Context

Investment in French public research is considerable, whether in universities or major public research establishments such as the Centre national de recherche scientifique (CNRS) or the Institut national de santé et de recherche médicale (INSERM). This represents an annual investment of around 12 billion euros. Realizing that until now this high-level research had not yielded all the desired economic results in terms of innovation and competitive advantage for companies, in 2010 the French government, as part of the Programme Investissements d'Avenir (PIA), created Technology Transfer Acceleration Companies (SATT), with a budget of almost one billion euros over ten years. The aim of this scheme is to bring economic value to the results of academic research. Valorization means that companies can adopt these technologies. This is the very essence of the SATTs, which act as gateways to facilitate...