December 2013, “Science, Technology, Innovation” by Vanessa CASADELLA*

Science and technology are key elements to innovation. Innovation is systemic and its interaction depends on the interrelations between actors: R&D, universities, research centers, science policy, and labor markets. The National Innovation System is used as a guideline in order to establish the overall level of different countries technological performance. This concept was used to measure the levels of R&D and technological performance in international comparisons (OECD, Eurostat). The R&D level is a basic feature of the National Innovation System. It is essential to compare impact analysis of the national policies on firms’ technological innovative behavior with different National Innovation Systems. However, if the national innovative dynamic is only measured in terms of formal activities related to R & D and scientific activities, innovation takes a rather “narrow” path. The only organizations and institutions included are the ones considered as necessary for research and exploration, therefore, only the production and use of innovation. Yet, the relationships between science / technology / innovation have largely evolved to give way to more microeconomic processes with greater scope.

Systemic Innovation goes beyond the restrictive framework of S&T and R&D. Is has more to do with the institutional and organizational structure of the company. The emphasis is placed on learning processes which implies that the firms’ competitiveness comes from their learning capacity. The strength of innovation lies in the effectiveness of networks of firms, on the intangible advantages and sources of interactive learning in purchasing activities, production and sales. The various sources of learning have been widely discussed as the basis of innovation. We refer to a Learning Culture to highlight the adaptation of knowledge to local conditions and the improvement of this in the whole economy. There are supposedly a multitude of ways through which individuals and institutions are likely to learn. Furthermore, systemic innovation is linked to the use of knowledge as a Whole. The aim is to encourage bottom up processes as opposed to top down ones and provide innovation with a multitude of creative sources. The systemic approach to innovation by Competence Building helps to understand the stakeholders’ interest to apply and disseminate knowledge. Businesses, customers and the public sector are able to deploy learning techniques by using products, services, technology and organizational processes and other less “conventional” processes (learning by interaction, imitation, etc.). Moreover, there are many varied learning sources available (education systems, labor markets, vocational training). Systemic innovation is reflected in a wide range of micro / macro elements aimed to influence the development, dissemination and use of learning capacities.

Only a part of learning and innovation capacity of the economic actors is developed within formal education and R&D. The learning culture within systemic innovation therefore directly feeds into science and technology. Despite its formal and legitimate use by European statistics and public policy of research, S&T, it ultimately represents a limited part of all current systemic innovation sources.

* University of Picardie Jules Verne, CRIISEA, Research Network on Innovation

November 2013, “The Chinese Great Leap Forward of Innovation” by Zeting Liu

After a spectacular economic growth for two decades, China is now seeking a new growth model to rebalance the economic and social development. Thus, through the National Medium- and Long-Term Plan for the Development of Science and Technology (the MLP, 2006-2020), the Chinese State Council announced the ambition to transform China into an innovative nation in 2020. To endow the innovative superpower to the Middle Kingdom, the Chinese government mobilised through five-year plans enormous resources to achieve its ambitious goals. Unlike the early reforms on the 1980s, today’s problems are no more lack of funding but how to optimise public investment to effectively develop innovation capacity. At the heart of the Great Leap Forward of Innovation are Chinese companies to whom the Chinese State “gives order” to reduce their dependence on foreign technology and to develop so-called “original” innovation that is radical and unique to China. Invest heavily in S&T infrastructure, select and support the best State enterprises to make national innovation leaders, ensure the “technological leap” in the strategic sectors, develop endogenous innovation, support firms to become the pilot of technological innovation, such are the instruments deployed in the 11th (2006-2010) and the 12th (2011-2015) Plans on S&T Development to bring the Chinese domestic expenditure on R&D (GERD) to 2.2% GDP and 3.3 patents per 10,000 inhabitants in 2015.

However, massive public investment in R&D and scientific production does not necessarily translate into an equivalent performance in innovation. In practice, the public research (including universities) that took advantage of the institutional reforms to develop its own business is parting away from the industry in terms of R&D. In addition, the entrepreneurship is of particular concern in China. The excess bureaucracy and the dominance of State-owned enterprises tend to obstruct the entrepreneurs (OECD, 2012). This unfriendly environment to innovative entrepreneurship can be partly explained by the stiff Chinese political system that operates by consensus emphasising the stability and the continuity. The essential nature of freedom to create new values by destroying old ones seems to be incompatible with such political structure.

