Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

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

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.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (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].

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2