"Innovation is not a profit center, it is a public service mission."
On April 20, the University of Montpellier hosted the Deep Tech Tour. This event was organized by the public investment bank with the aim of raising awareness of entrepreneurship among researchers and students. It was an opportunity to take stock of innovation policy at UM with Vice President François Pierrot.
What exactly is innovation for a university that constantly produces new knowledge?
The goal of academic research has always been to acquire new knowledge. Innovation consists of transforming some of this knowledge into new products and services, or even public actions, because innovation does not only concern the commercial world, even if the link is more obvious when we talk about patents or software.
Are French universities required to have an innovation policy?
The official missions of universities include education, research, and contributing to the country's economic growth, so innovation is not an option for us. We are mainly funded by public money. Where does this money come from? From the economic activity generated by everyone's work. If, when the knowledge we have acquired lends itself to it, we do not bring our innovations to the market, or more broadly to society, it is a lost opportunity for everyone, and we are failing in one of our missions.
Is academic research essential for economic development?
Most economic progress today is linked to scientific and technological innovations, and the world's most prominent companies are those that have successfully linked research, innovation, and industrial production. We see this around major American universities: the Boston area around MIT and Harvard, Silicon Valley around UC Berkeley, Stanford, etc.In France, the promotion of "Deep Tech companies" illustrates this desire to place technological innovation from the academic world at the heart of the creation of companies that will be tomorrow's champions.
How do we take these innovations out of the university and bring them to market?
There is no single path, but certain elements are very often present: technology maturation, incubation of young companies, establishment of solid contractual relationships with private partners. We currently benefit from our privileged relationship with SATT AxLR, a private operator (created by the government in 2012) with public shareholders.
Who are the shareholders?
The most important shareholders are the French government, the CNRS, and the University of Montpellier, but the Montpellier Region and Metropolitan Area, which are key partners in innovation, have recently joined us. SAatt companies have financial resources that enable us to contribute directly to the maturation process when we detect a breakthrough in our laboratories that could give rise to intellectual property (patent, software, etc.), but also to the incubation of young companies that rely on our technologies.
And what measures has UM put in place to ensure this detection?
This is the role of both the departments in charge of partnerships with companies that are in regular contact with the laboratories (at UM: the DIPA), and specific measures, such as our "innovation booster": BIM (read BIM: a springboard for your ideas). If the projects are still at a very early stage, it will be necessary to persevere with pure research; if proof of concept is still lacking, move towards pre-incubation; if the projects are well advanced, move towards SATT or BIC.
What is the purpose of incubation?
If experienced managers are not present from the outset, the team of founders must be trained: this is the role of incubation. In many cases, it is the researchers themselves who wish to start a business. Concepts such as business plans, regulations, HR management, export strategies, etc. are often unfamiliar to them.
And who is responsible for this incubation in the Montpellier area?
We are fortunate in Montpellier to have several players who not only provide incubation services but also cooperate to provide co-incubation. Satt, of course, but also Montpellier BIC, which is one of the best incubators in the world and which we will soon have the opportunity to host on the Triolet campus, and finally the University Incubator, currently operated by MoMa, which we hope to strengthen in the near future.
Not all researchers want to start a business. How do you encourage relationships between researchers and companies that might be interested in their innovations?
These relationships need to be built over time, which is what we have been doing for the past three years with the Companies on Campus program. We help laboratories that want to welcome companies onto their premises to carry out collaborative research. These encounters can lead to future marketable products or services.
Does innovation generate revenue for the University?
Some may imagine that we do this for profit, but innovation is not a profit center; it is a public service mission. The "profit" is found in the society around us, thanks to the jobs created and the progress that spreads. If we look at the university's accounts, we will of course see income, but the university has not turned into a "business" or a "financial institution"; we are a public service provider.
Last November, we were selected to become one of five French university innovation hubs, or PUIs. Why us?
The government chose Montpellier because we and our partners demonstrated that we had moved beyond competition between institutions to a stage of cooperation. All of our partnership and promotion departments work together and have harmonized their practices. We have created a large family of innovation experts in Montpellier.
This cluster has a budget of €2.5 million. What will this funding enable?
We are well aware of our scientific strengths, but we are less familiar with our technological assets. However, if we want to help solve the problems facing the socio-economic sphere and society more broadly, we need to map these technological strengths and skills. To do this, we need to listen, and the PUI will enable us to do just that.
How?
By deploying new methods. The first is a long-term approach known as ideation. For a given topic, stakeholders are brought together with researchers and asked to work together for several weeks or even months to identify a social issue and then develop it into a research project.
And in the short term?
We have remarkable technological resources and expertise in our labs that could enable us to offer engineering services to companies for specific needs. This is not the job of researchers or research engineers; however, we could imagine placing engineers as close as possible to certain platforms, capable of responding to these specific needs. Some of our partners are very active in this area, particularly the CNRS.
In June, the University will host the Curie Congress. Is this an important event for those involved in innovation?
The Curie Congress brings together several hundred innovation experts to discuss, share, and develop practices. It is an opportunity for mutual learning and cooperation, and a very warm moment for the community. What's more, we are fortunate to be hosting this event in the year that we are celebrating the continuation of the I-SITE label... and the "E" in I-SITE stands for "economy." So it's a wonderful coincidence.
Finally, since 2019, the University of Montpellier has been awarding an Innovation Prize. What is the purpose of this initiative?
There are ways to recognize performance in the field of research and, more recently, in the field of education, but the government has not yet established a prize to recognize great innovators. This is a way for us to thank the teams that contribute most to this mission and to show that it is possible to conduct excellent research and transfer it. Put simply, this award is there to say that at the University of Montpellier, we love innovators.