The 2008 economic crisis forced the entire world to reflect on new and more sustainable economic models – and France was no exception. In response, the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region decided to optimise the transfer of public research into applicable, innovative technological solutions for businesses. This led to the creation of the EU-funded Technology Transfer Acceleration project, or SATT.
- 21 August 2018
The core business of SATT Sud-Est is to protect, develop and promote innovations and their academic shareholders; its goal is to help companies acquire technologies that are better suited to the industrial challenges they face.
Each of the 14 satellite SATT facilities set up across France shared the same goal: to simplify, accelerate and facilitate the transfer of innovative academic solutions into dedicated technology that better addresses the challenges companies face within their specific sectors. In the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (PACA) and Corsica Regions, this happened at the SATT Sud-Est facility.
Since its launch in 2012, SATT Sud-Est has protected close to 300 intellectual property rights for innovative solutions and approved EUR 23 million in funding for over 140 matured projects. The satellite facility has also granted licences for 85 businesses, leading to the creation of 17 start-up companies and over EUR 6 million in revenue. Thanks to the technologies coming out of the start-ups, 98 new jobs were also created.
Careful selection
SATT Sud-Est focused on five priority areas of interest: Health & Life Technologies, Industrial Processing, Digital & Connected Information Society, Environment, Energy & Territories, as well as Culture, Heritage & Digital Humanities.
The project relies on dedicated teams that source, detect and thoroughly evaluate relevant inventions or research results for their potential market value. This procedure starts with the identification of economic value creation opportunities within the SATT-related research institutions. Once an opportunity is identified, it undergoes an in-depth review for its business potential.
If approved, a dedicated project is put together to optimise the innovation’s development and to transfer the technology into socio-economic market segments. Any intellectual property that results – including patents – remains owned by the research institution.
The benefit of going local
The more projects that SATT Sud-Est selects, the wider its knowledge base becomes and the better it becomes at analysing the particular issues and requirements of every sector where it is active. This allows the facility to match researchers’ inventions with the needs of companies.
By pooling resources at the local level, while at the same time collaborating on a national scale, SATT Sud-Est has created new jobs and boosted public research in specialised sectors.
Total investment and EU funding
Total investment for the project “Programme d’Actions 2015-2016-2017 de la SATT Sud-Est” is EUR 10 000 000, with the EU’s European Regional Development Fund contributing EUR 5 000 000 through the “Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur” Regional Programme for the 2014-2020 programming period.