Dynamic and Innovative Regions in Europe The Case of Montpellier

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Dynamic and Innovative Regions in EuropeThe
Case of Montpellier The French Technopole
StrategyProf. Michel Lacave

• Seminar  The Oslo Region as a Learning Region 
• Oslo / November 22-23, 2002

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Plan of the presentation

• Montpellier Méditerranée Technopole
• History and strategy at the beginning (1980s)
• Implementation of the strategy
• The crisis of the 1990s
• Tentative assessment
• Now ?

• The French Technopole Strategy
• Definition of what is a  technopole 
• The role of local initiatives
•  France Technopoles Entreprises Innovation 

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Montpellier Méditerranée Technopole

• History and Strategy (1980s) (1)
• New municipality (center left) in 1977
• Takes control of the metropolitan area authority
  DISTRICT (50 of the seats in the District
  Council) which had been  a sleeping beauty 
• Among the competences of the District economic
  development of the metropolitan area
• The municipality of Montpellier decides to wake
  it up

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Montpellier Méditerranée Technopole

• History and Strategy (1980s) (2)
• A major reason the peripheral communes are
  growing very fast and their citizens use
  Montpellier City services while not paying taxes
  to Montpellier City
• Consequence a lot of services are transfered
  from City level to District level and the
  District becomes the driving force of Montpellier
  strategy

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Montpellier Méditerranée Technopole

• History and Strategy (1980s) (3)
• Which strategy of economic development ?
• Crisis in the wine sector from the 1960s at
  least
• IBM plant (big computers) from 1965 sun
  university first RD contracts
  university-industry
• A successful medium-size pharmaceutical company
  (ophtalmology) located in Montpellier because of
  university
• Importance of universities, research
  institutions, schools of engineers MAJOR
   ENDOGENOUS  RESOURCE

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Montpellier Méditerranée Technopole

• History and Strategy (1980s) (4)
• At the same time (beginning of the 1980s), the
  French govt launches an ambitious reform of the
  research policy aimed at supporting technology
  transfer and strengthening university-industry
  relationship

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Montpellier Méditerranée Technopole

• History and Strategy (1980s) (5)
• ADOPTION OF A STRATEGY BASED ON THE
  VALORISATION OF RD RESOURCES
• TWO-TIER
• Regional level (mayor of Montpellier also
  vice-president of the Region L-R) using the new
  instruments of  Contrats de Plan Etat-Région 
  CPER  RTDI  leading to the creation of CRITT
  (1984)
• District level first steps of the
   Technopole  strategy (1985)

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Montpellier Méditerranée Technopole

• History and Strategy (1980s) (6)
• Centre left loses the 1986 regional election
• Montpellier concentrates exclusively on the
   Technopole  strategy, with an
   infrastructures  and  industrial real
  estate  dimension which was not relevant at
  regional level, but was within the competences of
  the City and District

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Montpellier Méditerranée Technopole

• Implementation (1)
• Identification of  Poles  relying more or less
  on a  cluster  concept, either ST or
  industrial
• Agropolis a scientific cluster in agronomical
  sciences (3,000 researchers) with a large intl
  dimension, but a limited impact on the regional
  agrofood sector (rather weak)
• Euromédecine a rather balanced cluster
  scientific resources and pharmaceutical firms -,
  plus tradition of the Faculty of Medicine

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Montpellier Méditerranée Technopole

• Implementation (2)
• Identification of  Poles  relying more or less
  on a  cluster  concept, either ST or
  industrial
• Informatique an industrial cluster based on
  IBM and its local and regional network of
  subcontractors ST resources relatively strong
  but not exceptional in the French context
• Antenna ICT wishful thinking more or less

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Montpellier Méditerranée Technopole

• Implementation (3)
• Identification of  Poles  relying more or less
  on a  cluster  concept, either ST or
  industrial
• Later on Informatique and Antenna were merged
• Later on a new Pole named  Heliopolis ,
  considered as  transversal  and centered on
  tourism and culture, with the creation of a new
  Opera and a large Convention Center ( scientific
  tourism )

