University of Ottawa (1974), an M.B.A. from HEC Montréal (1976), and a Ph.D. in systems and entrepreneurship under the supervision of Professor Peter Checkland at Lancaster University in Great Britain (1988). L.J. Filion grew up in a family that was heavily involved with MSMEs (micro, small and medium-sized enterprises). Early in his career he held a number of management positions (1968 -1980), mainly in operations, human resources and marketing, in a variety of sectors including manufacturing (Reynolds Metals- Alcoa), finance and real estate (Desjardins Trust), management consulting (Ernst & Young), and publishing (Sogides). As a professor of entrepreneurship and small business at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières - UQTR (1981 - 1993), he was appointed director of one of Canada's first Master's programs in small and medium-sized business management (1986 - 1989). As a professor of entrepreneurship and new venture creation at HEC Montréal (1993-2016), he was the Director of the Rogers-J.-A.- Bombardier Chair of Entrepreneurship from 1995 until he retired in 2016. L.J. Filion has always been committed to field research. Over the course of his career he conducted hundreds of interviews with entrepreneurs and other agents of innovation to map different aspects of the thinking processes underlying and supporting innovative activity. The data gathered from the interviews were used to produce more than 200 case histories of entrepreneurs and other agents of innovation. He has also been involved in numerous entrepreneurship education development projects in more than 15 countries including Brazil 1990 - Les entrepreneurs parlent.