At 11, he grew flowers in his parents’ yard so he could sell them; in his 20s he was an adventurer, trekking to Mount Everest and cycling from China to Europe. His early career saw him settle and work in the US, Spain, France, Holland and now Switzerland. After a seven-year corporate career and attaining the role of Senior European Product Manager at a leading consumer electronics company, Canadian Stéphane Doutriaux is taking on a new challenge: launching his own company.

“I had always done lots of different things and loved it, but they never materialized into one solid project. I had not yet worked out how to align what I was good at, and use it to achieve my dreams. Over the past year, the IMD MBA gave me a chance to discover what I really like doing and where my true strengths lie. Looking at my classmates, I realized that, more than anything else, I enjoy touching on all aspects of business, and am good at bringing people together to create something new.”

“From the start, as part of the winning team for l’Oréal’s business strategy competition (Stéphane and two other IMD MBAs entered the L’Oréal e-Strat Challenge along with over 44,000 other competitors from 128 countries), I started to see how my tendency to think out-of-the-box could actually lead to something great. Coming into IMD I already had some business ideas, so as the MBA program progressed I used the opportunity of graded assignments to start working on them. From marketing strategy to intellectual property and financing, I gradually developed a business plan, partly through my course work.”

His emerging company’s business is based on a desire to link online social networking to real-world human interaction. “Wouldn’t it be great to enable people to link up as easily in the real world as in the virtual one?” The idea came up during a business trip to Japan a few years ago. “The ban on smoking in public places has reduced real-world networking options. It has taken away one excuse for interacting with new people. I’ve never been a smoker myself, but suprisingly the inspiration came from observing them.”

With his love of challenges, Stéphane’s long term vision of himself is as a ‘serial entrepreneur’. “I had a strong professional background to start with. IMD helped me clarify what I can do with it. I see myself building a business, bringing it to a certain level and then passing it on so I can do it again. The ideal would be to have the financial and professional freedom to do this on my own schedule, so that I can enjoy quality time with my wife and children.”