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Lyon-Grenoble - A region of excellence for innovative
start-ups
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The Rhône-Alpes Region, and especially the towns of Lyon and Grenoble, have a long tradition of partnership with research, university and industry, and a significant concentration of those in the fields of digital and IT and biotechnologies. This represents an outstanding framework for the creation of new technology-rich companies (I). Going further than this tradition of excellence, a common strategy for reinforcing the mechanisms of innovation is being set up (II): complementary national, regional and local initiatives encourage innovation in the service of regional development and job creation. As a result, in the Rhône-Alpes Region (with a total population of 5.63 million inhabitants, a Gross Domestic Expenditure on R&D of 2.23%) it is possible to estimate that about 800 innovative companies or new activities have been created in the last 10 years, especially in the sectors of information technology and micro-electronics. |
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I. An exceptional infrastructure
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1. Rhone Alpes is the largest research centre in France after the Paris area
- Public research in Rhône-Alpes represents 10% of French research and industrial research, 11% of French researchers.
- Grenoble is the first public research centre after Paris Ile-de-France.
- Grenoble ranks second in France for scientific communications and Lyons ranks third.
- 26,200 researchers: 17,000 in the Grenoble area, (13,000 of them coming from public research) and 9,200 in the Lyon area.
- Grenoble has 55,000 students, 10% of them coming from abroad, 3 renowned universities (Grenoble occupies a renowned position in mathematics, informatics, physics, electronics, health engineering), 9 engineer schools belonging to the Polytechnical group INPG, 2 business schools, 3 Technological Institutes, etc.
- Lyon-Saint Etienne has 120,000 students, 3 universities, INSA Engineer Schools, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Ecole Centrale de Lyon, Ecole de Management de Lyon.
- Lyon and Grenoble are also home to CNRS, INSERM, INRA.
- Lyon is home to the International Centre for Cancer.
- Grenoble is home to exceptional international and European facilities: European Molecular Biology Laboratory, European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, the Laue Langevin Institute (ILL).
- Grenoble hosts well-known national organisations and research institutes in micro-nano and IT technologies: Atomic Energy Research Centre of Grenoble (CEA), the Rhône-Alpes Centre of the National Institute for Computing and Automatics (INRIA), the National Study Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), the Grenoble High Magnetic Field Laboratory (GHMFL), France Telecom Research and Development Centre, etc.
- The Lyon-Saint Etienne pole has the largest centre of education in Rhône-Alpes. Lyon is one of the leading European centres for specialised courses in management skills for the healthcare industry, and occupies an even more essential position for veterinary care: a large choice of initial and continuous training resources, Strategy Development & Business Planning, Investments Analysis & Evaluation, Rhone Merieux and the world's leading school for vets.
2. Rhones Alpes hosts major French and international groups and SMES in the numeric and bio-technology sectors.
- Exceptionally high density of activity in the field of numeric and IT issues/sectors. 60,000 jobs in Rhône-Alpes, half of them in the Grenoble area; a large number of international companies and SMEs.
- Grenoble : STMicroelectronics, Motorala, Philips associated research, SOITEC, large groups such as Thales, Schneider Electric, Hewlett Packard, Xerox, Sun Microsystems, whose R & D centres are based in Grenoble.
- In this field Lyon is also an important European centre for video games: European leader Infogrames.
- Biotechnologies :
- Lyon : leading centre in France for the pharmaceutical industry, presence of large chemical groups: Bio Merieux, Rhodia, Aventis, with associated research organisations, Institut Pasteur, Universities.
- Grenoble hosts the Genopole which gathers 5 research platfoms :
Transcriptome Analysis, Exploring Gene function in Lyon, the National Centre of Proteomics research , Bioinformatics and Nanobio in Grenoble.
- Minatec : a European centre, mainly financed by public funding, dedicated to micro and nano technology research, initial and continuous training (2 engineer schools), creation of start-ups stemmed from laboratories or from cooperation between laboratories and companies on integrated cluster, animation of an international network with a specific space dedicated to seminars, hosting of European networks, of venture capital firms, local agencies for economic development via digital technologies.
