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Report Recommends Loosening Restrictions to Allow French Scientists to Become Entrepreneurs

posted by Fnord666 on Saturday February 18 2017, @03:49AM   Printer-friendly
from the c'est-magnifique dept.

takyon writes:

France needs more mesures pour l'innovation, according to a new report:

France isn't the hotbed of innovation it would like to be, and one reason is that scientific research has traditionally been done by public servants, who rarely start a company to turn their discoveries into new products or services. A 1999 law that aimed to change that by stimulating entrepreneurship has not had the intended effects, according to a report released on Tuesday. The report recommends relaxing the rules for academics who want to embark on a commercial adventure, rewarding those who file patents, and giving entrepreneurial scientists more recognition.

Judged solely by the number of patent filings, France may seem quite an entrepreneurial country; it ranks sixth globally, according to the latest figures from the World Intellectual Property Organization. But public researchers are often loath to become entrepreneurs. The French government asked Jean-Luc Beylat, president of Nokia Bell Labs France in Paris, and Pierre Tambourin, general director of the biocluster Genopole in Evry, to review the so-called Allègre Law of 1999, which sought to make it easier for scientists to engage in entrepreneurship, as well as similar initiatives.

[...] The authors suggest further loosening the rules. Researchers should be allowed to spend up to 10 years on developing their spin-off and to work 50% of their time on consulting activities, instead of the current 20%, for instance. They should also be given 3 years to resell their share and be allowed to keep up to 20% of it. The Public Service Ethics Commission should play a smaller role, the authors say, and entrepreneurial activities should be a factor in the career advancement of publicly funded researchers.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 18 2017, @05:51AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 18 2017, @05:51AM (#468497)

    How is entrepreneurship in general in France? Are others, non academics, doing it more? Because if the numbers are similarly low for both, maybe the issue is not academic vs non academic, but something else about entrepreneurs in France: culture, laws, investment, payback, entry barriers...

  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday February 18 2017, @06:54AM

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Saturday February 18 2017, @06:54AM (#468510) Journal

    Judged solely by the number of patent filings, France may seem quite an entrepreneurial country; it ranks sixth globally, according to the latest figures from the World Intellectual Property Organization.

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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday February 18 2017, @07:22AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 18 2017, @07:22AM (#468514) Journal

    How is entrepreneurship in general in France?

    First dotcom bubble did not happen in US.

    Minitel [wikipedia.org]

    The service was rolled out experimentally in 1978 in Brittany and throughout France in 1982 by the PTT (Postes, Télégraphes et Téléphones; divided since 1991 between France Télécom and La Poste).[1] From its early days, users could make online purchases, make train reservations, check stock prices, search the telephone directory, have a mail box, and chat in a similar way to that now made possible by the Internet.
    ...
    France Télécom estimates that almost 9 million terminals—including web-enabled personal computers (Windows, Mac OS, and Linux)—had access to the network at the end of 1999, and that it was used by 25 million people (of a total population of 60 million). Developed by 10,000 companies, in 1996, almost 26,000 different services were available.[4]
    ...
    The development of Minitel spawned the creation of many start-up companies in a manner similar to the later dot-com bubble of Internet-related companies. Similarly, many of those small companies floundered because of an overcrowded market or bad business practices (lack of infrastructure for online retailers).
    ...
    Payment methods
    * Credit card for purchases
    * Telephone bill for surfing time: rates depend on the sites visited
    ...
    In 1998, Minitel generated €832 million ($1,121 million) of revenue, of which €521 million was channelled by France Télécom to service providers.

    Maybe those Fench people know a thing or two, stopping them from burning money into startups like Yo [businessinsider.com].

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