The first inno­va­tion tour in the indus­tri­al zones, run­ning from June to Octo­ber 2019 and in which UTC par­tic­i­pat­ed, was a suc­cess. Its assigned objec­tive was to iden­ti­fy the needs of SME-SMIs in terms of inno­va­tion and inter­na­tion­al skills. 

Among the forty stopover cities of the first edi­tion of the inno­va­tion tour in the indus­tri­al ter­ri­to­ries, four are in Hauts­de-France, includ­ing Albert-Méaulte and Sain­tQuentin. Last Sep­tem­ber, in the town of Albert, the event was organ­ised by UTC-Compiegne. 

A work­shop-debate co-host­ed by Pas­cal Alber­ti, Direc­tor of Inno­va­tion and Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Devel­op­ment of UTC, with the ALTYTUD clus­ter and the com­mu­ni­ty of town­ships of the Pays du Coqueli­cot (”Pop­py-land”). The themes addressed relat­ed to the place of inno­va­tion and inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment in the cur­rent activ­i­ty of the SMESMIs of this ter­ri­to­ry, their expec­ta­tions in terms of skills but also the syn­er­gies between com­pa­nies, ter­ri­to­ry, uni­ver­si­ties and high­er edu­ca­tion establishments. 

Sev­er­al busi­ness lead­ers were able to express them­selves on many points. Typ­i­cal ques­tions raised: How do we inno­vate? With whom do we inno­vate? How do we attract young tal­ent? What syn­er­gies? What skills are in demand? Then, on Octo­ber 7, the tour end­ed at the Aisne Depart­men­tal Cham­ber of Com­merce and Indus­try. Around thir­ty high­er edu­ca­tion estab­lish­ments, includ­ing the UTC, were mobilised to sup­port this ini­tia­tive of the InnovENT‑E Institute. 

The lat­ter has just renewed the approach ini­ti­at­ed in 2012, which was to meet and inter­view SME-SMIs in order to bet­ter under­stand their expec­ta­tions in terms of human resources and to devel­op a skills-inten­sive bank. The insti­tute want­ed to be part of the dynam­ics of the indus­tri­al ter­ri­to­ries launched by the Prime Min­is­ter last autumn to meet their eco­nom­ic play­ers in a more exten­sive and struc­tured format. 

And this will ben­e­fit from the sup­port at the nation­al lev­el of the inter­min­is­te­r­i­al del­e­ga­tion for indus­tri­al ter­ri­to­ries, the BPI France, the Min­istry of High­er Edu­ca­tion, Research and Inno­va­tion, the CPME, the Pink Innov’ asso­ci­a­tion, the MMA busi­ness foun­da­tion of Entre­pre­neurs of the Future, the APEC and sev­er­al play­ers in the eco­nom­ic and social devel­op­ment of each ter­ri­to­ry visited. 

The strength of a territorial network

The InnovENT‑E Insti­tute is a part­ner­ship foun­da­tion cre­at­ed in 2018 with the aim of “pro­mot­ing the devel­op­ment of inno­va­tion and inter­na­tion­al skills among SMEs and SMIs”. It will per­pet­u­ate the actions of IDEFI (Ini­tia­tive D’Ex­cel­lence en For­ma­tions Inno­vantes) launched in 2011 as part of the Gov­ern­ment Incen­tive Pro­gramme of Invest­ments for the Future (PIA).

The insti­tute pro­motes the group­ing of eco­nom­ic and aca­d­e­m­ic actors, struc­tured in a net­work of ter­ri­to­r­i­al net­works. It aims at con­tribut­ing to the devel­op­ment of employ­ment and busi­ness com­pet­i­tive­ness through the co-con­struc­tion of a train­ing offer around the themes of inno­va­tion, cre­ativ­i­ty and entre­pre­neur­ship (ICE) labelled and adapt­ed to the speci­fici­ties of SME-SMIs. 

This foun­da­tion also pro­motes SME-SMIs among stu­dents and appren­tices. The Regions of Nor­mandy, Brit­tany, Cen­tre-Val de Loire, Hauts-de-France, Grand Est and Pays de la Loire have sup­port­ed IDEFI InnovENT-E’s approach, some of them as ear­ly as 2011 and, in par­tic­u­lar, the asso­ci­a­tion that was the fore­run­ner of the part­ner­ship foundation. 

“This nation­al tour will result in a sta­tus doc­u­ment that we will sub­mit to the Min­istry of the Econ­o­my dur­ing the first semes­ter of 2020. A very use­ful tool for com­pa­nies and for all of us, actors of the ter­ri­to­ry, in order to stick to the needs of the field via a ref­er­ence frame of com­pe­tences”, explains Pas­cal Alber­ti. Because more than ten thou­sand ques­tion­naires have also been sent out to SMEs with­out for­get­ting the thou­sand com­pa­nies mobi­lized on this largescale action. 

“It should be remem­bered that only one in twen­ty com­pa­nies export when they are not inno­vat­ing while one in two export when inno­va­tion is present”.