Can the Chinese State-entrepreneur (this time) lead to succeed the Great Leap Forward of the international competition driven by innovation? The adventure of the French State-entrepreneur in the 1980s did not give a flattering example. China, with its determination to achieve its objectives, broad scope, and, paradoxically, its flexibility in local implementation of national strategy, might write another story.

OECD, 2012, OECD Science, Technology and Industry Outlook 2012, Paris, OECD Publishing.

October 2013, “Economía política de la defensa” by Rémy Herrera (CNRS, UMR 8174 Universidad de París 1)

En el corpus teórico neoclásico, la defensa es un ejemplo típico de “bien público”. Los bienes producidos por el mercado tienen, por definición, un uso privado y las interdependencias entre los individuos están generalmente conectadas por el sistema de precios. Los bienes públicos se distinguen por el hecho de que son objetos de un consumo colectivo – sin excluir el acceso por los precios. Estos bienes no pueden ser producidos y asignados por el mercado, porque los mecanismos de precios no proporcionan más racionamiento. En estas condiciones, la teoría neoclásica admite que su producción puede ser confiada al Estado, el cual proporciona estos bienes a la comunidad mediante el cobro de un impuesto para financiar este gasto público. Como resultado de esto, la justificación de la producción de tales bienes colectivos por el sector radica en la incapacidad del mercado para asegurarla. Sabiendo que el Estado cobrara un impuesto y que el anuncio de sus necesidades llevara a pagar más, los agentes pueden ser incitados a comportarse en free riders. Un riesgo de subestimación puede ser introducido en la producción del bien público. Las características de la defensa la hacen entrar en la categoría de bienes públicos. En presencia de un bien público que los mercados no son capaces de producir y distribuir por el sistema de precios, la intervención del Estado sería la única manera de asegurar la optimización del equilibrio de los mercados para toda la sociedad. Sin embargo, una dificultad de aplicación de la economía pública neoclásica a la defensa viene de que combina varios tipos de imperfecciones de los mercados. Para que el gasto dedicado por el Estado en la defensa sea considerado como “óptimo”, a un nivel que se corresponde con la disposición a pagar de los individuos y suficiente para ser igual al costo de su producción, todavía es necesario que sean conocidos el tamaño y la composición de los presupuestos públicos por todos los consumidores. Pero los agentes se enfrentan a barreras para acceder a la información necesaria para evaluar el impacto de estos gastos. Otro problema que surge de la naturaleza dicotómica del bien de defensa: el impacto positivo del gasto militar en la seguridad de un país puede ser compensado por las externalidades negativas que provoca sobre los agentes de países extranjeros.

Sin embargo, economistas ultra-liberales llegaron a cuestionar el carácter de bien público de la defensa. Frente a los fallos del mercado señalados por la teoría neoclásica ella misma, defensores de la escuela del Public Choice afirman constantemente que el funcionamiento de los mecanismos del mercado, aunque imperfecto, es siempre preferible a los defectos en las intervenciones del Estado, que puede enmascarar preferencias individuales en el discurso de del interés general. A los efectos adversos reportados por estos autores se asocian prácticas de precios consideradas sub-óptimas, ineficiencias de comportamiento de las administraciones que no tienen la información necesaria para un control eficaz de los monopolios naturales, la no apropiación de los beneficios que dificulta la motivación y los incentivos de gestión, los riesgos de deriva burocrática o abusos de posición dominante. Sobre la base de posiciones anti-Estatales extremas y en favor de la propiedad privada y del libre comercio, algunos teóricos “libertarios” han ido tan lejos como recomendar la privatización de la defensa nacional. Según estos autores, esta última debería ser sometida a las leyes de la competencia, al igual que cualquier bien privado, en un mercado donde empresas podrían proporcionar bienes y servicios producidos hasta ahora por el Estado, y que los agentes podrían seleccionar “libremente”, de acuerdo a sus necesidades de seguridad y de una relación calidad-precio, por un cálculo costes-beneficios estándar. A pesar de que estos análisis, provocativos, son una minoría en los debates teóricos, han tenido, en los Estados Unidos, una influenza real en la práctica política. Si, en la teoría, la defensa es frecuentemente vista como un bien público, lo cierto es que, en la práctica, se privatiza.

