{"id":36019,"date":"2017-11-28T20:58:51","date_gmt":"2017-11-28T19:58:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/?p=36019"},"modified":"2019-04-26T15:50:06","modified_gmt":"2019-04-26T13:50:06","slug":"france-in-the-tech-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/2017\/11\/france-in-the-tech-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Where does France really stand in the Tech World?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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We like to put things – and people – into neat little boxes: this country is good at inventing, this one does well in computer sciences<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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How much if it is true?<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The OECD<\/strong> has <\/span><\/span>just<\/span><\/span> released a comprehensive report<\/a> on Science, Technology and Industry for 2017<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Maybe<\/span><\/span> it’s time to set the record straight. So how is France <\/span>really<\/span><\/span> doing?<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Science and the digital revolution<\/span><\/h3>\n
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Artificial Intelligence<\/strong>: the rank of the G20 countries in AI relates to their number of patents<\/strong><\/span><\/span>. France accounts for only 2.2% of all AI related inventions from 2012 to 2014. <\/span>This ranks well among European countries but France is far behind Asian countries such as Japan and Korea<\/span><\/span>. The USA are at third place.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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France’s number of AI related patents is down from 2.8% (in 2000-2005) to 2.1%<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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One area where France makes a mark is Machine-to-Machine subscriptions<\/strong>. In June 2017, France was only second to the USA and ahead of all the others.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Digital Transformation, Growth and Jobs<\/span><\/h3>\n
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Almost 86% of individuals in France used the Internet in 2016<\/strong>. Only 46.9% of them did in 2006. That’s a wooping 97% of 16-24 year olds and 68.5% of 55-74 year olds. More than half of who we now call seniors are in fact surfing the web. <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A matter of concern are the low figures in Adult Training.<\/strong> 43% of men and 43% of women are currently engaged in some sort of training. This is among the lowest numbers in the OECD countries<\/strong>. <\/span>When you take into account that half of jobs in the next 15 years don’t exist yet, there is a dying need to be able to upgrade one’s skills<\/span><\/span>. <\/span>France hardly promotes lifelong learning<\/strong> and this could prove to be a serious hinderance <\/span><\/span>in the near future<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The digital divide could worsen because of this.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Women graduates are lagging<\/strong> when it comes to scientific fields: they represent 31% of all tertiary graduates in Natural Science, engineering and ICT<\/span><\/span>. Actually, they are <\/span>barely<\/span><\/span> represented among ICT graduates (2%).<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Once in the workplace, women earn 14% less<\/strong> than their male counterpart.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Still, French women account for 10.5% of patents<\/strong> between 2012 and 2015 which is above the figures in the USA (10%) and the rest of Europe (7%)<\/span><\/span>. <\/span>There <\/span><\/span>is indeed<\/span><\/span> much to gain by promoting Science studies for women starting as early as primary school<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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There is also a severe drop in IT manufacturing and IT services. Once in the Top 6 (in 1995), France has dropped to the 10th place<\/strong> in 2011 in both fields.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Despite France’s efforts to promote technology, it seems there are issues to address. <\/span>Mainly<\/span><\/strong> education and training<\/strong>. <\/span>Education, to promote equal access to IT diplomas and lifelong training to adapt to changing technologies<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Taking action<\/span><\/h3>\n
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France’s government budget for R&D<\/strong> has <\/span>strongly<\/span><\/span> declined between 2008 and 2016. It fell by 22%.\u00a0<\/span>It declined even more in the defence-related R&D where it dropped by 80%.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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This is sure to correlate with the low rate of scientific publications.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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As this was not enough, France has lost more authors<\/strong> than it gained through international mobility<\/span><\/span>. In the past 15 years, 8000 more scientific authors left France than entered.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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To top this, France doesn’t have “publishing culture”<\/strong> in the scientific area as other countries do<\/span><\/span>. It’s trying to catch up but the ratio of publications in the top-10% of those most cited lags Europe’s figures (11.3%). <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Now what?<\/span><\/h3>\n
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The situation is far from being hopeless though. Many of those numbers date back to 2016. Sure, this was only last year. But a lot has happened since then.<\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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New president. Economy picking up. Huge efforts to promote the French Tech<\/strong> abroad and seduce foreign investors. Highly-skilled techies<\/strong> and their families invited to settle in French startups. The future may not be so dim after all.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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This study gives clear insights into what France needs to improve<\/strong>. <\/span>Let’s <\/span><\/span>just<\/span><\/span> hope the report will not <\/span><\/span>be discarded<\/span><\/span> like the PISA report (on the education system) which France keeps ignoring<\/span><\/span>. <\/span>France’s tech future may <\/span><\/span>reside<\/span><\/span> in an unbiased appraisal of its position<\/strong> in the G20 <\/span><\/span>regarding<\/span><\/span> technologies<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Source:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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OECD (2017), OECD Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard 2017: The digital transformation, OECD Publishing, Paris<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We like to put things – and people – into neat little boxes: this country is good at inventing, this one does well in computer sciences. How much if it is true? The OECD has just released a comprehensive report on Science, Technology and Industry for 2017. Maybe it’s time to set the record straight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":36021,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1962],"tags":[7269,7268],"class_list":["post-36019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-leisure","tag-artificial-intelligence-en-2","tag-europe-en-2"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36019","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=36019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}