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Montpellier Méditerranée Technopole

• Implementation (4)
• Creation of ST parks corresponding to the
   Poles 
• Agropolis Science Park (120,000 sq m)
• Euromédecine Park (1,500,000 sq m)
•  Millénaire  Technological Park for both
  Informatique and Antenna, close to the IBM plant
  (2,000,000 sq m)
• A Business Innovation Center with an
  incubator ( Cap Alpha ) supporting in
  particular academic spin-offs

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Montpellier Méditerranée Technopole

• Implementation (5)
• Creation of and support to  events 
  (conferences and fairs/exhibitions) corresponding
  to the  Poles 
• Journées Internationales Agropolis
• Salon Euromédecine with scientific conferences
• Salon Informatique (the poorest one because of
  huge competition)
• Journées internationales de lIDATE (a
  scientific institute dedicated to the market and
  legal aspects of ICT)

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Montpellier Méditerranée Technopole

• Implementation (6)
• Management by the District with  animators 
  paid by the District for each  Pole 
• A kind of advisory board  Comité scientifique
  et technique  with leading representatives of
  the academic and business community consensus
  building
• Creation of a non-for-profit organisation for
  escaping the rules of public accountancy

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Montpellier Méditerranée Technopole

• The crisis of the 1990s (1)
• Property development crisis (not particular to
  Montpellier) too much office space and too much
  serviced land
• IBM dramatic downsizing (from 2,600 people to
  750) and opening of IBM own  science park 
  (Eureka) to commercialise a large part of its own
  premises
• But successful location of Dell computer (!)

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Montpellier Méditerranée Technopole

• The crisis of the 1990s (2)
• End of expectations concerning a collaboration
  with the Region (political fighting) the Region
  has competences and money for supporting
  innovation and technology transfer, the City and
  the District have none so, what to offer to
  academics ?
• Change of generation at the top of universities
  and research institutions much less
   consensus 

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Montpellier Méditerranée Technopole

• Tentative Assessment (1)
• Successful for what regards
• Job creation
• Real estate development (except for the
  temporary crisis of the 1st half of the 90s)
• Start-ups and spin-offs (Cap Alpha)
• Convention Center (science)
• Global image

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Montpellier Méditerranée Technopole

• Tentative Assessment (2)
• Major weaknesses
• inter-personal relationship was a key success
  factor at the beginning change of generation,
  in particular among top academics, raised
  problems
• typically systematic and top-down approach
  (gallic ?)

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Montpellier Méditerranée Technopole

• Tentative Assessment (3)
• Major weaknesses top-down approach
• Agropolis corresponds in fact to 2 different
  realities under the same brand name
• the  Pole  set up by Montpellier Technopole
• the Scientifc Complex  Agropolis  organised as
  a consortium grouping 18 intl and national
  research and higher education institutions and
  universities receiving money from the
  archrival, the Region
• the District tolerated with difficulty such
  academic, institutional and financial autonomy

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Montpellier Méditerranée Technopole

• Tentative Assessment (4)
• Major weaknesses top-down approach
• There were conflicts between the District and
  the Faculty of Medicine University Hospitals
  concerning the valorisation of the
   Euromédecine  image
• the Pole Informatique was more or less limited
  to a dialogue between the District and IBM
• Comité scientifique et technique set aside
• ST parks were only developed on the City of
  Montpellier territory, the other  communes  of
  the District having only  classical  industrial
  parks

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Montpellier Méditerranée Technopole

• Tentative Assessment (5)
• Major weaknesses
• As already stated, money for innovation and
  technology transfer comes in principle from the
  Region (and the State). So, the incentive for
  research institutions and universities to
  collaborate in the Technopole strategy is limited
• A possible exception building incubators but
  there is a Ministry of Research programme for
  financing  academic  incubators and the
  universities of Montpellier are benefiting from it