El tema de la defensa es también explorado por los autores de la corriente marxista, en particular con las teorías del imperialismo, para las cuales la militarización es considerada como modo de existencia del capitalismo, y el uso de la fuerza armada como estrategia impuesta por los oligopolios financieros más poderosos, para permitir la reproducción de las condiciones de su poder en el sistema capitalista mundial. Sugerimos al lector a cuestionar la naturaleza de las guerras modernas llevadas por los Estados Unidos; las relaciones que estas guerras podrían mantener, más allá del control de los recursos naturales estratégicos, con la crisis sistémica actual; las oportunidades que abren a los dueños del capital mundialmente dominante para transformar las formas mismas de este último; las eventuales oportunidades que ellas ofrecen para revitalizar la acumulación en el centro del sistema mundial; o también y sobre todo los riesgos mayores de agravación de las contradicciones internas del capitalismo que activan.

More:
Journal of Innovation Economics & Managemant
https://www.cairn.info/revue-journal-of-innovation-economics-2013-2.htm

September 2013, “Innovation and research policies for a sustainable transition” by Fabienne PICARD

The year 2013 is marked by the commitment of France in a large collective reflection on the energy transition, making it a central issue of sustainable transition (Verbong and Loorbach (eds), 2012). The organization of these citizen’s conferences mobilizes a methodology initiated by the Danish Board of Technology (the equivalent of the French Parliamentary Office for Evaluation of Scientific and Technological Choices in Denmark) around a central goal: “Towards an energy model that can meet in a sustainable, equitable and safe way, for people and the environment, the energy needs of citizens and the French economy in a low energy and low carbon society.” This approach fits in line with the overall objective of the European Union to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20%, to achieve 20% of energy savings and to increase the share of renewable energy to 20% of total energy consumption.

Sustainable transition [« a shift from an initial dynamic equilibrium to a new dynamic equilibrium, characterized by fast and slow development as a result of interacting processes… involves innovation in an important part of a societal sub-system », – Kemp and Rotmans, in Elzen et al. (eds), 2004] provides a form of answer to the persistent problems that today’s societies are facing: climate, energy, transportation-mobility, housing, food, water, health…. There is no need to demonstrate the challenges of the transition to a sustainable social and economic model. However, a new dimension has been risen since the 2008 crisis, with some saying that a recovery from the crisis can only be feasible in the long term by integrating the question of sustainable transition (Perez, 2009), and thereby of the nature of existing institutions and emerging processes of new practices and new values.

Today, the question is about how to foster the sustainable transition given the importance of intrinsic factors that are locking the current systems. Studies on sustainable transition emphasized that transition is a process of multi-level, long and slow structural transformation carried out by systemic innovations. These systemic innovations include the introduction of new technologies but also the development of new markets, the emergence of new practices and new uses, the creation of infrastructure, the establishment of new forms of regulation or a different culture (Elzen, Geels and Green, 2004). The irreversibility of gradually settled damages and the risk of reaching a point of no-return require radical and rapid changes. But the “natural” pace of transition is incompatible with the need to respond quickly to the consequences of ongoing anthropic transformations and requires a strong collective action.

The levers of public policy in transition revolve around three complementary pillars: information, incentives and regulation. But they assume that technological choices are already partly made, thus leaving in the shade the previous question of the building process of such policies. Between administrative and economic rationalism, democratic pragmatism (Grin, Rotmans, Schot (eds), 2011) recalls a new form of governance mixing technology development, experimentation and implementation of learning process involving users.

The studies presented at the 2013 Summer School of the Research Network on Innovation will interrogate the emergence of new systems that will be beneficial from an environmental point of view (renewable energy, smart grids, sustainable mobility, sustainable housing, sustainable food, industrial ecology…) and will review the reality of these new forms of governance.

Elzen, Geels and Green (eds), 2004, System Innovation and Transition to Sustainability. Theory, Evidence and Policy, Edward Elgar.
Grin, Rotmans, and Schot (eds), 2011, Transitions to Sustainable Development. New Directions in the Study of Long Term Transformative Change, Routledge, New York.
Verbong and Loorbach (eds), 2012, Governing the Energy Transition. Reality, Illusion or Necessity?, Routledge, New York.

