www.FITT-for-Innovation.eu

1. Web Portal for Innovative SMEs
FITT
– Fostering Interregional Exchange in ICT Technology Transfer –
www.FITT-for-Innovation.eu
Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

2. The case study description
Web portal for innovative SMEs: the objective is to develop, consolidate and
organize a community of innovative SMEs around INRIA in order to stimulate
technology transfer in their direction
Main elements of the case study:
 The architecture of the portal is reusable
 The case is generic (useful to every organisation wanting to adapt its offer to
specific needs)
 Stakeholders: development engineers, TT and Communication officers for the
specifications
 Case is related to the FITT process “Network Management”
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3. The concept
 The web portal for innovative SMEs:
 the objective is to develop, consolidate and organize a community of
innovative SMEs around INRIA in order to stimulate technology transfer in
their direction
 But without ignoring pre-existing INRIA communication efforts
 Meaning that:
“to structure and organize efficiently this community, tools and processes
are needed to make benefit from the pre-existing activity of information
production, organisation and communication and direct these activities
towards transfer to innovative SMEs”
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4. Main tool with various facets
 Facet 1: a technology transfer web space dedicated to the community: added value
information available to members only. The public space will only be a showroom but
should work as a teaser (make visitors want to become a member)
 Facet 2: to be linked to external social networks like youtube /dailymotion/ twitter
 Facet 3: an animation/organization program to lead the community (for example by
organizing webinars)
 Facet 4: an internal network of researchers on technology transfer subjects
 Different but necessary blocks built successively
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5. Present state analysis (1)
 The official INRIA website: www.inria.fr/innovation
News, Agenda, Free software, demos showroom
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6. Present state analysis (2)
 Content sources
 Publications: two external newsletters
 Videoconferences on strategic marketing (internal events open to some
selected partners)
 The transfer department newsletter (internal, for INRIA researchers)
 Other websites (thematic): Mobile Jungle, HPC-PME, Data Publica
 The website “Club des PMEs” (https access)
 The research teams websites
 Broad content from variety of sources
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7. Present state analysis (3)
 INRIA and its partners communicate through:
 Competitiveness clusters websites
 OSEO (SME support agency) websites
 INRIA Transfert
 INRIA Alumni
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8. Present state assessment
 Many interesting but non-focused contents for too many targets
 No harmonisation
 of the dissemination channels
 of processes to enter information
 Necessity to optimize the dissemination of information:
Information entered once 
 automatically relayed on and others
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9. SMEs: What are their needs ?
 Synthetic and thematic info
 Agenda
 Technological watch, prospective info
 Financing
 National funding agencies, national mechanisms as tax credit
 Label for raising capital: a technological credibility
 Growth possibilities by new technological offers
 Software, patents, know-how
 Recruitment
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10. SMEs: What are the targets ?
An extended target to expand the
INRIA profile in the ICT domain (B2B)
The SMEs interested in partnering
with INRIA
The SMEs carefully followed up by TT
associates with on-going transfer
operations
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11. SMEs: What kind of tool ?
 Professional web portal:
 With an editorial and qualified content
 With moderation of the on-line community (blogs, wiki subsets)
 With webinars, plenary meetings, INRIA-Industry meetings, international
operations
 According to the five specific domains in which INRIA promotes transfer
operations
 By reusing/aggregating the multiple INRIA communication contents
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12. Conclusions
 The portal demands hard preparation work but eventually it turns to be
useful and interesting: it allows to take a distance and to think of a different
PRO’s communication policy which manages to well differentiate the target
groups and their specific needs
 A successful collaboration between Transfer and Innovation Department
and the Communication Department, as well as with the development
engineers, that challenged the specification team with Web 2.0 features
 The expected outcome is to boost INRIA as a national transfer stakeholder
in the ICT domain
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