February 2014
Summary
Réalités industrielles
Which partnershipfor public research and industry?
Complete issue
This issue was coordinated
by Jacques SERRIS
This issue was coordinated
Foreword
By Anne LAUVERGEON
Présidente de la Commission Innovation 2030, Présidente-directrice générale d’ALP SA
Introduction : Quelle place pour le partenariat de recherche public-privé en France ? par Jacques SERRIS,
By Benoit LEGAIT
Ingénieur général des mines (Conseil général de l’Économie, de l’Industrie, de l’Énergie et des Technologies – CGEIET)
L'analyse
Is partnership research soluble in public research policies?
By Frédérique PALLEZ
Professeur Mines ParisTech
Since research partnerships in France are seen as a way to improve a firm’s competitive advantage, various public programs provide backing for them. Their principles seem to dovetail with the major axes of public research policies, which lay ever more emphasis on the need for collaboration between research and industry. Nonetheless, when we turn our attention toward the driving force in the behavior of stakeholders — researchers and research professors, in particular — we observe that powerful obstructions (mainly related to methods for evaluating personnel and allocating funds) keep them from working more closely with each other. The path around these obstacles is narrow.
Which public policies will boost innovation and economic growth?
By Alain VILLEMEUR
Professeur associé à l’Université Paris Dauphine, co-auteur de L’innovation au cœur de la nouvelle croissance, avec Jean-Hervé Lorenzi (Economica, 2009)
As recent reports have shown, France is weak in terms of innovation and economic growth. For a dozen years now, several programs have supported innovation in hope of stimulating the economy. However they have not actually been a success in making up for these weaknesses. What public policies can boost innovation and make the economy thrive in the coming years? We must fall back on the key factors that economists specialized on these questions have identified as forces shaping the ecosystem of innovation: cooperation between universities and firms, new products and a reinvigoration of companies. As it turns out, a literal public policy shock is needed to achieve this.
Les attentes des industriels
At the core of a global “open innovation” initiative for designing the automobile of the future at PSA Peugeot Citroën
By Gregory BLOKKEEL et Sylvain ALLANO
Direction de la Recherche, de l’Innovation et des Technologies avancées du groupe PSA Peugeot Citroën
To be capable of innovating is to be able to grasp and manage opportunities as they arise. It means being able to take the risk of exploring the unknown. For this purpose, firms must maximize their exposure to the surrounding world in order to gain access to scientific knowledge and know-how about new practices. This corresponds to the concept of open innovation, as developed by Henry Chesbrough. A firm must set up genuine partnerships with all parties in its ecosystem of innovation. PSA Peugeot Citroën is pursuing a policy of open innovation, described herein with respect to three ecosystems: the academic, the corporate and the individual.
What types of partnership for public research and industry? A small company’s expectations
By Pierre-André MARCHAL
Directeur exécutif d’Enersens.
Enersens makes super-insulators from silica aerogel, a technique that, it is worth pointing out, stems from research conducted jointly with Mines ParisTech. This company made the choice for partnership research in order to increase its capacity for innovation and play a leading role in high-performance materials, a field with stiff international competition.
R&D and innovation in digital technology: What manufacturers expect
By Stéphane DISTINGUIN
Fondateur de FABERNOVEL et Président de Cap Digital
Philippe ROY
Délégué adjoint, Cap Digital
et Isabelle RYL
Directeur du centre de recherche Inria Paris–Rocquencourt
The digital revolution has just started. The speed and mobility of advances in this young field have already modified the usual relations between public research and industry. Cooperation is essential, especially between these two stakeholders. As major players in this research, manufacturers and big industrial holdings support cooperation, which has taken on new forms and raises new issues. Open innovation, accelerated product development cycles and ongoing changes and adaptations as well as their rapid adoption by users are factors pushing growth and change. Owing to its speed, changes — sometimes violent (globalization and exacerbated competition, for example) — bring pressure to bear on research and innovation.
Les attentes des chercheurs publics
Universities and firms
By Bertrand MONTHUBERT
Mathématicien, Président de l'Université Toulouse III-Paul Sabatier
Far from the commonplace of academia as an ivory tower, relations have developed and are growing between the corporate and academic worlds. Given their importance, we must turn attention to the conditions under which these relations can be harmonious, balanced and respectful of the duties entailed by the concept of “public service”. It is a challenge to shape them so as to make a break with the fragmentary relations that have characterized research, education and occupational training. How to bring these various dimensions into a sort of hub of innovation?