August 2013, “Labor market, pension system and austerity: the clashing issues” by Denis LANGLET

May 2013, JP Morgan¹ expresses itself in favour of the “political reform” in Europe because “the political² systems typically display the following characteristics: a weak leadership, weak central governments compared to the regions; a constitutional protection of workers’ rights; systems looking for consensus and encouraging political patronage, and the right to protest if unpopular changes are made to the political status quo.” The workers’ rights, the right to protest are “deeply rooted political problems ./. which, in our opinion, should be changed if the European Monetary Union (EMU) is supposed to work in the long term” as the report of JP Morgan says.

May 29th, the European Commission presents a list of structural reforms to be carried out in France. This recommendation “lists six priority areas: reducing the public deficit, in particular through new reform of pension system, labor market, labor costs, liberalization of services, business environment and simplification of tax system.” While saying “it is not for the European Commission to tell us what to do,” the President of the Republic points out that “we have to respect the commitments (to the EMU) to reduce deficits. As regards the structural reforms, it is us and us alone to say what will be the right way to achieve the goal,” that is, once more to bow before the troika (the European Union, the European Central Bank and the IMF).

June 20th and 21st, at the “Large Social Conference for Employment” the issue of pensions occupies one of the six panels. The conference tempts to renew, under the banner of competitiveness, the operation of the Social Conference in July 2012, which initiated the national inter-professional agreement of January 11th, 2013 of which the Article 10 symbolises the loss of relative rights of this type of agreement: “any employee who refuses a transfer may be dismissed.”

July 4th, the President of the ECB, Mario Draghi, declares that “(T)he Governing Council expects that the key ECB interest rates – including the deposit rate – to remain at their current level or lower for an extended period.” On July 5th and 6th, the newspaper Les Echos publishes two titles noting that “The central banks fly to the rescue of the markets” and, following the announcement, “European stock markets rebounded”. The ECB aims to ensure international investment banks a commercial margin over time. Indeed, the current refinancing rate that the ECB is trying to ensure is of 0.5%. It is the rate that the ECB applies to investment banks. The low rate guarantees the latters a significant margin. Thus investment banks have raised the borrowing rate granted to the Portuguese Government to nearly 8% (for 10-year bonds), reason: Countering the powerful mobilization of the Portuguese people against the austerity by a blackmail strategy about the debt. A rate of 8% can blow the level of the interests of sovereign debt and increase the debt accordingly.

June 14th, A. Fayolle, CEO of Agence France Trésor, told Les Echos that “For investors who follow us, the pension reform is a very important reform closely following by them; they noted the intention of French authorities to accomplish this issue by the end of the year.” For banks and private insurances, attacking our pay-as-you-go pension schemes could open a market of more than 37 million men and women³ and an industry of more than EUR 100 billion of contributions. But in what state are these authorities designated by Brussels to end the French “social model” founded in 1945? The government just expelled one of its ministers and lost for each by-election a little more of its social base. How will workers in France respond to new measures against their pension system? After Portugal, will France be the next country overtaken by the “austerity fatigue”?

¹In 2010, the Morgan Group made revenues of EUR 100 billion and net profit of EUR 12 billion. Holder of assets of more than USD 2 000 billion, these results make the group, present in 60 countries, the world’s leading investment banks.
²The political systems of the peripheral countries were formed after dictatorship and were defined by that experience. The Constitutions tend to have a strong socialist influence, reflecting the political force that the left-wind parties have gained after the defeat of fascism.
³ Total number of men and women between 20- and 59-year-old included in 2013 (source: INSEE).

