At the end of September 2019, all stakeholders involved in innovation, higher education, and support for innovative start-ups in the Hauts-de-France region submitted a single application in response to the call for projects entitled "Integration of SATTs, incubators, and accelerators." The "Let's grow deeptech" consortium is one of nine winning bids at the national level (out of 41 submitted) and will receive €367,000 in funding. The aim of this funding is to strengthen the range of services offered by the consortium's stakeholders in order to further support entrepreneurship and the support of Deeptech start-ups.
With 270,000 businesses, including 3,600 innovative ones, the Hauts-de-France region sees more and more business projects with disruptive innovations emerging every year. These deep tech startups are fortunate to operate in one of France's most fertile ecosystems for research, with more than 4,000 researchers working in over 80 public and private laboratories. Each year, more than 200 innovative projects in key sectors such as health and digital technology and nearly 80 business start-ups are supported by all the players involved in innovation and research promotion in Hauts-de-France.
However, three issues are holding back the growth of deep tech projects:
- Often driven by researchers, deep tech start-ups need to rely on complementary commercial skills in order to grow. However, the winning combination of "researcher-business developer" is difficult to establish, and particularly difficult to sustain.
- Forming R&D partnerships, raising funds, building a high-quality board, and expanding internationally are strategic points for the growth of deep tech startups.
- Recruiting rare profiles with expertise in disruptive technologies and deep tech business models is also a key issue for these startups.
In response to this, the "Let's grow deeptech" consortium proposes to work on three complementary areas:
- Promoting the emergence of deep tech startups: by encouraging students and scientists to embark on entrepreneurial ventures. To this end, a deep tech hackathon will be launched. It will bring together 100 students working on 10 business projects, who will then continue their work for a semester.
- Attracting more technology projects to deep tech: emphasizing the potential of disruptive innovations by matching CEOs with deep tech projects seeking these profiles;
- Supporting the development of deep tech startups: by sourcing rare profiles and strengthening the key skills of project leaders. Training programs tailored to the profiles sourced will be offered, and a study will be conducted to consider the opportunity to create an umbrella company.
The "Let's grow deeptech" consortium, led by Eurasanté, is made up of Amiens Cluster, Euratechnologies, HdFID, the University of Lille, the University of Picardie Jules Verne, SATT Nord, I-Site ULNE, INRIA LNE, CEA Tech, and Transalley.
