SMEs, Technologies and Development
An Academic Communication to NATF, by Christian MARBACH, former GM of SOFFINOVA PARTNERS and ANVAR

How can we assist SMEs to take technological evolution into their stride, naturally with all the relevant consequences and even encourage them to play an important role in designing and developing major innovations? This Academic Communication to the Academy sets out certain answers to these questions.

After an overview of the SME scene in France, diverse and important to the economy, the report touches on the innumerable possibilities to engage a dialogue with the SMEs, all the more so that these possibilities are open to all, whether or not they wish to integrate technologies and their changes into their activities.

The report then goes on to make identify certain factors that relate to conditions needed for a good circulation of technologies, before insisting on the specifics of those SMEs that seek to be more active in this area, for example, subcontractors of the major French groups or “young” enterprises created for the very purpose of developing innovative products, processes or services.

To conclude, the author underscores that fact that the primordial ingredient for success when an SME is faced with a technological ‘assault’ or challenge, is the personal quality of the managers and their immediate staff. This presupposes that the rules for access to various jobs and to management practice for many SMEs – that today are somewhat buried in an often Malthusian framework of authorisations should never neglect the technological dimension in the rule-base and its own evolution. Likewise, technical training in France suffers from all the crucial shortcomings that we find in the “selection” process of the students, which in essence penalise the SMEs who would be their main employers. Lastly, the author states that it is not at all certain that the current continuing education system in France allows the managers and staff of the SMEs to acquire the basics of technological evolution, fraught as this path is with delays and difficulties.

PME, Technologies et développement This document, in Frech, ca, be ordered at this site.

Biotechnologies and the Environment

A NATF Academic Communication. Ed. Le Manuscrit : April 2010

Biotechnologies rely on certain properties of micro-organisms, animal or vegetable cells, cell constituents, notably enzymes, in order to create new products, new production processes or new services.

Biotechnologies are usually exclusively associated with GMBs and carry a generally negative connotation in France, even though their impact in the domain of public health is generally seen as positive. This vision stems largely from the fact that the benefits are not clearly understood and therefore are not “visible”. Faced with the difficulty of appreciating the risk factors and a tendency to reject the technologies – given that they are seen to be an ‘instrumentalisation’ of the living realms - it is not easy to restore confidence of end-users in any technological progress that derives from life sciences.

And yet biotechnologies are present everywhere and have existed for a long, long time, for example in beer-brewing and, wine fermentation and bread making. In more recent times, we find applications in food and chemical industries, in production of renewable energies and waste treatment processes.

Far from having a negative effect on the environment, biotechnologies can represent an advantage for companies who integrate environmental issues and preservation seriously in their development policies.

Without even trying to make a pro domo defence of biotechnologies and limiting the arguments to environmental spin-offs when implemented, the examples set out in this report illustrate the extent to which biotechnologies can have a positive impact on preservation, or even restoration, of our environment in fields as varied as agriculture, solid waste disposal and effluent water treatment, health sectors and the chemical industries at large.