July 2013, “The resources of the entrepreneur” by Dimitri UZUNIDIS

Since the beginning of the 1980s, the entrepreneur has become a topical subject. The slowdown of the economic growth since the mid-1970s, followed by the structuring of large companies, has led many researchers to announce the return of the entrepreneur. The governments of the industrialised countries have launched public policies to encourage the creation of companies to innovate and/or to absorb the unemployment. The direct aids to new entrepreneurs in the early period have been replaced by the more liberal policies aiming at creating the conductive institutional conditions for the creation of companies. To understand the modern entrepreneur, we must consider the “entrepreneurial function”: entrepreneur = ƒ (uncertainty + risk + innovation + social capital + public policy). The entrepreneur, regardless of the merit claimed for him, is not born from nothing! Once this evidence is raised, there is still a long way to solve the puzzles of the entrepreneurial success and to explain how this success contributes (or not) to the economic prosperity. The “entrepreneurship environment” can help us in this approach. It is composed of the entrepreneur himself, the organisation, a relational context, the production resources, the customers, the suppliers, a legal framework of accumulation and the time. In the centre are information, networking and innovation. An economy develops a dynamic industrial atmosphere which is based on the conventions and the dynamic complicities that favour the development of new ideas and the sharing of the external resources and the links with national and international markets. An enthusiasm that stimulates each other is created in this “environment”. The time explains why some entrepreneurs are more successful than others. They must arrive on time, neither not too early nor too late, to seize the best opportunities at the right time. The socio-technical and economic environment provides them with the information they need to innovate, the capital to design and launch the project and the close relations to capture the first customers. The researcher must, like a detective in a thriller, disentangle these elements to find out the entrepreneur.

Read more:
Springer Encyclopedia of Creativity, Invention, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship
https://www.springerreference.com

June 2013, “Asymmetric innovation: benchmarks” by Jean-Pierre MICAËLLI¹

November 5, 2012, Louis Gallois delivered an official report urging the French government to improve the competitiveness of French industry. Its lack of competitiveness can be explained by the weakness of innovation, intra-and inter-enterprise tensions, and a polarized structure enclosing SMEs in dependency and anomie. Gallois’ report was echoed in the public. There is no doubt about the topicality of the innovation issue. It encourages the academic community to ask new questions about the nature and the production of innovation. Innovation is a perpetuum mobile as its theorization. Among the outstanding issues, one concern is the relevant innovation model for mature SMEs. Researchers, scholars or practitioners have valuable innovation models for large groups or for start-up. Mature SMEs must choose between one or another of these models. However, none is adapted to what they are and what they do. This is paradoxical because the French government wants to strengthen SMEs. If the research community wants to propose SMEs relevant innovation models, it can learn from military strategy. Indeed, it conceptualizes asymmetric conflicts, usually defined as an answer of strong adapted to the actions of weak. In our case, it is thus appropriate to distinguish superinnovation (S-Innovation) from asymmetrical innovation (A-Innovation). S-Innovation is based on a promise made by elite to develop radically new things enabling the emergence of a new industry or a new society. S-Innovation mobilizes huge capacities, usually located in a very small number of areas. S-Innovation hypertrophies blockbuster features. S-Innovation can induce mimetic rivalry between major actors. A-Innovation has the opposite features. This type of innovation is so constrained that it aims at efficiency. It can be defined as a low intensity innovation. It uses as much as possible existing resources. Its development is based on a network of informal cooperation, impenetrable to tiers. Thus, A-Innovation is driven by necessity, continuity and ambiguity. Lastly, large buyers can promote the capacity for A-Innovation of their suppliers. The example of frugal innovation or jugaad promoted in India is in this respect remarkable.

¹ ITUS – UMR CNRS 5600 EVS, INSA Lyon, France, jean-pierre.micaelli@insa-lyon.fr

May 2013, “Innovations and Doubly Green Chemistry (2GC)” by Estelle GARNIER, Romain DEBREF & Nicolas BEFORT¹

For about 20 years, the rise of environmental and health risks, such as accidents and chemical pollution coupled with issues raised by sustainable development, have guided the innovation strategies of the chemical industry to explore a “sustainable” chemistry from agricultural resources (Doubly Green Chemistry – 2GC). From there, the socio-technical regime is modified by the so-called “environmental” innovations. Commonly used in the literature and in the practice, the identification and implementation of such innovations are still requiring clarification. Their existence depends on the representations developed by the actors. Thus, these representations affect the shape that can take a sustainable transition pathway for the 2GC supply chains (fine chemistry, materials, energy).

