Interview of Gilles Babinet, French Digital Champion

Extracts from the interview:

“Yearly a year ago, I conducted a digital agility test for companies in the CAC40 with Les Echos.

GDF SUEZ ranked 4^th, which is a major performance.

One of the evaluation criteria was major actors’ capacity to form strong links with the digital ecosystem. This involves hackathons, incubators, and meetings with companies.

There are two things to expect from a partnership between startups and major groups.

-An infusion of disruptive innovation, innovations that these corporations – who are used to incremental innovation – would have difficulty implementing themselves.

-Setting up new organizational and management processes within organizations, ones that are much more cross-cutting, that rely on data and digital technologies, and that focus much more on a project-based approach and less based in hierarchy.

These are two notions that we almost always see in partnerships between major corporations and startups.”