« Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Innovation: what prospects for France? »

Since the early 2000s, France has been experiencing the development of an entrepreneurial society. The number of business start-ups has reached record levels, particularly with the development of auto-entrepreneurship. Young people are increasingly considering entrepreneurship as a professional project. More and more universities, business schools and engineering schools are setting up entrepreneurship teaching programs, sometimes with incubators to facilitate the creation of companies among students.

The development of this entrepreneurial culture is also taking shape in existing companies, regardless of their size. This entrepreneurial dynamic is expressed through the emergence of entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystems that contribute to generating collaborations between companies, universities and public authorities. These contexts are conducive to the development of collaborative innovation projects.

White paper on business creation support structures in France. Overview of support structures in terms of management and performance

Business creation support is receiving increasing attention from public authorities. Representing more than 1,500 structures in France and with an estimated budget of 2.7 billion euros, budgetary constraints increasingly call into question the performance and degree of professionalization of business creation support structures. What are the reasons for the performance of these structures? Are there differences between the different support networks?

This white paper published by Labex Entreprendre aims to answer these major questions and results in recommendations for defining an entrepreneurial policy that meets the economic challenges facing France.

Analysis of the development trajectory of companies incubated at Languedoc Roussillon Incubation (LRI)

The objective of this study is to analyze the success factors of start-ups incubated at Languedoc-Roussillon Incubation (LRI) and to identify typical development paths. All LRI projects were taken into account from the start of the incubator’s activity in 2001 until 2011 (182 projects). The study is based on a double approach, quantitative and qualitative. It relies on three main sources of data: the LRI incubator database, data collected through the administration of a questionnaire, and interviews.

8 recommendations

1. Increase awareness of the entrepreneurial culture;
2. Encourage less radical innovation, more favorable to regional employment;
3. Introduce more flexibility in the collaboration with research laboratories;
4. To promote access to the skills acquired during experiences in business creation or internationally;
5. Find new sources of funding to overcome the “valley of death”;
6. Reinforce the legal support and industrial property;
7. Develop open innovation;
8. Facilitate the recruitment of commercial skills.