The “sustainability transition management” stream proposes a general theory of sociotechnical transition from one regime to another. This stream takes over current classical evolutionary scheme and it takes place in two phases. First, by exploring many technological niches and second, by operating in some of these niches. According to this dynamics, a “winning technology” can be identified. As a matter of fact, the latter is the feature of an emerging regime provided by backcasting studies. In the framework of the 2GC, this kind of studies has been developed by European States in order to identify a dominant design. Their efforts drive peculiar aspects of 2GC. On the one hand, they are based on the model of biorefineries, as large industrial units. On the other hand, they are based on the emulation of petrochemical activity in which biofuels are considered as the reference model for supply chains.

But, how to identify a dominant design? Cases studies² have shown that actors are in a situation of radical uncertainty. Consequently, they produce diverse representations of what might be an environmental innovation in the 2GC’ supply chains and simultaneously, they are following several enduring technological pathways (counter to the prescription of the backcasting exercises).

The diversity of representations is based on the search for reproducing the existing “productive heritages” and may continue due the hybridization of knowledge basis between chemistry and agriculture. It is therefore interesting to work on normalization processes (like life cycle analysis) for achieving the convergence of actors’ representations of what “environmental innovations” could be in the 2GC.

¹ Members of REGARDS, EA 6292, University Reims-Champagne-Ardenne and of the Research Network on Innovation
² See the NRA AEPRC2V project led by the laboratory REGARDS (URCA)

April 2013, “Will craftmanship save humanity ?” by Michel MARCHESNAY

At least, that’s what declared Albert Einstein. That aphorism will nourish our comment, argued on two topics: first, what is, nowadays, the current meaning of “craftmanship”, and, second, how the “new craft spirit” may induce a “new humanity”?

As A. de Tricornot wrote (Le Monde, 3/12/03, p.8), a lot of people analyse “the big crisis in management” as a crisis of leadership. Seen during a long time as the sole in command, the top manager let the shareholders govern. Consequently, the managerial function has lost humanity, entailing “a loss of legitimacy of leaders, unconscious of their duties vis-à-vis the community”.

During the Seventies, the industrial crisis aroused a new humanist hope, surfing on the waves of “New Age” and “Small is beautiful”. However, as we wrote in 1980 in the (French) Industrial Economics Review, “Small is specific” and “Small is difficult”. The most part of emergent and registered firms just include one or two persons, and their innovativeness is weak. In other words, to solve the crisis by the arising of the so-called “entrepreneurial capitalism” (Audretsch) reveals to be doubtful. Our industrial societies lack of spirit of enterprise, of entrepreneurship. We cannot wait from entrepreneurship (defined by, either new venturing, or owner-manager) a new humanity, but, conversely and unfortunately, a reinforcement of the dehumanized society induced by the managerial doctrine.

Actually, the activities of future need new arrangements of resources and competences. The mastering of the tecné, of the tools, now implies new ways of action, of creation (poiesis), of evolutionary practices (praxis), focusing on a continuous adaptability. It is well-known that an increasing amount of researchers, originated from various disciplines, observe “innovating” practices, historically linked to traditional crafts, in order to reproduce them, by analogy, in the activities of the third industrial generation. Richard Sennett having entitled his work “The Craftman” (Yale U.P., 2008), we suggest to use the word “craftsmanship” , hoping that this renewed conception of the creative activity opens the way to a new humanity, a conception of the modern mankind, the “homo faber” , according to Hanna Arendt, “conscious of his duties vis-à-vis the community”.

March 2013, “Competitive intelligence and companies’ performances” by Jean-Luis MONINO

Today, conducting industrial strategies largely depends on the ability to develop information systems open to the environment, in order to access to strategic information and anticipate the evolution of markets and competitors’ strategies.

The increasing importance of innovation, the pervasiveness of information and communication technologies and the primacy of a service economy have become in a few years a new key driver of growth: the intangible one. Beside the concrete richness of manufacturing industry and capital equipment, the intangible economy stands as an abstract wealth and is a new component of an economic world which has changed. It is based on new raw materials: knowledge, skills, creativity, imagination and information technologies.

The success and the performance of competitive intelligence is based on the ability to collect, select and analyze data to be used in the decision making process. Nowadays each individual creates, consumes and uses digital information. The issue of the security of information, being public without any notion of confidentiality or private and confidential, is based on the necessity to:
– Store and manage the whole digital data;
– Protect and secure the collected information in order to exchange it with other individuals.
These different steps are included in the competitive intelligence process.

