Fonds social européen en France

Report of study trip in
Cambridge of winners
24 HEURES CHRONO DE
L’ENTREPRENEURIAT
Edition Spéciale Doctorants CIFRE 2012
With the sponsoring of Caisse des Dépôts, institutions and companies :
Juliettte BERT
Université Bourgogne
Danielson Engineering
Florian RIGAUD
ISAE
Eurocopter
Thibaud DUMAS
Université Paris 6
RATP
Kevin ROYER
ENSMA
EDF R&D
Thierno Fall
INSA Lyon
VALEO
Agathe VERCOUTTER
Université de Franche-Comté
Safran-Turbomeca
LES 24 HEURES CHRONO DE L’ENTREPRENEURIAT® / Septembre 2012 / ANRT/CIFRE® & NOVANCIA
Edition Spéciale Doctorants
Cambridge University, 800 years of sciences history.
King's College and
the Chancellor of the University, William Cavendish, the Seventh Duke of Devonshire
who provided the building a physics laboratory.
In 1209, Oxford’s scholars taking refuge from hostile townsmen, migrated to Cambridge and settled
there. By 1226 the scholars were numerous enough to have set up an organisation, represented by an
official called a Chancellor, and seem to have arranged regular courses of study, taught by their own
members.
Today, the University is a confederation of Schools, Faculties, Departments and Colleges. The Colleges
are governed by their own statutes and regulations, but are integral to the make-up of the University
of Cambridge.
Pembroke College and its refectory
LES 24 HEURES CHRONO DE L’ENTREPRENEURIAT® / Septembre 2012 / ANRT/CIFRE® & NOVANCIA
Edition Spéciale Doctorants
Students live, eat and socialise in one of the University’s 31 autonomous Colleges. Undergraduates
receive College supervisions – small group teaching sessions – regarded as one of the best teaching
models in the world. Each College has its own internal procedures. They select their own students,
subject to University regulations, and most admit both undergraduate and postgraduate students.
College representatives sit on the University Council and Finance Committee.
There are six Schools, which each forms an administrative grouping of Faculties and other institutions.
They are: Arts and Humanities, Biological Sciences, Clinical Medicine, Humanities and Social Sciences,
Physical Sciences, and Technology. There is a Council of each School – including representatives of its
Faculties and Departments. The Schools are represented on the General Board.
University Faculties organise teaching and research into individual subjects or groups of subjects. Their
work is normally organised into sub-divisions called Departments. Centres of studies are controlled by
committees of management, bringing together representatives from several disciplines.
Window of Isaac Newton flat and a modern wall
of Cavendish Laboratory .
In June 1661, Isaac Newton was admitted
to Trinity College.
He is less known as the inventor of
the cat flap than for his theory of gravitation.
LES 24 HEURES CHRONO DE L’ENTREPRENEURIAT® / Septembre 2012 / ANRT/CIFRE® & NOVANCIA
Edition Spéciale Doctorants
Cambridge university has attracted and trained many distinguished scientists. Its laboratories have
gathered 85 Nobel prize recipients. The research was always supported by firms.
John Taylor, a famous watchmaker
who has studied in Cambridge
University, has built this Clock for
the Corpus Christi College. On it, a
grasshopper, as a chronophage,
seems to eat up seconds.
LES 24 HEURES CHRONO DE L’ENTREPRENEURIAT® / Septembre 2012 / ANRT/CIFRE® & NOVANCIA
Edition Spéciale Doctorants
Interaction with Anglia Ruskin University
Established at the heart of Cambridge, Anglia Ruskin University takes advantage of the Cambridge’s
entrepreneurial dynamism. Primarily dedicated to art studies (book
illustration), today, the university has developed several programs,
European projects and a contest that promote entrepreneurship studies
and research.
We have met Brynn Deprey in one of the numerous new classes of Lord Ashcroft business school
where a jury was waiting for us. The jury was composed with teachers and PhD students of the
business school eager to discover the results of 24 hours contest last session.
After an informal meeting,
and a quick presentation of everybody’s field of expertise,
Clarisse and Renaud have introduced the CIFRE program.
LES 24 HEURES CHRONO DE L’ENTREPRENEURIAT® / Septembre 2012 / ANRT/CIFRE® & NOVANCIA
Edition Spéciale Doctorants
And here comes our turn to present the Baby Dream project, born during the 24 hours contest!
Given the caricature, made by Gabriel our special reporter, we were, obviously, behaving as if we were
true professionals!
We were inspired by our original presentation in September 2012.
It was a challenge to become familiar with the
technological vocabulary in English. A specific
preparation was necessary. We have prepared the
final presentation the night before. However, we
could rely on our team typical conviviality.
LES 24 HEURES CHRONO DE L’ENTREPRENEURIAT® / Septembre 2012 / ANRT/CIFRE® & NOVANCIA
Edition Spéciale Doctorants
Few words to summarize our presentation and the following debates:
The SmartNest project addresses sensitive topics such as early age education and emotions. As a
consequence, the debate was passionate.
Indeed, our project consists in creating an automatic and smart moses basket:
It detects babies’ cries and it cradles automatically in adapting the motion
It deciphers the cries and indicates their origin (pain, hunger, etc.)
We can stress differences between the English and French juries (during the 24h00 contest, we have
met a set of industry managers).
As expected, our presentation
was too focused on the
technological aspects of our
product according to the
Anglia Ruskin’s jury. They
were more keen on discussing
its practical implications and
its outcomes.
In contrast with our French jury, the English jury has not
examined important issues such as safety.
