• In his speech presenting his economic project for “France 2030”, Emmanuel Macron announced that he wanted to make France a country specializing in innovation start-ups.

  • A pious wish that the president intends to realize with funding of 30 billion euros.

  • Enough to achieve this objective and create the innovation leaders of tomorrow?

Will the new Telsa, SpaceX or Blue Origin be French? In any case, this is the wish of Emmanuel Macron. During his speech on his economic project “France 2030”, he set the country's ambition to become a “great nation of innovation”. And for this, France must, according to the tenant of the Elysee, bet less on the large historical groups of the CAC40 than on the newcomers. "French reindustrialisation will also pass, and perhaps especially in certain areas, through start-ups", declared the president.

"If we want to build the France of 2030, we must win back the industrial part, we must innovate in and through industry and therefore decide to increase funding for industrial start-ups," insisted Emmanuel Macron.

But does France really have enough to bring out the Jean-François Bezos and other Léon Musk of tomorrow?

The number 1 place impossible

The soil is there, according to Servane Delanoë-Gueguen, teacher-researcher at Toulouse Business School and specialist in entrepreneurial ecosystems. Obviously, despite his optimism displayed, equaling or surpassing the United States by 2030 seems totally chimerical: "we have neither the same production forces, nor the same funding, nor the same culture," he recalls. she. France will therefore not dominate the world of innovation at the end of the decade, shut up.

Even constant clear, clean and precise for Stéphane Villers, economist specializing in macroeconomics: "We cannot compare our capacity to invest public money to the capacity of the United States to do so, they have eight times our GDP" .

Innovation is perhaps a question of daring, nerve, genius, but above all a question of financial means.

The economist cites the example of the vaccine against the coronavirus as such: “Who found them first?

The United States, which has invested billions and billions in it.

This is innovation: whoever invests the most wins.

"

Focus on Europe

For the two experts, the solution is therefore quite found to hope one day to look the United States in the eye: the European Union.

The 27 can better claim to box in the same court as Washington: roughly the same population, the same shares of the world market, and the same GDP.

“If France wants to create a future star entrepreneur, it has every interest in quickly turning to the international market, at least European.

If it focuses on the French market, it will not break through beyond ”, supports Servane Delanoë-Gueguen.

What is more, the alliance between several nations can bring a saving mixture of skills when seeking to innovate.

But here too, there is ambition and reality: such cooperation between European nations remains difficult to envisage in the short term.

French dynamism

There are, however, grounds for hope. In terms of start-ups, France was starting from much further away, and has made up part of its delay. “At its level, French Tech is in the process of establishing itself,” enthuses Stéphanie Villers. In 2013, French Tech raised a total of 600 million euros during the year. In 2018, four billion. One figure among many which illustrates the French rhythm. If France cannot match the United States, it is inspired by it, adds Servane Delanoë-Gueguen: “There have been great changes over the past two decades, with a real ability to try, to take risks, entrepreneurship that has developed in the country, and more investment ”.

Good thing, Emmanuel Macron spoke of investing several billion euros more. For the teacher-researcher, it is nevertheless necessary to be careful with this funding, which can be tricky if they are too delimited, the president speaking in particular of investing massively in ecological technologies: “Innovation arises from where we do not. do not expect it, we must therefore leave a great freedom to start-ups and not impose precise specifications on them. "

But in the end, is a Jean-François Bezos from home possible anyway?

Yes, for Servane Delanoë-Gueguen.

The response is more nuanced in Stéphanie Villers: "Bezos or Musks, France must already have plenty of them, we know very well how to create well-formed and innovative heads, what we don't know how to do is to converse them. .

One of the most significant recent innovations is the RNA vaccine against the coronavirus, notably by Moderna.

Its CEO, Stéphane Bancel, is French.

But is no longer in France.

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