6. Conclusion and main recommendations

Innovation financing instruments are varied, and must be chosen according to the company's characteristics and those of the innovation project it intends to pursue.

The company characteristics that most influence this choice are its size (number of employees) and age, whether or not it belongs to a group, and its sector of activity (depending on whether it is, for example, an industrial or a service company).

Taking company size as the main criterion, we recommend the following approaches:

• a very small company (1 or 2 employees, or even individuals who are not yet employees of the company) that has just been created on the basis of an innovation, whose directors are often young graduates inexperienced in terms of management, must first be surrounded, or even "nurtured", and indirect aid such...