GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.
French Tech is utterly vivid in Paris. Paris Region Lab is a team of 30 people headed by Jean-François Gallouin. Jean-François is concurrently a teacher at engineering school Ecole Centrale Paris, an active school in the playground of Entrepreneurship.
Paris Region Lab is a non profit organization initiated by Paris municipality and “Ile de France Region” in 2009. Its purpose is the development of Parisian incubators, and the support for innovative experiments over the Greater Paris territory.
Spreading a culture of innovation within Ile de France and Parisian administrative services, opening progressively Request For Proposal to creative ideas, enabling large companies, SME, and innovative start-ups to test their concepts in real life, iterate, and improve their solutions, are some of the directions Paris region Lab is heading to. What is amazing is the scope of the hundred of experiments it has covered since 2009: actually Parisian public services handle a wide range of activities from water distribution and environment to nurseries and elementary schools, or city libraries.
Regarding business incubation, Paris Region Lab focuses on late stage ventures: start-ups have shaped their offer, and have earned their first customers. Paris Region Lab accomodates 150 start-ups over various locations, and partners with La Ruche, a coworking space for ‘social business’.
Paris Region Lab relationship with corporates is thriving on the basis of open innovation: Paris Region Lab cooperates with companies launching an open innovation program, or wanting to set-up an incubator, alone or in synergy with other industries, and acts as a very linchpin. Thus, Renault got involved in an incubator dedicated to mobility. And many different partners shared an open innovation approach for Tourism and Health portals.
With the ‘Open Innovation Club’, Paris Region Lab gives companies the opportunity to source ideas and methodologies out of their industry: requests for proposal are launched by large companies on a regular basis on the web site, and innovation dating stage quarterly 20 start-ups pitches in front of 30 large companies. Beyond innovation practice sharing, the 50 Club members participate to a Tech-Tour: this year, the journey will take place in the Silicon Valley, and be centered around connected objects, big data, robotics, and customer relationship. Investigating future through prospective works with start-ups, and setting-up a Fab Lab for service delivery are additional topics at the agenda of the Open Innovation Club.
No doubt Future is bright and dizzying at Paris Region Lab!
Credits: Paris Region Lab, La Ruche, Paris Decideurs en Region
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