Sylvain Matte

Location: Montreal, QC

Fluency: English, French

New & Improved: Sylvain Matte

Sylvain Matte is a Partner at New & Improved in Montreal (Québec, Canada). His areas of expertise include strategic planning, organizational diagnostic, organizational development, change management, and IT strategic sourcing, as well as consulting, training and facilitation in creative problem solving and applied creativity. Sylvain brings forth 32 years of experience working for and with large Canadian companies, multinationals and small businesses. He has strong analytical skills and an ability to quickly assess situations, to focus everyone’s energies on the real issues, and to bring forth pragmatic solutions.

Some of the organizations to benefit from his facilitation and training include: Aeroplan, AXA Group (Europe), Business Development Bank of Canada, CAE, Casino of Montreal, City of Montreal, Costco, Desjardins Financial Security, Hydro–Québec, IBM, Loto–Québec, National Bank of Canada, Merck Frosst, Pfizer, Rio Tinto Alcan, and many more, including some SMBs, professional associations and not–for–profit organizations.

His background includes a degree in IT, an MBA, 14 years in an international manufacturing company, and several years as a consultant, including 3 in major technology and management consulting firms. He is also, since day one, among the Collaborators of An Idea Whose Time Has Come, a consulting and training firm helping businesses bring out creative potential and put forward innovative ideas from within. Sylvain is a faculty facilitator of the Creative Problem Solving Institute where he has been a leader since 1991 and he is a member of the Program Committee of the Creative Education Foundation.

Sylvain has worked in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Brazil, four different countries in Europe, Northern Africa and on multiple occasions in China, delivering training programs and conferences, managing projects and facilitating hundreds of ideation sessions.

He is currently the program coordinator for CREA, one of the leading international conferences on creativity, innovation and leadership. He has been involved with CREA since its inception in 2002 and launch in 2003. He helped design and deliver 4 key core programs in the first 5 years of CREA, and has been coordinating programs since 2007.

Sylvain is also vice–president of the newly created Crea–Québec, a not–for–profit organization with the mission to help individuals and groups working in the fields of creativity and innovation (as well as those simply interested or curious about creativity) to network, to share and to develop their skills around creativity and innovation. He was also a faculty facilitator of the Creative Problem Solving Institute between 1991 and 2004, serving for 4 years as coordinator of programs and 3 years on the CPSI Council. He was awarded their Distinguished Leader Award in 1999 and the Distinguished Service Award in 2005.

Sylvain lives in Montreal with his wife. Happy empty–nesters, they live not far from their 2 young adults and dream about becoming grandparents. When not working, teaching, coaching, travelling or attending Board meetings, Sylvain loves fishing, hiking, cycling, going to the gym, and reading good sci–fi while listening to great music.