Ladies and gentlemen, dear chairmen, dear CEOs, dear colleagues, welcome to this conference which is organized with many of our partners. I will try not to forget anyone: MEDEF, and I salute Patrick Martin who will speak just after. France Industrie. I salute the presence of Alexandre too, Alexandre Soot who is here, the French Association of Technological Resource Centers, the Association of Carnot Institutes, the Association of Constrained Research Companies, the CIM, the Richelieu Committee, the CTI network, and with the support of AEF. I hope I haven't forgotten anyone. Thank you all for your presence.
So, we are gathered today because I want to say the audience is normally won over in advance, we are all convinced and we want through this day to reaffirm the importance of cooperation between the economic world, the academic world, and businesses. R&D is a vital issue for our economic fabric and, if we zoom out more generally, for the good health of our society with a capital S. It is an absolutely key determinant of the competitiveness of many of our companies, of the ability to differentiate, to make the breakthrough compared to our competitors, and also to look further, to anticipate the disruptions that transform our markets, our business models, our products and what goes with them.
We can see that to bear its best fruits, research really needs to combine the contributions of both worlds, the academic world and the business world, to produce what they have best. Quite schematically, when I look at our companies, a company's research will generally deploy on three horizons. A first horizon is that of incremental evolutions. We seek to improve our products with knowledge mastered by the company. The second horizon consists of evolving our value chains, integrating new knowledge. And there, the company begins to integrate knowledge that is not only its own and often comes from the academic world. And the third horizon, in a somewhat schematic way, is that of ruptures, technological ruptures where we will create new products, new services, sometimes even new business models. We will sometimes even create new markets. And this type of innovation and this horizon requires a significant scientific contribution.
We can see through this little diagram that the company that seeks to prepare its future must project itself on these three levels, and at least two of these three levels call on collaboration between the company and the academic world. Of course, for this virtuous circle to function as productively as possible, fully, the business world must engage. First, public research must also engage. It must also be attractive. I believe that is the case in many cases. And then, there must also be clear support in terms of public policy to act as a catalyst for this collaboration.
It is this conviction that led us to set the agenda for this day. You will see round tables, testimonies, contributions from entrepreneurs, business leaders, from the business world, from the academic world, researchers, and also political leaders who will come later in the afternoon to speak to us on this theme. And it will also be an opportunity, since we will have a plurality of political parties represented, to challenge them in the noble sense of the term on what they propose, what they envisage, particularly with a view to the upcoming elections or electoral deadlines, and of course we can think of the 2027 deadline. We will conclude this day with the intervention of Mr. Thierry Breton, who was the former president of the ANRT but who has many strings to his bow, who will come to give us his vision at the end of the day.
This event today takes place, if I may say, almost 20 years after another event that also marked these debates, stemming from the movement 'Save Research' (Sauvons la Recherche), which highlighted the need to better recognize and better support scientific activity in our country. So at that time, 20 years ago, in November 2004, the Estates General of Research were held in Grenoble and were particularly fruitful. There was a real dynamic, a real desire to change things, and the work undertaken during and after these conferences was at the origin of many major reforms that at the time carried a lot of hope. The creation of the ANR, the creation of competitiveness clusters, Carnot institutes, PIA, SAD, IRT, among other initiatives.
If we now place ourselves 20 years later and look at what has been done since, I would say the assessment, as we can make it factually, is, let's say, partially satisfactory. That means that a number of things have not borne all the fruits we expected from these various reforms. During a recent meeting between the Richelieu Committee and MEDEF, a simple question was asked: should we change everything, start over? Of course, it was theoretical, but it was a way to challenge ourselves on what we hope. The very pragmatic discussion was rather: no, we won't start over, but it led us to note lucidly certain insufficiencies of our system, things that absolutely need to be improved. The fragility of certain advances, which are positive but need to be consolidated. And also some of us regretted this very French tendency to rather than consolidate what had been launched, to create new devices, adding a bit more complexity to a world that is already complex, devices whose sustainability is not guaranteed. In short, all this lacked coherence.
Another rather alarming or worrying observation, according to recent work we have conducted, one in two companies tells us they are not convinced of the importance of research, whereas it should seem quite spontaneous. One in two companies tells us, and even fewer are convinced of the need to cooperate with academic research or academic laboratories. Even though very often, R&D is a condition for survival and long-term development in a fierce global competition.
Another point to keep in mind, something to improve or a handicap, is related to the training of our young people. On one hand, we can say that the quality of our higher education, our laboratories, is internationally recognized. That's true and good, and we must absolutely welcome it. However, the trend in the training of our young people is, from my point of view, more worrying or concerning. The recent evolution of certain programs, as we know, distances young people from science, from scientific subjects, even though we are at a time when for our companies more than ever, it is important to have the whole spectrum from engineer to doctor.
And then, a last small touch to this panel or panorama: startups are extremely important centers of innovation. And if we look at this ecosystem, particularly under the impetus of the President, quite a few things have been done to encourage and energize the desire for startups. However, when we look factually at this ecosystem, it still struggles to grow. Risk aversion has not really changed in our country, especially if we compare ourselves to other countries, particularly across the Atlantic. This risk aversion is still very present and translates concretely into the financing of startups. So, once again, it is improving, but there is still much to do in this area, and it is a very important source of innovation.
So, in a few words for this introduction, I would say that this day is for us the opportunity to recall a set of realities. First, that cooperation between researchers and industrialists is truly at the heart of our ability to produce decisive innovations, and our country and our companies need it. Second, that without research, it's a bit caricatural but it's true, there will be no dynamic. We will struggle to maintain an economic dynamic, a dynamic of employment, and if we zoom out, a dynamic or a form of social cohesion that is so important in these times. And also that this collaboration that we promote is a key foundation of research and innovation. We must absolutely say it, repeat it, make it known to give desire to those who don't spontaneously think of it. One last word to make the link between this theme and an issue that has become very visible in public debate in recent years: sovereignty. This issue of sovereignty has probably settled in for a long time in the framework of our concerns in general, and certainly reinforced since 2022, since the war in Ukraine. So, what is the connection, you will ask? There is this need, this desire, or this imperative necessity for Europe, for our country, to strengthen its sovereignty. Sovereignty does not mean autarky, does not mean total independence, but at least the ability to create enough interdependence to be master of our destiny, to be able to choose our model, our political model, our social model, with whom we have decided to be friends and the others. And in these sovereignty issues, it is obvious that research and technology find a place, if not central, at least extremely important.
That's it for these few words. I hope in any case that these Partner Research Conferences will be at least as fruitful as those that took place twenty years ago. In any case, I thank you for coming, many of you, this morning and throughout this day, which will certainly be very fruitful. Thank you all, and I invite Patrick Martin, President of MEDEF, to say a few words.