Business intelligence deals with the collection of information, while competitive intelligence is a request from the corporate management to know and control as much as possible the dynamics of its environment. Competitive intelligence must mobilize human and financial means, but it also uses work methods and tools, especially for the collection and analysis of that information. Information becomes one of the strategic raw materials of the company and the manager must be able to find the necessary assistance at the time of making strategic decisions.

A schematic representation of Strategic Competitive Intelligence can be suggested from a section of the hierarchical model described by T.S Eliot (1934), which establishes a link between wisdom, knowledge and information initiated from data. The proposed model identifies three concepts “Data, Information and Knowledge” which serve to define the overall concept of competitive intelligence by highlighting the place of “Information”. Our overall concept leads to decision making and incorporates the capital concept of cycle in Strategic Competitive Intelligence:

1. Data:
Data accumulated is not information; they are numbers, words, and existing events outside of a conceptual reference framework. In the absence of context, data taken individually have no great significance. Data are raw information.

2. Information:
Information accumulated is not knowledge, the overall data, processed and transformed, will become information, validated and confronted to begin making sense.

3. Knowledge:
Knowledge accumulated is not wisdom – here “intelligence”, only all information interpreted within the company can justify policy choices.

Information is at the heart of Competitive Intelligence and its strategic management has become a key driver of overall business performance. The process of market globalization obliges economic agents to adapt to the new equilibrium established between competition and cooperation. Henceforth, the conduct of industrial strategies and the improvement of companies’ performances largely depend on the ability to access strategic information in order to anticipate on the evolution of markets and technologies.

February 2013, “Global Capitalism and new North-South divide” by Sophie BOUTILLIER

Since the beginning of the 1990s, with some exceptions, the hegemony of capitalism has been complete. The market, free trade, the firm and individual initiative represent for the huge majority of the world population the hope of a better future, whether in a formal or informal economic context. The State, including the welfare state (social benefits, education, health, retirement) has been criticized as parasitical, granting to the poor the right to…inactivity. The world economy is dominated by the financial sector. The development of new information and communication technologies has transformed the whole world into one vast market. Raw materials (whether energy, industry or agriculture-related) are the subject of frenetic speculation, independently of the basic physiological needs of the people. Robots and automated plant have not only displaced humans in manufacturing, but also in banks and the financial markets. Complex programs have been created to optimize speculators’ profits, at the cost of greater knowledge and the human resources vitally needed in such sectors as food, health, or general well-being of populations.

The current economic and financial crisis plays out within a major and continual movement towards a restructuring of the world economic model as drawn up following the Yalta conference of 1944; this resulted in a division of the world into two geopolitical blocs, the United States (capitalist) and the Soviet Union (socialist). The period which ensued between 1944 and the beginning of the 1990s was classed as the Cold War, marked simultaneously by clashes between East and West over military and technological issues (notably the conquest of space). However, certain earthly continents have been the subject of distinctly “hot” wars. During these decades numerous military conflicts have taken place in Asia and particularly Africa, and some continue to this day. Furthermore, if some people continue to fear the outbreak of a third world war, others consider that such a war began in 1944, taking different forms in different parts of the world, particularly in countries classified as “developing”. War is, in addition, considered as justifiable for reasons of internal politics, so as to divert the attention of populations away from serious chronic problems such as poverty or unemployment.

Poverty continues to advance in the North just as in the South. Basic questions such as the provision of food and housing generally believed to be solved in the northern countries are again in the news, with both middle and working classes suffering. The North and South are converging towards….poverty! The vicious circle of sovereign debt (in Europe and elsewhere) is plunging whole nations back towards indigence. To reduce the deficit, public expenses are reduced, while taxes, both direct and indirect, increase. Demand falters. Economic growth slows, aggravating as it does so the weight of indebtedness. If the end of history announced by F. Fukuyama were to be materialized in the supremacy of the market and of democracy, this concept has been diminished by the dominance of the global financial market.