Which partnership for public research and industry? Being a researcher and creating an innovative firm
By Alain THOREL
Directeur de Recherche à Mines ParisTech
Stages in the creation of DiamLite, a start-up devoted to the industrial production of fluorescent nanodiamonds, are described from the first experiments that led to developing the basic concepts till the process of setting up a company with help from the Ministry of Research.{ This project emerged out of a dozen years of collaboration between the Center of Materials at Mines ParisTech and INSERM Unit 829.} By recounting this adventure, marked with difficulties as well as opportunities, we can identify the points with a strong (positive or negative) impact; and draw a few general lessons about the complementarity between the basic research at the origin of the technological breakthrough and the partnership research that has served as the main relay between intellectual concepts and the satisfaction of needs in society.
Les politiques publiques en France et à l'étranger
From ANVAR through OSEO to Bpifrance: Major phases in public funding for innovation
By Laure REINHART
Directeur des Partenariats à la Direction Innovation de Bpifrance Financement
For more than fifty years now in France, technological transfers between public research laboratories and the economy have been a central concern of the ministries in charge of Research and Industry. After the approaches based on a “technology push” during the 1970s, the organization of such transfers now involves recognizing the needs of companies, small and middle-sized in particular. In the middle of the first decade of the new century, the virtues of open innovation were being played up through the creation of “poles of competitiveness” and the Agency of Industrial Innovation (AII). Nowadays, efforts are being devoted to all aspects of innovation and to the follow-up with firms thanks to the new know-how developed in particular by the social and human sciences.
How will public policies for research partnerships evolve?
By Guillaume PRUNIER
Ingénieur des mines, Chef du bureau des Politiques d’innovation et de technologie à la direction générale de la Compétitivité, de l’Industrie et des Services (DGCIS)
Though but one component in a policy of innovation, research partnerships provide a lever for improving competitiveness that is too little used in France. This comparison of research partnership policies focuses on what has been done in France (Instituts Carnot) and Germany (the Fraunhofer institutes).
Transferring and applying the findings of public research: An international perspective
By Mario CERVANTES, Dominique GUELLEC et Daniel KUPKA
The commercial exploitation of the findings made by public research is now a practice adopted by most countries. It is a key theme in national policies about research and innovation. Although significant progress was initially made once these policies were adopted, the results seem to have stagnated in recent years. This can be set down to several characteristics of these policies, which some countries are now trying to change. For one thing, these policies focused too narrowly on patents, but filing a patent or, for that matter, creating a company are administrative actions whereas creating value from these assets is an economic action. For another, there has been a tendency to overlook the potential of students as entrepreneurs; their strategies do not adequately take into account the means for commercially exploiting the findings of R&D: intellectual property rights, research under contract and setting up a business.
Technology developments in Europe: Horizon 2020
By Iskren KIRILOV
Responsable de travaux, direction générale pour la Recherche et l’Innovation, Commission européenne
et Jack METTHEY
Directeur de la direction Programme-Cadre –Relations Interinstitutionnelles –Direction générale pour la Recherche et l’Innovation, Commission européenne
Horizon 2020, a new EU framework program, seeks to respond to the need for revitalizing our “model” of society — a need exposed by the economic recession and the concurrent social and political crisis that have afflicted Europe for almost five years now. Research and innovation are to play a major role in this process, and their a scope should extend beyond the purely economic. In this context, Horizon 2020 will provide backing for a wide variety of activities ranging from basic research to the marketing of new products and the development of new processes, systems and services, including social innovations. This program’s design has significantly changed the usual channels of funding by adopting a multidisciplinary approach for diversifying the means of intervention and stimulating interactions between different technological fields and industries.
Research partnerships in France and elsewhere, a constantly changing landscape
By Sacha KALLENBACH
Inspectrice générale de l’Administration de l’Éducation nationale et de la Recherche
et Joël JACQUET
Professeur à Supélec, directeur Scientifique de Captoor
Since innovation is important to corporate competitiveness, governments try to boost the sharing of the findings of basic research with firms. This can accelerate the transfer of advances made in knowledge toward new products. Like other countries, France has adopted several programs for bring academia closer to the world of business through research partnerships.
Aid for innovation and research partnerships in the United Kingdom
By Cyrille VAN EFFENTERRE
Conseiller pour la Science et la Technologie – Ambassade de France au Royaume-Uni
Academic research in the United Kingdom is outstanding, of worldwide renown, second behind Germany’s in terms of the budget allotted under the EU’s seventh Framework Program on Research and Development. In 2011, funds for R&D from private sources amounted to 17,4 billion pounds in Great Britain. Although British academia is not traditionally very oriented toward applied research, public authorities have exerted efforts for over a decade in favor of developing relations between universities and firms. The objective is to facilitate the transfer of key technology from the laboratory toward the marketplace. Thanks to these efforts and the recent tax credit for research, the results are now becoming visible.