Professor of entrepreneurship and innovation, HEC Montréal (Quebec).
OCTOBER 7-8, 2026
Jean-François Ouellet
Professor of entrepreneurship and innovation, HEC Montréal (QC)
Jean-François Ouellet is a professor at HEC Montréal researching how people, firms, and institutions adopt innovation, build trust, and create value amid social and technological change.
Research:
When people change jobs, do they tend to stay in the same city, or move elsewhere? My research looks at whether a city’s nightlife and cultural scene — bars, live music venues, event spaces — helps answer this question, using public data on around 300 US metropolitan areas. Cities with more nightlife activity in 2019 saw somewhat higher rates of workers staying local after changing jobs between 2022 and 2024. Much of this connection reflects city size: bigger cities naturally offer more of everything, including nightlife. But even after accounting for size, a smaller, real association remains, driven more by event and performance venues than by bars themselves. Cities with livelier nightlife also show stronger evidence of social connections across income groups.
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