Economic and social divergences, environmental inequalities too. Dustbin of the planet (business in dangerous waste products, relocation of polluting businesses etc.) the South has certainly been more affected than the North. As a result of deregulation of environmental policies, accompanied by fruitless international negotiations, no serious solution is yet in view. Nevertheless scientific, technical and industrial solutions could exist. Is this the promise of a lasting future transition, or just “greenwashing”? From another angle, though, populist initiatives continue to be put forward resting on solidarity – rather than on competitive platforms – and founded on what might be termed old-fashioned rustic knowledge which modern agribusiness has contributed to burying. Could the current crisis be, in fact, good news that can waken political consciousness to build a new world order founded on a continuum of solidarity, and no longer deadened by competition between the peoples of the North and the South? After all, both are victims of the same ills.

January 2013, “The Local Determinants of Corporate Growth” by Nadine Levratto

Closures of industrial plant sand the job losses which have accompanied them have brought new proof of the male ability of capital and of the high degree of nomadism of large corporate groups, in manufacturing industries most of all. They also high light the risks associated with policies of encouraging foreign direct investment as a means of creating jobs locally and of promoting local development. The mass layoffs related to the closing down of establishments or companies embedded in corporate groups are not specific to France. The European Restructuring Monitor provides facts and figures concerning these phenomena in the 27 EU member States and Norway, while in France, the business intelligence group Trendeo shines light on the impact of the reorganizations of industrial sites in the different regions. The main issue does not deal with the nationality of equity. The behaviour of these large corporations is the same wherever the headquarters are located. The point is that the decisions are taken far from the place where they are implemented, a factor which, ultimately, diminishes accountability.

Are centre port funded by the Research Foundation of the Caissedes Dépôtset Consignations and l’Assemblée des Communautés de France shines new light on the subject. It focuses on the study of the possible origins of the growth of 58324 establishments (52 268 companies) operating in the manufacturing industry and 48 408 establishments(42 901 companies) in the sector of business services between 2002 and 2009. The principal conclusion is that territorial implantation is crucial in explaining their performance in creating jobs but that the effects of the local conditions differ according to the local and governance characteristics of the establishments. Let us re-examine these two arguments.

1. Local conditions model the trajectories of the growth of the firms
The area an establishment is located in constitutes a key condition for its competitive nessand, thus, its growth rate. The influence of the local variables passes through several channels ranging from market size to the availability of the resources, viathe existence of externalities and the local economic atmosphere. It reaches its greatest intensity when the companies can easily access the resources necessary for their production process. The grow this also facilitated by the agglomeration of similar or complementary companies on the same territory in accordance with the concept of local externalities. The strength of the relationship with the territorial so relates to the availability of human resources whose qualifications nourish know-how and the firms’ capacity for innovation. Taking into account the geographical effect at the finest territorial division level also confirms the importance of what has been called “invisiblefactors.” However, a high degree of concentration of the production system tends to slow down and even to impair the development of the establishments in a given area.

2. Theestablishmentsareunequallysensitivetolocalconditions
The influence exerted by the local determinants of growth may differ in intensity according to the type of establishment and area they are located in. These factors exert a varying degree of influence on corporate growth model forecasting, depending on both the governance structure of the establishments (whether they belong to independent companies or to large business groups) and their location thus leading us to a nuancing of the regularity of the previously mentioned patterns. The establishments incorporated in the perimeter of groups are largely less sensitive, when they are at all, to the local conditions than the establishments belonging to independent companies. Bound by corporate relationships, the former find in the mother or sister companies the essential resources necessary for their expansion. On the opposite, the small and independent companies, whose geographical mobility is limited, have a growth path largely determined by the availability of human, material and immaterial means and that of public facilities in the vicinity. The same type of differentiation is at work at the geographical level. The study previously mentioned analysed the differences between the establishments located in the greater Paris area and those of the provinces. Without surprise, one could note that the growth of the latter depends strongly on the local conditions, which is not the case for the establishments located in Ile-de-France, themarket of reference of which expands far beyond the employment area (INSEE); they draw the resources which they to grow from the capital region, and even beyond.

Within the context of the deep economic crisis and taking into consideration the above demonstration of the role played by local conditions in explaining corporate growth, a reconsideration of the public policies promoting sustainable local development is paramount. It is indeed urgent to abandon local public policies resting on heteronomous investments, in which decisions depend on an entity located in another area. Following the recent trend toward the empowerment of local elected officials within a context of territorial autonomy and a local anchoring of production rehabilitation efforts considered as key conditions to economic recovery, a better understanding and control of the local determinants of corporate growth are becoming academic and political challenges we must tackle.

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