Strategy of Innovation

The globalisation and the extraordinary technological progress of these past 30 years have change the rules forever, for everyone and for all developed countries.

Since his election at the Presidency of France (2007), Nicolas Sarkozy has driven a policy to deeply reform French Universities (link, link, link). The goal of his reform is to enhance the competiveness of French Universities and to bring them at the level of US and UK Universities. But his reform will also deeply impact and positively change the French economy and enhance the competitiveness of France.

University Nice Sophia Antipolis

What is the Sarkozy's University reform? To make the story short, our Universities are becoming:

• Independant from the Government policy and strategy concerning education & research choices.

• « Autonomous ». They will freely establish their strategy and priorities. They will be allowed to partner with industrial companies and find other sources of funding than those provided by the French state and ministries. They will be free to hire and manage their human resources. The Universities will be the owner of their real estates and tangible assets (for example, at 2012, the University of Nice will be the owner of more than 1 billion euro real estate!).

Before the Sarkozy's University reform, French Universities were big public administrations having bureaucratic management, and working without interaction with the real economy.

After the reform, the Universities will be corporation-like organizations, with regular accountancy, with thousand of employees (Professors, Researchers, Engineers, Administrative and Management staff). These big corporation-like organizations will now completely change the economy and the rules of the game at the local regional level. The economic center of gravity of each French region will become its University.

At January 2011, 73 on 83 French Universities accepted to be autonomous, and at the beginning of 2012, 100% of Universities will be autonomous. The reform is also accompanied by an unprecedented financial commitment of the State: 50% increase in the budget for higher education over 5 years, a total of €16 billion of « additional » government funding for universities. 

The missions of French Universities before Sarkozy's reform:

• Research and knowledge production

• Knowledge transmission through scientific article publications and teaching to students

The missions of French Universities after Sarkozy's reform:

• Research and knowledge production

• Knowledge transmission through scientific article publication and teaching (to students)

• Professionalisation of students (the goal is to enhance their employability)

• Entrepreneurship and Innovation through applied scientific research and technology transfer into firms

Other organisations involved in the innovation process

French Universities are strongly linked to other organisations involved in the innovation process. The following organisations have also been strongly pushed and supported during the Sarkozy presidency:

Startup Incubators

- In France, we have 83 Universities, and each one has a Business Incubator dedicated to support the transfer of academic research and technology into spin-off startups. Each incubator holds around 100 technology-based startups (around 8000 startups are currently in our incubators!). We have startups having innovations coming from every academic and scientific fields (Formal Sciences, Physical Sciences, Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Life and Medical Sciences ...).

As example, you can visit the website the Incubator of University Nice Sophia Antipolis, Incubator PACA-EST : http://en.incubateurpacaest.org/

- French Universities are also launching business incubators dedicated to their students. The need of launching incubators dedicated to students is very promising. Indeed, among the thousand students of each University, we could have several potential Mark Zukerberg (Facebook's founder-CEO) that have crazy dreams and wishing to change the world.

Of course, startups launched by University students are less technology-based compared to University spin-out startups backed by several years of scientific research. Nevertheless, the success and profitability of such new ventures based on “good ideas” could very high (Facebook, Goolge, eBay ...). 

Student-entrepreneurs wishing to launch their startups will have a strong support from the university’s academic resources (business training, expertise and mentoring from Professors) and facilities (laboratories and engineering for prototyping, business offices ...), and also from local expert such as CEOs and Managers of growing companies.

Industrial Property Management firms

- Each University will also have an independent company only dedicated to the management and marketing of University industrial property (patents) and licensing negotiation to industrial companies. These management companies are named SATT (Sociétés d’Accélération du Transfert de Technologies). The SATTs will provide all the resources needed to favor the transfer of innovative technologies from the academic labs into firms.

For example :

Floralis

http://www.floralis.fr/ IP Management company of the University of Grenoble

ValorPACA

http://www.valorpaca.fr/ (wesite only in French) IP Management Association of Universities of the PACA region (Nice, Marseille and Aix-en-Provence). Valorpaca is not yet a SATT, but it will become one soon (and will be renamed SATT PACA Corse).