It was very interesting for us to face a whole new jury with
different concerns and backgrounds; and new questions
have been raised. At the end of the discussion, the jury was
puzzled when Clarisse stressed that our business proposal
was the result of a game in spite of its seriousness and
potential. We also had the opportunity to discuss with PhD
students the market implementation of our product. This
whole experience was an amazing gift and a great
experience.
In addition, we were kindly invited to watch the BigPitch semi finals. BigPitch is a Lord Ashcroft
business school entrepreneurship contest similar to 24h00 contest. The major difference lies on the
reward of the contest. Anglia Ruskin students may win a £15k price to concretize their project.
LES 24 HEURES CHRONO DE L’ENTREPRENEURIAT® / Septembre 2012 / ANRT/CIFRE® & NOVANCIA
Edition Spéciale Doctorants
In the evening, we have enjoyed a pleasant dinner with our jury in Cambridge midtown.
Anglia Ruskin academic team
- Dr. Brynn Deprey- Senior Lecturer, Course Leader BA Enterprise and Entrepreneurial Management
- Dr. Louise Chalkley – Senior Lecturer, Enterprise Development
- Dr. Rosie Robison- Research Fellow, Global Sustainability Institute
- Lianne Miller- Lecturer in International Business and Deputy Director CEDAR
- Dr. Linda Piusa-PhD student
- Magdalena Partac-PhD student
- John Magabhegede- PhD student
LES 24 HEURES CHRONO DE L’ENTREPRENEURIAT® / Septembre 2012 / ANRT/CIFRE® & NOVANCIA
Edition Spéciale Doctorants
Visit of a Cambridge company
On Thursday, we have visited Cambridge Consultants, a company that set up in the Cambridge Science
Park. For obvious confidentiality reasons, we were unfortunately unable to take picture within their
facilities.
According to the name of the company, Cambridge Consultants (CC), we were quite surprised by their
day- to-day activity. Far from the standard paper-based consulting that we had imagined, the CEO
himself, Alan Richardson, in his introducing speech let us know that 95% of their activity was actually
applied engineering. Basically, customers come with a concept or an idea and CC mission was to bring
it to life; the other 5% are internal projects, proposed by employees themselves. The company
illustrated its talents with several life impacting projects, such as the first integrated blue tooth chip,
the ground-based installation of Iridium, the famous clearblue pregnancy test. The flagship project –
the round teabag – reveals that the most financially efficient innovation can lie in competitive
differences rather than in radical innovation:
- apparently simple ;
- complicated to put into production;
- not bringing any improvement in quality to customers.
BUT was brilliantly profitable!!
One of the critical aspects of this project was the importance of the disclosure effect, and as a
consequence, to ability to keep the secrecy.
The CEO also insisted on their human resources philosophy that apparently put the individual
inspiration and motivation in the center of the process. This is also embedded in the existence of an
employee-innovation process. Employees present and defend proposals that can integrate different
company resources. The employee-driven innovation projects provide unclassified communication
content to emphasize the firm’s skills and strengthen its legitimacy among its stakeholders and clients.
In spite of its very strict confidential policy, we have visited two labs with Patrick Pordage (Marketing
Communications Director): the electronics lab and life science lab. We have attended a stunning
demonstration of their electronic production equipment that quickly transformed a naked board to a
LES 24 HEURES CHRONO DE L’ENTREPRENEURIAT® / Septembre 2012 / ANRT/CIFRE® & NOVANCIA
Edition Spéciale Doctorants
fully operational device. Those tools offer broad capacities of rapid prototyping and internal small scale
production. Those two are crucial advantages comply with the required high confidentiality.
We also visited the so called “life science” lab where the firm proceeds with sophisticated quality
control processes. CC activity is focused on drug delivery. It is a leader of the market. We finished our
visit with a speech delivered by an enthusiastic employee about her daily activity.
In conclusion, we were nicely surprised to discover the CC corporate culture and infrastructure. We
admired the firm’s policy that encourages employee-driven innovation. We were also intrigued by
managers’ lack of interest in terms of partnership with academic entities.
Seeing those examples of successful spin off based companies also encourages us for future
entrepreneurial projects.
Conclusion
By Clarisse Angelier, head of Cifre department at ANRT and Renaud Redien-Collot, Director of
international affairs at Novancia
We have enjoyed this study trip and especially the welcoming of Anglia Ruskin academic team. Cifre,
Novancia, on the hand, and Anglia Ruskin, on the other are building a stimulating dialog about science
and entrepreneurship and academic entrepreneurship. We have appreciated the enthusiastic feedback
of ARU academic team during the presentation of Baby Dream. For example, a member of the team
said: “I love it, I want to put money in it.” It would be interesting to stabilize this study trip in
Cambridge, and, in turn, it would be important to welcome members of Anglia Ruskin in France. Brynn
Deprey has already accepted to participate in the 2013 24h00 contest in Paris. In the same vein, we can
imagine to set up a partnership based on joined-Ph.D. in the Cifre framework. Apparently, there may
be an interesting cross-fertilization in sharing our respective expertise in entrepreneurship education
and research and in academic entrepreneurship.
We were also delighted by our visit on CC site. We were impressed by their high accomplishment in
innovation management and technology. We have also discovered the importance of employee-driven
innovation within corporate culture.
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LES 24 HEURES CHRONO DE L’ENTREPRENEURIAT® / Septembre 2012 / ANRT/CIFRE® & NOVANCIA
Edition Spéciale Doctorants