Innovation appears in nearly every strategic plan, yet remarkably few organizations create the conditions required to sustain it. For Isabelle Perreault, that gap is both a challenge and an opportunity.
As Founder and CEO of Differly, Isabelle works with small and medium-sized enterprises to help them invest in the right technology, improve adoption, and accelerate innovation. A mother of three teenage girls, investor in women’s sports, and former amateur boxer, she approaches business with both discipline and foresight.
Her focus is clear: innovation is not accidental. It requires intention.
We Don’t Have a Technology Problem
Isabelle launched Differly around two core realities. First, businesses talk about innovation but rarely apply the discipline of foresight required to nurture it. Complacency makes opportunities difficult to see and even harder to act on. While most organizations are capable of innovation, few build the internal conditions necessary for it to thrive.
Second, she saw firsthand the high failure rates of technology rollouts among SMEs. The issue, she believes, isn’t the technology itself – technology is not complicated; people are complex. Organizations often underestimate the cultural and behavioral shifts required to extract value from new systems. Technology doesn’t disrupt; people do. To remain competitive, businesses must be willing to work differently, and that requires leadership, communication, and trust.
The “Who Not How” Mindset
A pivotal shift in Isabelle’s leadership journey came through by embracing the concept of “who, not how,” popularized by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy.
Rather than asking how to solve every problem yourself, ask who is better positioned to do it. Entrepreneurs often begin by doing everything, and in the early days, that’s necessary. But as vision expands, so must the circle of collaborators. Impact becomes exponential when individuals operate within their areas of expertise, aligned around shared goals.
Delegation, in this sense, is not about relinquishing control. It is about multiplying capability.
Lessons from the Ring and the Field
Sport has profoundly shaped Isabelle’s leadership style.
After competing as an amateur boxer for over a decade and now supporting her daughters who train six days a week in soccer, she has seen firsthand that success rarely belongs to the most gifted. It belongs to those who are relentless and consistent.
High-performing sports teams mirror high-performing business teams. Both require trust, accountability, shared vision, and a willingness to set ego aside and pass the ball to the person in the best position to score. In business, like in sport, complacency is the opponent.
Honest Conversations, Real Leadership
Isabelle intentionally supports women leaders through candid conversations about the realities across the entire lifecycle of a career.
The challenges at 30 differ significantly from those at 50, whether that means navigating young children, aging parents, teenagers at home, or perimenopause. She has learned to say the word out loud, and the world did not stop. Leadership does not require silence about what makes us human. Strength and vulnerability can coexist.
Choosing Growth Over Safety
Currently, Isabelle has been navigating a familiar entrepreneurial question: play it safe or reinvest to create greater long-term impact?
Growth requires tolerance for risk. It requires deliberate bets. She chose to reinvest. Looking back, she is proud of her ability to nurture foresight, often sharing ideas before they are fully formed. Fifteen years ago, she believed digital transformation would dominate CEO agendas, even before most leaders could articulate what that meant. That conviction became the foundation for Differly.
More recently, she developed an “Innovation-as-a-Service” model after recognizing how bureaucracy and resistance often stalled new initiatives. Today, accelerating innovation is central to conversations across industries, including defense procurement.
Ideas, she believes, need room to breathe. They must be shared early and often, before complacency takes hold.
Showing Up
At 51, Isabelle reflects with clarity: Some days feel unstoppable. Others bring doubt. But every day, she chooses to show up and make the spaces around her a little better. You experience the life you focus on.
Her journey is a reminder that innovation is not just about technology; it’s about mindset, discipline, collaboration, and the courage to act before certainty arrives.
At OBOT, we are proud to spotlight leaders like Isabelle Perreault who are strengthening Ottawa’s SME community, championing forward-thinking leadership, and helping businesses remain competitive in an evolving economy.