The SATTs are very efficient organisations because they are not an administrative department of University. Although SATTs investors and shareholders are public organisations (67% Universities, 33% French State through its Sovereign Wealth Fund), they are fully independent corporation having their own governance, management and staff, and at the opposite of public administrations, and like every corporation they have to be efficient and profitable.

The proof of the efficiency of SATTs is their annual financial statement. For example "Floralis", founded at 2009, Floralis has €1,500,000 capital stock (serious commitment of its shareholders), and presented at December 2010 a turn-over of €7,448,000 and a net income of €75,000!

http://www.score3.fr/UJF-FILIALE,452135452.ent

Technology Clusters

- In every French Region, there is also Technology-Cluster. 

A cluster join together in a given territory, industrial global firms, innovative SMEs & startups and research laboratories of Universities to develop synergies and cooperation.

The challenge is to build synergistic collaborative projects and to allow innovative companies involved to have access to facilities (subsidies, grants, tax reduction, infrastructure ...) and to take a leading position in their fields in France and abroad. Each Cluster is dedicated to a specific industrial field.

Here is the Government website dedicated to French Clusters (named Pole de Compétitivité in French) : http://competitivite.gouv.fr/poles-en-action/carte-des-poles-468.html

Tax Credit, Subsidies/Grants 

- Other support to companies having R&D and innovation activities : important Tax Credit for R&D investments done by companies, Payroll Tax reductions for young innovative startups, numerous Subsidies and Grants to support innovation projects of privately-held companies ...

To be continued ... 

I would like to present a very interesting web site based on a simple idea, but a very useful one:

Science Exchange

http://scienceexchange.com

Science Exchange is an online CtoC marketplace for outsourcing scientific experiments, from academic scientists to academic scientists (StoS). The goal is to make it easier for researchers to access core resources across institutions. Currently, the natural audience of Science Exchange is academic researchers, but the service will interest for sure researchers and engineers of companies having R&D activities, or even companies wishing to solve a problem with the help and support of academic scientists.

For example:

A scientist should perform an experiment to finish an article before submitting it to peer-reviewed journals, but he/she is not competent in a particular technique needed for the experiment, or the technology is not available in his/her lab, or just he/she has an urgent deadline.  

He/she is looking to outsource the experiment to other scientists at core facilities of major research universities who have the capacity to conduct the experiment. 

After registering in Science Exchange, the scientist can easily propose a proposal, and his peers can offer their services.

Here the screanshot after clicking on the "Find Projects" button:

Here the proposal details of a scientist who wishes to outsource an experiment. You can access to his profile and see where he's working (in which lab, and what is his position), you can ask him a question, and you can also send by email the proposal to scientits that could be interested by the task (by clicking on the "Promote This Proposal" button).    

The Co-founder and CEO of Science Exchange is Dr. Elizabeth Iorns, Cancer biologist researcher and Assistant-Professor at the University of Miami:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethiorns 

Dans un monde de plus en plus complexe, où nos contemporains sont noyés sous un océan d’information, où la somme des connaissances disponible augmente de jour en jour, la formation efficiente des ressources humaines (acquisition de savoirs nouveaux, transformation des savoirs en connaissances, en compétences et en savoir-faire) est un enjeu majeur pour toutes les organisations qu’elles soient publiques ou privées.

Que cela soit pour la formation initiale (de l'enseignement primaire jusqu'au supérieur) ou pour la formation continue, le developpement des NTIC permet dans une certaine mesure de répondre à la problématique du transfert de savoir dans le contexte d’« infobésité » actuel. Ceci peut paraître paradoxal puisque c'est bien la révolution informatique et des NTIC qui est responsable de l'augmentation de la production et de la diffusion massive de l'information. C'est du mal que viendra le remède, le e-learning !

Le e-learning est l’action d’apprendre par l’ « intermédiaire » des ordinateurs, de logiciels dédiés (LSM Learning Management System) et du réseau internet.  

