The Report with the find­ings of the first Inno­va­tion Tour de France, 2021, is now avail­able ! Prof. Alain Stor­ck, for­mer Pres­i­dent & Vice-Chan­cel­lor of UTC and Pres­i­dent of the Hauts-de-France Inno­va­tion and Devel­op­ment Agency (HDFID), was in charge of edi­to­r­i­al coor­di­na­tion and writ­ing of cer­tain chap­ters of the Report, enti­tled: «Regards croisés sur le développe­ment de l’innovation et l’international dans les PME-PMI de ter­ri­toires d’industrie : bilans et per­spec­tives» [Analy­ses of Inno­va­tion and Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment Poli­cies for SMEs & SMIs in indus­try-inten­sive ter­ri­to­ries: sta­tus reports and future prospects]. 

The first ” Inno­va­tion Tour de France ” in its indus­tri­al ter­ri­to­ries, which took place from June to Octo­ber 2019 and in which UTC par­tic­i­pat­ed, was a suc­cess. The assigned objec­tive was to iden­ti­fy the needs of SMEs and SMIs in terms of inno­va­tion and inter­na­tion­al skills. Among the thir­ty-six stag­ing towns of the first edi­tion of the Inno­va­tion Tour de France in indus­tri­al ter­ri­to­ries, four were in Hauts-de-France, includ­ing Albert-Méaulte and Saint-Quentin. Some thir­ty HE (high­er edu­ca­tion) estab­lish­ments, includ­ing UTC, were mobilised to sup­port this ini­tia­tive of the InnovENT‑E Insti­tute with the sup­port at nation­al lev­el of the Inter­min­is­te­r­i­al Del­e­ga­tion for Indus­try-inten­sive ter­ri­to­ries, BPI France, the Min­istry of High­er Edu­ca­tion, Research and Inno­va­tion, the CPME, the Pink Innov’ asso­ci­a­tion, the MMA Entre­pre­neurs of the Future Foun­da­tion, APEC and sev­er­al oth­er eco­nom­ic and social devel­op­ment play­ers from each ter­ri­to­ry analysed.

A report that focuses on innovationand international development

This Inno­va­tion Tour de France result­ed in a sum­ma­ry doc­u­ment, a use­ful tool for com­pa­nies and local play­ers, in order to meet the needs of the field via a skills ref­er­ence frame­work. “We were able to draw con­clu­sions and write a 252-page report. Beyond the resti­tu­tion of the thir­ty-six stages and the por­traits of the com­pa­nies, we were able to high­light the ben­e­fits observed and the obsta­cles encoun­tered around inno­va­tion as a fac­tor of eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment, human resources and the ter­ri­to­ry. And above all, to make rec­om­men­da­tions. I am par­tic­u­lar­ly proud of this work”, con­fides Alain Stor­ck, Pres­i­dent of the HDFID Agency and of the InnovENT‑E insti­tute. What’s next? “A sec­ond edi­tion will be sched­uled between Sep­tem­ber 2021 and April 2022, this time fol­low­ing a call for appli­ca­tions dur­ing which the ter­ri­to­ries will be able to put for­ward all their speci­fici­ties. At the same time, we are launch­ing the ter­ri­to­r­i­al clubs, the aim of which is to iden­ti­fy the needs of SMEs and SMIs, to iden­ti­fy and invent ways of meet­ing them with part­ners, and to pro­pose solu­tions,” invites Alain Stor­ck. “The third line of work is the set­ting up of an inno­va­tion obser­va­to­ry, pro­vid­ing a data­base and asso­ciate case stud­ies to help with decision-making.“From its very first edi­tion, this Inno­va­tion Tour de France has been rich in actions and com­mit­ments for the ben­e­fit of the territory. 

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Promoting innovation

The InnovENT‑E Insti­tute is a part­ner­ship-based Foun­da­tion cre­at­ed in 2018 to pro­mote the devel­op­ment of inno­va­tion and inter­na­tion­al skills among SMEs. It is a con­tin­u­a­tion of the IDEFI (the French Gov­ern­ment Ini­tia­tive of Excel­lence in Inno­v­a­tive Train­ing) actions of the same name launched in 2011 as part of the Future Invest­ment Pro­gramme (PIA). The insti­tute pro­motes the group­ing of eco­nom­ic and aca­d­e­m­ic play­ers, struc­tured in a net­work of ter­ri­to­r­i­al net­works. It aims to con­tribute to the devel­op­ment of employ­ment and the com­pet­i­tive­ness of com­pa­nies through the co-con­struc­tion of a train­ing offer around the themes of inno­va­tion, cre­ativ­i­ty and entre­pre­neur­ship (ICE), labelled and adapt­ed to the speci­fici­ties of SMEs.