{"id":28201,"date":"2015-01-28T09:30:14","date_gmt":"2015-01-28T08:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/?p=28201"},"modified":"2015-01-28T09:30:14","modified_gmt":"2015-01-28T08:30:14","slug":"closing-gap-r-d-bpifrance-formally-redefines-innovation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/2015\/01\/closing-gap-r-d-bpifrance-formally-redefines-innovation\/","title":{"rendered":"Closing the gap between R and D, Bpifrance formally redefines Innovation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Innovation\"
\nThis week Bpifrance,\u00a0the French\u00a0investment bank which is financed by the French government,\u00a0announced that it would be changing\u00a0its criteria for determining if potential investments are innovative.\u00a0The new definition will see Innovation\u00a0defined not only as hard technological innovation (think ‘patents’), but will incorporate 5 new criteria – product innovation, service & use, behavior & organization, marketing & sales, social impact & business model. Projects will be assessed on a scale of 0 to 4 on these six criteria, with eligible candidates being expected to excel in some, not all, of these criteria.
\nSince its formation in 2013<\/a>, Bpifrance has looked to simplify the way that the French government supports innovation from an investment perspective. Inevitably, as a structure that must industrialize the process by which it assesses an entire country’s investment opportunities (rough numbers suggest that, between its activity supporting seed & growth<\/a> funds as an LP, and its direct investments in the likes of Withings, SIGFOX<\/a> & Teads<\/a>, that Bpifrance is responsible for more than 2\/3 of all investment money pouring into French startups – which is both good and bad<\/a>), Bpifrance inevitably restricted itself to tangible KPIs for technological innovation – patents & research credits.
\nAs pointed out in Challenges<\/a>[fr]\u00a0this week, this has led both to Bpifrance being unable to support some of France’s fastest growing startups (e.g: Leetchi, which\u00a0is announcing international expansion this week), as well as making things more difficult for startups, such as Blablacar, by looking to bend the very activity that the startup does in order to fit its own criteria.
\nMore importantly, though, is that Bpifrance is pointing out that it, like the very startups it supports, is still learning, and that it makes mistakes. Bpifrance\u00a0is among the most transparent government investment bank, releasing their results to the public and setting a concrete line for how both governments and\u00a0private\u00a0investment funds\u00a0can think differently about innovation without reducing it to “gut feeling.”
\nPaul-Fran\u00e7ois Fournier, SEVP of Innovation at Bpifrance, added in an interview that Bpifrance also recognizes that this\u00a0new definition of Innovation will, too, become obsolete or need adjustment, and that Bpifrance cannot afford to wait until the road is clear to step out – it, too, must be on the leading\/bleeding edge.
\nParticularly for\u00a0France, I believe that Bpifrance’s adjustment\u00a0addresses\u00a0a cultural issue head on which may have rippling positive effects. Too often France finds itself one step ahead on Research, and two steps behind on Development. Investing\u00a0based solely on research potential rewards this behavior and punishes those who are too busy building a scalable business to re-invent the wheel. By redefining and opening up its definition of innovation, Bpifrance is sending a signal across France, and even outside of France, that the country needs to redefine its priorities when it comes to supporting entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week Bpifrance,\u00a0the French\u00a0investment bank which is financed by the French government,\u00a0announced that it would be changing\u00a0its criteria for determining if potential investments are innovative.\u00a0The new definition will see Innovation\u00a0defined not only as hard technological innovation (think ‘patents’), but will incorporate 5 new criteria – product innovation, service & use, behavior & organization, marketing &<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":28226,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10563],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tech"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}