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Montpellier Méditerranée Technopole

• And now ? (1)
• From a District with 15  communes  and 300,000
  people to a  Communauté dAgglomération  with
  38  communes  and 450,000 people
• The Communauté dAgglomération is responsible
  for economic development
• Links with the academic community are loose

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Montpellier Méditerranée Technopole

• And now ? (2)
• The Region has downsized its ambitions in the
  field of innovation and technology transfer and
  is poorly involved in EU programmes which does
  not help a kind of vacuum precisely when the
  EU is promoting  The Regional Dimension of the
  ERA 
• One exception creation of an intl campus on
  biological control supported by Region and
  Communauté dagglomération

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Montpellier Méditerranée Technopole

• And now ? (3)
• Widening of the Communauté dagglomération
   industrial real estate development  
  strategy 
• 12 parks (industrial, scientific, technological,
  logistics on a total of 6,100,000 sq m (about
  1,500 companies)
• 26  ateliers-relais  (16,500 sq m)
• A second incubator  Cap Omega  (5,000 sq m) in
  the Eureka science park besides  Cap Alpha 
• A third incubator specialised in biotechnologies
  bio-incubator

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Montpellier Méditerranée Technopole

• And now ? (4)
• A strengthening of the territorial marketing
  aimed at attracting external investments
• Creation of an instrument of  economic and
  technological intelligence  (not free of charge)
  for the local and regional businesses

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Montpellier Méditerranée Technopole

• Drawing some lessons (1)
• Not so bad after 20 years but
• Too much top down consensus building has been
  strong at the beginning, but forgotten later
• Too loose relationship between the  centers of
  excellence  in the academic community and the
  policy-makers
• Too often conflictual relations with the
  business community

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Montpellier Méditerranée Technopole

• Drawing some lessons (2)
• develop sustainable actions of social and
  institutional engineering keeping the
  stakeholders effectively involved
• leading to improve synergies
• and the building-up of a culture of trust
  between the major partners
• focus on common projects which can mobilise
  stakeholders

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The French Technopole Strategy

• What is a  technopole  (1)
•  Supporting a territorial development policy
  based on innovation, a technopole favours
  cross-fertilisation. Creation of innovative
  activities, animation and networking of
  competences, territorial marketing, are the
  components of the technopolitan dynamics 
• (Definition given by France Technopoles
  Entreprises Innovation)

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The French Technopole Strategy

• What is a  technopole  (2)
•  Soft  policies are emphasised and the
  concept is closer to  regional innovation
  strategies  than to the  brick and mortars 
  science park but the French never forget
   aménagement du territoire  with its dimension
  of spatial planning

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The French Technopole Strategy

• The role of local initiatives (1)
• Surprisingly (due to the French tradition of
  centralisation), the development and
  multiplication of technopoles (and STPs) do not
  result from central government initiatives (with
  maybe one exception close to Paris !)
• Technopoles and STPs have been created by cities,
  metropolitan areas authorities (rarely
  Départements) profiting by the move toward
   décentralisation  (from 1982-83)

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The French Technopole Strategy

• The role of local initiatives (2)
• A consequence is that the DATAR (French Natl
  Agency for Regional Development) has considered
  technopoles as  unidentified territorial
  development objects  for years, passing from
  diffidence to curiosity
• DATAR has been up to now paying lip service to
  the  technopole  phenomenon, but prefers
  supporting clusters for instance there is no
  official national  technopole strategy 

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The French Technopole Strategy

•  France Technopoles Entreprises Innovation 
• As a result, this non-for-profit organisation
  plays its own game (having no direct money from
  the govt)
• And was successful in grouping not only
  technopoles and STPs, but also Business
  Innovation Centers and a majority of incubators
  (including the academic incubators supported by
  the Ministry of Research)
• It is now a real driving force in its field in a
  country where public bodies organisations are
  generally more or less under the State umbrella