The Sarkozy university reform aimed to make French universities more independent, autonomous, and competitive globally. It gave universities more freedom to partner with companies, control their own budgets and property, and function more like corporations. The reform also substantially increased university funding. It aimed to turn universities into major regional economic drivers and place greater emphasis on applied research, entrepreneurship, and job preparedness for students. The reform was accompanied by broader French investments and programs to support innovation through startup incubators, intellectual property management, technology clusters, and incentives for business R&D.

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Science, Technology and Innovation Ecosystem in France
The globalisation and the extraordinary technological progress of these past 30 years have change the
rules forever, for everyone and for all developed countries.
Since his election at the Presidency of France (2007), Nicolas Sarkozy has driven a policy to deeply
reform French Universities (link, link, link). The goal of his reform is to enhance the competiveness of
French Universities and to bring them at the level of US and UK Universities. But his reform will also
deeply impact and positively change the French economy and enhance the competitiveness of France.
University Nice Sophia Antipolis
What is the Sarkozy's University reform? To make the story short, our Universities are becoming:
• Independant from the Government policy and strategy concerning education & research choices.
• « Autonomous ». They will freely establish their strategy and priorities. They will be allowed to
partner with industrial companies and find other sources of funding than those provided by the
French state and ministries. They will be free to hire and manage their human resources. The
Universities will be the owner of their real estates and tangible assets (for example, at 2012, the
University of Nice will be the owner of more than 1 billion euro real estate!).
Before the Sarkozy's University reform, French Universities were big public administrations having
bureaucratic management, and working without interaction with the real economy.
After the reform, the Universities will be corporation-like organizations, with regular accountancy,
with thousand of employees (Professors, Researchers, Engineers, Administrative and Management
staff). These big corporation-like organizations will now completely change the economy and the
rules of the game at the local regional level. The economic center of gravity of each French region
will become its University.
At January 2011, 73 on 83 French Universities accepted to be autonomous, and at the beginning of
2012, 100% of Universities will be autonomous. The reform is also accompanied by an unprecedented
financial commitment of the State: 50% increase in the budget for higher education over 5 years, a
total of €16 billion of « additional » government funding for universities.
Ari Massoudi / Consultant Strategy of Innovation / www.strategy-of-innovation.com / www.linkedin.com/in/arimassoudi

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Nicolas Sarkozy has launched an important investment plan of €35 billion, focused
on:
- knowledge and intelligence (higher education and academic research), €16 billion
- innovative industries, €19 billion (ex. €4.25 billion for digital economy)
http://investissement-avenir.gouvernement.fr/
The missions of French Universities before Sarkozy's reform:
•Research and knowledge production
•Knowledge transmission through scientific article publications and teaching to students and to
professionals by continuing education
The missions of French Universities after Sarkozy's reform:
• Research and knowledge production
• Knowledge transmission through scientific article publication and teaching (to students)
• Professionalisation of students (the goal is to enhance their employability)
• Entrepreneurship and Innovation through applied scientific research and technology transfer into
firms (commercialization of scientific discoveries)
Other organisations involved in the innovation process
French Universities are strongly linked to other organisations involved in the innovation process. The
following organisations have also been strongly pushed and supported during the Sarkozy presidency:
Startup Incubators
- In France, we have 83 Universities, and each one has a Business Incubator dedicated to support the
transfer of academic research and technology into spin-off startups. Each incubator holds around 100
technology-based startups (around 8000 startups are currently in our incubators!). We have startups
having innovations coming from every academic and scientific fields (Formal Sciences, Physical
Sciences, Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Life and Medical Sciences ...).
As example, you can visit the website the Incubator of University Nice Sophia Antipolis, Incubator
PACA-EST : http://en.incubateurpacaest.org/
- French Universities are also launching business incubators dedicated to their students. The need of
launching incubators dedicated to students is very promising. Indeed, among the thousand students of
each University, we could have several potential Mark Zukerberg (Facebook's founder-CEO) that
have crazy dreams and wishing to change the world.
Ari Massoudi / Consultant Strategy of Innovation / www.strategy-of-innovation.com / www.linkedin.com/in/arimassoudi

3. 3
Of course, startups launched by University students are less technology-based compared to University
spin-out startups backed by several years of scientific research. Nevertheless, the success and
profitability of such new ventures based on “good ideas” could very high (Facebook, Goolge, eBay
...).
Student-entrepreneurs wishing to launch their startups will have a strong support from the university’s
academic resources (business training, expertise and mentoring from Professors) and facilities
(laboratories and engineering for prototyping, business offices ...), and also from local expert such as
CEOs and Managers of growing companies.
Incubators increase dramatically the percentage of success compared to startups without having had
the support of an incubator. The incubation clearly diminishes the risk of failure.
- Without incubator: Over 50% of small businesses fail in the first year and 95% fail within the first
five years (according to the US Small Business Administration)
- With incubator: 90% of new ventures are still alive and are operating 5 year after leaving the
incubator.
Industrial Property Management firms
- Each University will also have an independent company only dedicated to the management and
marketing of University industrial property (patents) and licensing negotiation to industrial
companies. These management companies are named SATT (Sociétés d’Accélération du Transfert de
Technologies). The SATTs will provide all the resources needed to favor the transfer of innovative
technologies from the academic labs into firms.
For example :
- Floralis
http://www.floralis.fr/ IP Management company of the University of Grenoble
- ValorPACA
http://www.valorpaca.fr/ (wesite only in French) IP Management Association of Universities of the
PACA region (Nice, Marseille and Aix-en-Provence). Valorpaca is not yet a SATT, but it will become
one soon (and will be renamed SATT PACA Corse).
The SATTs are very efficient organisations because they are not an administrative department of
University. Although SATTs investors and shareholders are public organisations (67% Universities,
33% French State through its Sovereign Wealth Fund), they are fully independent corporation having
their own governance, management and staff, and at the opposite of public administrations, and like
every corporation they have to be efficient and profitable.
Ari Massoudi / Consultant Strategy of Innovation / www.strategy-of-innovation.com / www.linkedin.com/in/arimassoudi

4. 4
The proof of the efficiency of SATTs is their annual financial statement. For example "Floralis",
founded at 2009, Floralis has €1,500,000 capital stock (serious commitment of its shareholders), and
presented at December 2010 a turn-over of €7,448,000 and a net income of €75,000!
http://www.score3.fr/UJF-FILIALE,452135452.ent
Technology Clusters
- In every French Region, there is also Technology-Cluster.
A cluster join together in a given territory, industrial global firms, innovative SMEs & startups and
research laboratories of Universities to develop synergies and cooperation.
The challenge is to build synergistic collaborative projects and to allow innovative companies
involved to have access to facilities (subsidies, grants, tax reduction, infrastructure ...) and to take a
leading position in their fields in France and abroad. Each Cluster is dedicated to a specific industrial
field.
Here is the Government website dedicated to French Clusters (named Pole de Compétitivité in
French) : http://competitivite.gouv.fr/poles-en-action/carte-des-poles-468.html
Tax Credit, Subsidies/Grants
- Other support to companies having R&D and innovation activities : important Tax Credit for R&D
investments done by companies, Payroll Tax reductions for young innovative startups, numerous
Subsidies and Grants to support innovation projects of privately-held companies ...
Ari Massoudi / Consultant Strategy of Innovation / www.strategy-of-innovation.com / www.linkedin.com/in/arimassoudi