Most laboratories and universities have European and international co-operations and are closely connected to regional industry, thus taking advantage of long-standing, well diversified industrial fabrics.
- The Lyons and Grenoble Region has a large university hospital centres, including high level research laboratories (Lyon, Grenoble, Saint-Etienne). The CHU (University hospital of Grenoble) is home to a laboratory with a technology transfer office, spinning out 3 new companies per year.
- The CEA/Leti laboratory gathers researchers, industries and laboratories through an open platform initiative, in the field of micro and nano technologies. About 30 new companies merged from this process in 20 years : 20 in 12 years, and 10 in the last 3 years. In 30 years more than 1,500 employements were created as a result (minimal scale). The most famous is the international firm STMicroelectronics, world number 4in semi-conductors.
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II. A strategy for reinforcing regional excellence
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1. Facilitating tools
- Scientific parks and incubators play an important role in technological
transfer :
- scientific parks: Novacite, and Bioparc in Lyon and Biopolis in Grenoble.
- incubators: Crealys in Lyon for Western Rhône-Alpes, crealys@aol.com and GRAIN in Grenoble for Eastern Rhône-Alpes, elisabeth.andrup@grenoble-alpes-incubation.com
- Seed-funds aim at investing in innovative start-ups with a high technological and financial potential
2. Legal and administrative measures aimed at favouring the creation and development of innovative enterprises.
From national level :
The legal and administrative framework effecting the creation of new companies is based on the Innovation Law (loi Allègre, July 1999) which improves employment, taxation and status of researchers in the public sector. This removes many well-known difficulties from the paths of those wishing to start companies based on scientific innovation.
Great attention is paid to the simplification of the procedure for starting a company :
- encouragement, orientation and support of entrepreneurs (training in aspects of running a company),
- local technology platforms (interaction between education/research/industry),
- business/education links.
At the end of 1999, the Rhône-Alpes network of towns initiated a policy of developing innovation and technology transfer from research laboratories to commercial application in two key-sectors. These were numeric (including IT, software development, micro and nanotechnologies) and biotechnology with the objective of deploying substantial resources over a five-year period. Lyon was chosen to lead the bio-industry part of the initiative and Grenoble was appointed to take care of numeric and IT issues/sectors : Creation of two regional thematic agencies since early 2000 to coordinate and facilitate initiatives: Agence Régionale du Numérique for digital and IT sector in Grenoble, ARTEB for biotechnologies sector in Lyon.
Their mission is to identify and promote the assets of the Rhône-Alpes Region laboratories and companies in the IT and biotechnological fields and highlight regional, national, European, international networking, to ensure a technological and economic survey for regional SMEs and favour partnerships between laboratories and regional SMEs. They are chaired by an innovative SMEs CEO and financed by the Regional Council, the regional delegations for the Ministries of Research and Industry and the Rhône-Alpes cities network. |
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Links
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Regional Development Agency for Digital and IT :
Agence Régionale du numérique, in Grenoble
Philippe Malicet, Director
numera@numera.org
Regional Development Agency for biotechnologies :
Arteb
JB Philippon, Director
jbphilippon@arteb.com
Incubators :
Crealys
national incubator based in Lyon
Pascal Nief, Director
crealys@crealys.com
Grain national incubator based in Grenoble
Gilles Talbotier, Director
gilles.talbotier@gr-a-in.com |
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Seed-funds
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National seed fund for electronics and materials
Emertec, in Grenoble
pcapdevielle@emertec.fr
National seed fund for biotechnologies
BioAm, in Lyon and Paris
contact@bioam.fr
National seed fund for informatics
I-Source, in Grenoble (hosted by INRIA)
info@isourcegestion.fr
National Agency for Research VAlorization :
ANVAR in Rhône-Alpes :
Jean-Yves Renaud -Regional Delegate
rhone@anvar.fr |
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