March 2002
abstract
Gérer & Comprendre
Issue 67
Editorial
By Francis LEFEBVRE
Secrétaire général du Comité de rédaction
OVERLOOKED
A startup’s life: Investing in innovative companies
(S')Investir dans les entreprises innovantes
By Olivier MARTY
Doctorant - LATTS
The advent of information technology has led to the development of a new economy with the emergence of avant-garde firms. Startups are defined by the way they are financed and by the wager they represent on innovations. A series of consequences ensue from these two fundamental aspects. For one thing, the rationale of production in these companies is disturbed by a "financial logic" based on the "capital of confidence" to be built up with investors. This test differs significantly from the one that start-ups face in the marketplace. For another thing, innovation and short-term constraints force start-ups to maintain structures and job profiles of a very evolving sort. This versatility leads to both a "culture of innovation" and the vitality of relations based on a strong identification with leaders. However these relations should not cover up the games of power played out around this charismatic authority and for control over certain key technical qualifications. If we add to this picture a rather homogeneous population with quite heterogeneous motives, we are forced to admit that a startup forms a closed world with its own rules of operation.
Drawing up plans for higher education: In quest of a strategy for establishments
À la recherche d'une stratégie d'établissement
By Frédéric KLETZ
and Frédérique PALLEZ,
Centre de Gestion Scientifique, École des Mines de Paris
A controlled supply of education reflecting clear-cut objectives is a major sign that a university has a strategy and a decision-making capacity, regardless of what disciplines are taught. The gauge of what is conventionally called "autonomy" is, therefore, the establishment’s policy for supplying education. Despite detectable changes, diplomas and graduates still enjoy a high degree of autonomy with only marginal regulation. A tension between the "logic" of the disciplines and of the university is inherent in how these establishment operate; and it may, as such, be fertile. Nevertheless, questions can be raised about the conditions for a new equilibrium with the right place for universities given stagnating enrollments and budgets as well as growing competition — which will become international in the near future — between establishments.
TRIAL BY FACT
How to accommodate innovation and reduce delays? A few lessons from the development of Laguna II
Quelques leçons tirées du développement de la Laguna II
By Franck AGGERI
and Blanche SEGRESTIN
CGS, Ecole des mines de Paris
Designing a new automobile is a strategic activity that brings together, adapts and changes different procedures in a special context in relation to strategic targets and as a function of distributed qualifications. This activity involves much more conflict than you would think when listening to managers talk. The Laguna II Project bears important lessons about how firms implement state-of-the-art managerial procedures and about how product development can be methodologically studied. Beyond handling the difficulties that cropped up, Renault had a surprising capacity to react to situations and ask questions. One of the most convincing pieces of evidence of this is the presence of researchers endowed with a broad capacity for inquiry.
Restructuring firms: From economic rationality to human beings
De la rationalité économique à la souffrance des hommes
By Maryse DUBOULOY
Professeur à l'ESSEC
Claude FABRE
Maître de Conférences à l'IUFM de Montpellier
and MOSAICS
The mathematical rationality underlying several cases of restructuring in line with an essentially "financial logic" shows that the human implications are often overlooked, underestimated or even denied. In changes painful for people, it is essential to collectively take into account the emotional and psychological aspects of reorganization. In this context, gradually working out a reorganization strategy based on forward-looking procedures for managing human resources, adopting counseling and dialog programs for following up on change, and defining a clear-cut project are the very conditions for the human and economic success of a restructuring.
Mosaics
L'islam dévoilé
À propos du livre de Daryush Shayegan : « Le regard mutilé » (Éditions L'aube Poche, 1996)
By Claude RIVELINE
Ecole des Mines de Paris
Les forces souterraines du management
À propos du livre « Délit de gestion », sous la direction de Salvatore Maugeri (Éditions La Dispute, 2001)
By Daniel FIXARI
CGS, Ecole des Mines de Paris
Le retour du long terme ?
À propos des livres de M. Baghai, S. Coley & D. White, « The Alchemy of Growth » (Perseus Publishing, Mai 2000) et de J. Mc Grath, F. Kroeger, M. Tream & J. Rockenhaeuser, « The Value Growers » (Mc Graw Hill, 2001)
By Dominique JACQUET
Université Paris X Nanterre
A SHORT
Du concept pur aux applications pratiques et retour
Les tribulations de l'Institut Henri Poincaré et de l'Institut de la Statistique de l'Université de Paris
By Francis PAVE
Centre de Sociologie des Organisations
Mathematics and society
Entretien avec Georges Th. Guilbaud
Mené par Bernard COLASSE (Université Paris-Dauphine) et Francis PAVE (Centre de Sociologie des Organisations)
In the years following WW II, applied mathematics found a haven for creation and development and the conditions for an exceptional diffusion inside the Henri Poincaré Institute; but all these advantages would be depleted by the 1960s. One of the leaders in this adventure was Georges Guilbaud. Inspired by Condorcet, this mathematician would, quite early in his career, take interest in how mathematics was used in various social sciences as well as in economics and management. He played a key role in developing operations research in France.
The Henri Poincaré Institute at the origin of operations research
Entretien avec Bernard BRU, historien des Mathématiques
Mené par Bernard COLASSE (Université Paris-Dauphine) et Francis PAVE (Centre de Sociologie des Organisations)
At the end of WW I, Émile Borel, an outstanding mathematician, was appointed to the Chair of Probability and Mathematical Physics at the University of Paris. At that time, statistics was hardly taught anywhere; and the very idea of concretely applying mathematics kindled scorn among "true" mathematicians. Nonetheless, Borel was persuaded that, in economics and especially insurance, a demand existed for practical applications. This intuition would, in 1928, beget the Henri Poincaré Institute, which brought together mathematics in Paris and would, in turn, give birth to the Institute of Statistics at the University of Paris. During the next thirty years, the ISUP, led by remarkable men, would be behind the introduction, in France, of education in statistics and of statistical applications in industry, management and operations research.