L’environnement informatique permet de réduire considérablement les couts de l’enseignement et de la formation sur le long terme. En effet, on peut enseigner à n’importe qui, n’importe où et n’importe quant, pourvu que les apprenants soient équipés. De plus, la possibilité de « scénariser » l’offre de formation en proposant à l’apprenant un parcours initiatique rend afin l’apprentissage « ludique ». Le cerveau humain est beaucoup plus receptive à l’acquisition de l’information quant ce dernier lui est présenté sous une forme narrative (principe du storytelling). Ainsi, l’efficience du transfert de savoir (taux de rétention, compréhention ...) est ainsi particulièrement augmentée.

Solunea est une société de conseil en ingénierie informatique spécialisée en E-Learning.

Solunea (www.solunea.fr) est une brillante start-up nîmoise créee en 2006 par Yann Lescurat (http://www.viadeo.com/fr/profile/yann.lescurat). Solunea a réalisé un chiffre d’affaire de 700k€ en 2009 et au vu de sa croissance, ambitionne de doubler ce chiffre d’ici à 2012.

Fort de son succès et de son savoir-faire, Solunea a séduit la firm américaine SABA avec laquelle elle a tissé un partenariat solide. SABA, multinationale spécialisée en management des ressources humaines, a été fondée par l’irano-américain Bobby Yazdani en 1997, et côtée au NASDAQ depuis 2000 (http://www.saba.com).

Mais justement, quel est ce savoir-faire qui rend Solunea si attractive ?

Solunea propose à toutes organisations, privés ou publiques, l’ingénierie et la réalisation d’outils d’e-learning « à façon » en interaction avec les équipes pédagoques du client, depuis l’élaboration du cahier des charges jusqu’à la livraison du e-produit.

Quelques exemples :

Patterns est un produit développé avec la participation du laboratoire de recherche LGI2P de l’Ecole des Mines d’Alès qui a pour ambition de fournir aux experts métiers et formateurs occasionnels un outil d’aide à la décision pendant la phase de conception pédagogique des actions de formation. Sous forme d’un « super-assistant », Patterns permet de guider les intervenants pendant l’étape de conception afin de garantir l’homogénéité et la qualité de cette étape. Patterns permet aux utilisateurs de récupérer en sortie le dossier de conception de leur formation au format Word.

Emulsion est l’outil auteur de Solunea qui permet d’assembler les ressources médiatiques (animations, photos, sons, documents, etc.) en modules de formation e-learning. L’approche innovante de Emulsion réside dans l’orientation collaborative de la démarche de production, permettant à différents intervenants de travailler à la réalisation de la même ressource de formation, tout en garantissant le niveau d’homogénéité et de qualité des réalisations. Solunea est le premier outil auteur a avoir une démarche d’industrialisation de la production des modules e-learning. Emulsion est aussi le premier outil à indexer l’ensemble des éléments médiatiques utilisés. Enfin, Emulsion propose des fonctionnalités puissantes permettant d’assurer la traçabilité des actions de production, grâce à des fonctionnalités de gestion de configuration.

Démonstration en ligne gratuite d'Emulsion le "Vendredi 1er juillet 2011 à 10H30" (Flyer), inscription ici http://www.solunea.fr/seminaires 

Thaleia est un produit qui permet aux responsables de la production de ressources de formation de diffuser facilement ces ressources auprès de leurs utilisateurs relais, eux-mêmes en charge de la mise en ligne et de l’exploitation auprès des apprenants. Cet outil est notamment utilisé dans la génération d’outils de certification en ligne (questionnaires), afin de permettre aux différents décisionnaires de la diffusion des questionnaires (managers, maîtres d’ouvrage, filiales, etc.) de personnaliser les questions et les questionnaires en amont de leur diffusion aux apprenants. Ainsi, les manager peuvent vérifier à tout moment grâce à un outil en ligne, que les questionnaires dont ils disposent sont totalement à jour (et les regénérer dans le cas contraire), puis qu’ils correspondent précisément à leurs préoccupations en choisissant eux-mêmes les questions à exploiter ou les messages complémentaires à diffuser. Thaleia permet aussi de générer automatiquement des questionnaires à partir de modèles de questions et de simples fichiers Excel de définition. Générer des modules e-learning de questionnaires avec des centaines de questions n’a jamais été aussi simple et rapide !