1 Education for innovation : views (and lessons?) from a research organization Stéphane Dalmas – Department of Transfer and Innovation

2 Introduction  Some views on education and innovation from a ¨raw material producer” for innovation  Whose workforce is PhD  A research institution : an interesting place at the crossroad of (higher end) education and innovation

3 Research institutions : innovation and education  Play a triple role  As provider of raw material for innovators – Research is not innovation, invention is not innovation... – Either implicitly, to the whole society Vast body of knowledge in publications – Or explicitly, for “clients” Through contracts: technology transfer, research, studies...

4 Research institutions and education  They are part of the education system – PProducing PhD  But they also hire the people that have spent the most time in the education system – Consuming PhD – To produce innovation components

5 INRIA  French government funded research institution in ICST - “Digital sciences” – Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique  Under the dual auspices of the ministry in charge of research and industry  Main missions : – Scientific excellence (basic and applied research) – Knowledge transfer  The largest of its kind in Europe – More than 3300 scientists – More than 200 research teams

6 INRIA is interesting because...  We are not an applied research organization – Not focussing on the needs of industry  In a field largely involved in innovation and with a short time scale  Many initiatives around innovation – Framework agreements – Joint laboratories with SME – IT-Translation : coaching and early stage funding of spin-off from public research –....  And a track record : more than 100 start-up companies, some bought by Yahoo !, IBM, BO...

7 Our workforce  PhD : clever, curious, creative...  Team work is common – Many joint publications  Enjoying a large scientific freedom – No individual goal for grants and contracts  Multicultural – PhD students, post-docs, visitors, researchers...  Some researchers with an engineering background (top level engineering schools ; common in ICST)  1000 PhD hosted in our research teams

8 Who are the best at innovation ?  As measured by technology transfer, research contracts, spin-off creations  Nothing obvious in terms of background...  The most effective are – Notwithstanding the influence of the area – The motivated ones... – The ones that found the right person to talk with A “user”, an engineer, a business person (sales, marketing, funding...), another researcher...

9 Because  From research ideas/products – Some other stakeholders are needed to convert them to innovation In a way that we don't really understand... The vision has to be built incrementally – And every case seems to be special : people and relationship are key – Many results are generic and can be applied in many different markets – Complicated and many are too advanced...  The key point, besides finding the people. : being able to talk with them

10 From an education point of view  Enable our researchers to talk the language of the people needed to realize the innovation potential of their research – Translators do not really work...  A real challenge – Hard to know what could be useful... – Business school (finance, marketing), some engineering, psychology,... – Entrepreneurship and innovation teachings are something else, probably – No need to have a shallow understanding of the whole picture – and avoid being too unscientific...

11 Improving our understanding of innovation  Research institutions such as INRIA are good places to get insights  Measuring innovation – Evaluation of our actions around innovation (including collaborative projects)  Benchmarking with other research organizations – Taking into account the differences between organizations – and their people – At a European level (KIC ICT-Labs)  Ultimate goal to improve the performances of the organization and the performances of our people