A startup’s life: Investing in innovative companies

Olivier Marty

The advent of information technology has led to the development of a new economy with the emergence of avant-garde firms. Startups are defined by the way they are financed and by the wager they represent on innovations. A series of consequences ensue from these two fundamental aspects. For one thing, the rationale of production in these companies is disturbed by a "financial logic" based on the "capital of confidence" to be built up with investors. This test differs significantly from the one that start-ups face in the marketplace. For another thing, innovation and short-term constraints force start-ups to maintain structures and job profiles of a very evolving sort. This versatility leads to both a "culture of innovation" and the vitality of relations based on a strong identification with leaders. However these relations should not cover up the games of power played out around this charismatic authority and for control over certain key technical qualifications. If we add to this picture a rather homogeneous population with quite heterogeneous motives, we are forced to admit that a startup forms a closed world with its own rules of operation.
 

How to accommodate innovation and reduce delays? A few lessons from the development of Laguna II

Franck Aggeri and Blanche Segrestin

Designing a new automobile is a strategic activity that brings together, adapts and changes different procedures in a special context in relation to strategic targets and as a function of distributed qualifications. This activity involves much more conflict than you would think when listening to managers talk. The Laguna II Project bears important lessons about how firms implement state-of-the-art managerial procedures and about how product development can be methodologically studied. Beyond handling the difficulties that cropped up, Renault had a surprising capacity to react to situations and ask questions. One of the most convincing pieces of evidence of this is the presence of researchers endowed with a broad capacity for inquiry. 

Frédéric Kletz and Frédérique Pallez

A controlled supply of education reflecting clear-cut objectives is a major sign that a university has a strategy and a decision-making capacity, regardless of what disciplines are taught. The gauge of what is conventionally called "autonomy" is, therefore, the establishment’s policy for supplying education. Despite detectable changes, diplomas and graduates still enjoy a high degree of autonomy with only marginal regulation. A tension between the "logic" of the disciplines and of the university is inherent in how these establishment operate; and it may, as such, be fertile. Nevertheless, questions can be raised about the conditions for a new equilibrium with the right place for universities given stagnating enrollments and budgets as well as growing competition — which will become international in the near future — between establishments.
 

Maryse Dubouloy and Claude Fabre

The mathematical rationality underlying several cases of restructuring in line with an essentially "financial logic" shows that the human implications are often overlooked, underestimated or even denied. In changes painful for people, it is essential to collectively take into account the emotional and psychological aspects of reorganization. In this context, gradually working out a reorganization strategy based on forward-looking procedures for managing human resources, adopting counseling and dialog programs for following up on change, and defining a clear-cut project are the very conditions for the human and economic success of a restructuring.

Claude Riveline: The slumber of civilizations: On Daryush Shayegan’s Le regard mutilé.

Daniel Fixari: Management’s subterranean forces: On Salvatore Maugeri’s (ed.) Délit de gestion.

Dominique Jacquet: Back to the long run? On M. Baghai, S. Coley & D. White’s The Alchemy of Growth.
 

A SHORT

From the pure concept to practical applications and back: The tribulations of the Henri Poincaré Institute and of the Institute of Statistics (University of Paris)

Francis Pavé

Mathematics and society

An interview with Georges Guilbaud conducted by Bernard Colasse and Francis Pavé

In the years following WW II, applied mathematics found a haven for creation and development and the conditions for an exceptional diffusion inside the Henri Poincaré Institute; but all these advantages would be depleted by the 1960s. One of the leaders in this adventure was Georges Guilbaud. Inspired by Condorcet, this mathematician would, quite early in his career, take interest in how mathematics was used in various social sciences as well as in economics and management. He played a key role in developing operations research in France.

The Henri Poincaré Institute at the origin of operations research

An interview with Bernard Bru conducted by Bernard Colasse and Francis Pavé

At the end of WW I, Émile Borel, an outstanding mathematician, was appointed to the Chair of Probability and Mathematical Physics at the University of Paris. At that time, statistics was hardly taught anywhere; and the very idea of concretely applying mathematics kindled scorn among "true" mathematicians. Nonetheless, Borel was persuaded that, in economics and especially insurance, a demand existed for practical applications. This intuition would, in 1928, beget the Henri Poincaré Institute, which brought together mathematics in Paris and would, in turn, give birth to the Institute of Statistics at the University of Paris. During the next thirty years, the ISUP, led by remarkable men, would be behind the introduction, in France, of education in statistics and of statistical applications in industry, management and operations research.