Rennes obtained the French Tech label on November 12, 2014. -
C. Allain / APEI / 20 Minutess
The Poool's mission is to attract talent and help project leaders to promote their innovations.
Obtained six years ago, the French Tech label has visibly enabled Rennes to develop its digital sector.
About 10,000 jobs would have been created in ten years in this sector.
It was a little less than six years ago.
Rennes obtained its “French Tech” label and dreamed of being the French digital capital.
Since then, time has passed, the appellation has changed and Rennes has seen the birth of Le Poool, a baby resulting from the merger of the Rennes Atalante technopole and its “French Tech” structure.
Comfortably installed in the former premises of France Telecom at Mabilais, the 25 employees of the Poool are trying to bring out innovation projects in the department of Ille-et-Vilaine.
Goal ?
Create activity and therefore jobs.
To achieve this, the Poool recently renewed its teams.
Arrived less than a year ago, the director Daniel Gergès has been accompanied since Wednesday by Gwenaëlle Quenaon-Hervé, appointed president of the structure before a virtual general assembly bringing together 300 people.
Co-founder of Régionsjob (today called HelloWork), the Rennaise will try to put her entrepreneurial experience at the service of project leaders.
"For me, innovation makes a region economically attractive," said the new president.
The basic objective was there.
In 2014, obtaining the French Tech label should allow Rennes to attract talent.
"I want people to dream of coming to Rennes and Saint-Malo", hammered the former boss Stanislas Hintzy.
Since then, the teams have grown, digital events have multiplied, but has the structure helped to create jobs?
The 2019 key figures @Le_Poool presented during the
#General
Assembly ...
▶ ️300 members
▶ ️26 innovative companies
▶ ️200 supported companies
▶ ️80 projects integrated into support programs
▶ ️4 experimentation projects
... and 100 events!
#innovation pic.twitter.com/bsLd4ktwT7
- Fanch ROUAULT (@fanch_rt) September 23, 2020
If the results of this work are difficult to assess, we can rely on the study carried out in 2019 by Audiar, an urban planning and development agency for the Rennes metropolitan area, which estimated the number of jobs at 1,000. created each year in the digital sector.
"What is being done at Poool is much larger than what can be seen in other French Tech capitals", assures director Daniel Gergès.
According to the same study, digital technology offered around 30,000 jobs in the Rennes metropolitan area, placing it in third place nationally for the density of jobs in the sector.
Gwenaëlle Quenaon-Hervé is the co-founder of Régionsjob and now president of Poool, a structure created by French Tech Rennes.
- C. Allain / 20 Minutes
With a budget of 2.8 million euros per year, the Poool aims to be the interface between all players in the digital sector, from large Orange laboratories to the small creator of start-ups.
A central pole capable of supporting, guiding and federating to bring about projects.
“I have the impression that a lot of things have changed since the arrival of Daniel Gergès.
He's a “serial entrepreneur”, he knows what he's talking about ”, assures Anthony Chesnais, one of the pioneers of the Rennes digital canteen founded in 2010. For him, the Breton capital remains among the most attractive, in particular thanks to the quality of its engineers and its research centers.
“The people of Nantes envy us”, slips the one who has become a community manager.
The health crisis, a boost for the province?
To gain in attractiveness, Rennes was able to count on two nudges.
One was expected and is called the LGV which brought Paris and its decision-making centers closer together.
The other one arrived suddenly and is named Covid-19.
Studies show that confinement and the health crisis have given desires elsewhere to many Parisians who had so far resisted calls from the province.
An unexpected response to the recruitment difficulties of certain companies.
Not wanting to experiment with 5G in Rennes, it's as if Reims decided to ban champagne or Le Havre to close its port!
How to kill its flagship economy and its ecosystem!
Think of the tens of thousands of people who work in digital and telecoms in Rennes https://t.co/K7nANnTL6N
- Jocelyn DENIS (@jocelyndenis) September 16, 2020
The challenge of Poool today seems to be that of opening up to a public far removed from the networks that are not always open in the digital sector.
“We are going to launch a French Tech Tremplin to offer strong support to those who are excluded from entrepreneurship,” says director Daniel Gergès.
As for the new president Gwenaëlle Quénaon-Hervé, she promises "to identify all the companies which will have difficulties" in this period of crisis.
He told himself there could be many.
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