Federating innovation stakeholders with public-private partnerships

Résumé

Enjoying an international reputation for quality research across the boards, France suffers from insuffi cient means in innovation transfer. More specifi cally, there are many small and mediumsized companies in agriculture and the agro-food industry and they have little access to innovations currently being developed within their respective fi elds. Nevertheless, innovative technologies are crucial for them to address their economic, environmental and societal challenges in order to produce more with less. To meet these challenges in food production, to strengthen innovation transfer, and to address societal concerns regarding food, setting up public-private partnerships (PPPs) is strategically imperative in an open-innovation process. Involving a broad spectrum of stakeholders ranging from public research organizations to technical research institutes in agriculture, upstream, downstream and societal groups, leading companies in the agro-food industry as well as small-scale farmers, all must be empowered and pool their shared objectives. Due to the considerable differences in the backgrounds and motivations of participants, such PPPs are not so easy to set up and manage. They can succeed and result in synergies by members’ coming together in a spirit of cooperation for clearly defi ned objectives and sharing the same vision, selecting the right partners based on their skills, clearly  defi ning the scope of PPPs, working on a long-term for building trust among partners, by fairly sharing their results mutually. PPPs can serve as an important economic leverage in accelerating innovation transfer and furthering mutual understanding among research, production and society in general.