| The C te d'Azur is renowned as a tourist destination for its Mediterranean climate with hot summers and mild winters. The first international high-tech companies to move here were IBM and Texas Instruments. They located R&D centers in the area in the early 1960s, taking advantage of both the quiet, pleasant environment and an abundance of sunshine, which was considered conducive to research and innovation, and the convenience of nearby Nice airport. The C te d'Azur region has traditionally attracted many individuals who sought inspiration. It is a truly beautiful place with mountains , sea, and long stretches of coastline. Artists such as Monet, Renoir, C zanne, Gaugin, Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso, Magnelli, Braque, as well as writers such as Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Huxley, Gide, Mansfield, and Lawrence, and modern day pop-stars such as Tina Turner and Elton John have all flocked to the region. Intending to capitalize on the inspirational aura and international accessibility of the region, Pierre Laffitte initiated the Sophia Antipolis Foundation. [2] Toward the end of the 1960s, the Foundation bought 140 hectares of land using private funds. It was named Sophia Antipolis, and became Europe's largest technological park, located 9 kilometers north of Cannes, and dubbed "the California of Europe." The name Sophia Antipolis was chosen by Pierre Laffitte. Sophia coming from the Greek word for wisdom, and Antipolis coming from Antibes, the name of the nearest town. Local authorities were invited to join in the 1970s and governement help began in 1976. Originally, only a few companies and institutions settled in the park. Its growth was constant in percentage (30% per year) from the beginning. During the 1980s, up to 185 companies per year located in Sophia Antipolis. The high-tech park developed its image and its brand, and as it started reaching a critical threshold of participants , it was able to draw more and more companies, research centers, and educational institutions to the area. Of course, with the current economic downturn, the growth is down to about a 10% annual increase. Initially, the different players from industry, research, and education had the habit of working separately, almost in isolation from each other. The Foundation team developed academic, business, engineering and artistic events every week over a period of years , in order to change the sociological and cultural habits. Recently, Sophia Antipolis has seen numerous initiatives and projects, which, by linking different players and creating synergies from their expertise, have helped to lead the way toward a more substantial cross-fertilization. Nonetheless, a vital ingredient of Pierre Laffitte's vision of inspiration and creativity is still partly missing from Sophia Antipolis: the integration of art, the humanities, and philosophy, which he regards as critical in order to create a full picture of human knowledge. Steps have been taken in the right direction, but Laffitte himself is not yet satisfied. But in the fields of innovation, and modern economic spirit, success is complete. Following Laffitte's vision, two- thirds of the park's area was to remain as green space, none of the buildings were allowed to be constructed taller than the hills that directly surrounded them, and no fences or walls were allowed. He believes that mushroom collectors ought be able to wander about freely and without restrictions between the company buildings, collecting mushrooms and enjoying the nature as if the park had never been built. Laffitte opposed the construction of any residential buildings on the park's ground, as he intended for employees to live in the surrounding villages and towns in order to avoid the development of " engineers ' ghettos." Today, Laffitte's plan is to avoid too big an expansion of the park's original outlines. As an answer to the demands for growth, he proposes constructing high-tech satellites , small Sophia Antipolis villages within the close vicinity, and thus convenient for networking and easily connectable by modern telecommunications broadband networks. Office and accommodation space is scarce in Sophia, and the surrounding infrastructure of roads has reached its capacity. Nonetheless, the area continues to attract new high-tech business, causing the Sophia Antipolis region to be second only to Paris in terms of job creation and business growth in France. When considerable layoffs by the foreign companies in Sophia occurred due to the economic slump of the early 1990s, it was noted that the population of foreign business professionals in the area nonetheless remained constant. It became apparent that the region was a place that people liked to move to and stay in, so they were willing to look for new jobs in the region rather than to move elsewhere. [3] The area offers a comprehensive infrastructure for foreign employees, including international schools , country clubs, and other international organizations; in short, the infrastructure needed to attract and retain an international community. Sophia's population consists of 63 different nationalities. Pierre Laffitte The Latin quarter in the fields ” Building a high-tech metropolis from scratch Cross-fertilization is difficult to construct. It requires a lot of commitment and an organization that takes charge. In Sophia for instance, we have organized a breakfast once a month for the past 30 years where we discuss topics of general interest. The myth of Sophia has probably helped its successful development. This myth has attracted risk-takers from all over the place. I believe that the people who originally came were attracted by the quality of life and the new concept. After a certain time, the corporate managers realized that the productivity, the number of publications , and even the number of patents created in Sophia Antipolis were somewhere around 20% to 30% higher than in comparable regions and certainly a lot higher in relative terms than in the Paris region. People needed to become aware of this because relative advantage is not something that you can "see." Cross-fertilization and conviviality ” sources of creativity ” are not written on a wall in red paint ” they are in the air. The concept of Sophia Antipolis was not originally part of the French business culture. In the beginning, we attracted the large technology companies and went step-by-step from there. What is cross-fertilization? Cross-fertilization occurs when a solid state physicist , a specialist in chemical aromas, and a butcher meet and try to find a solution to some problem. Sophia is still lacking the butcher, or at least the butchers in the area don't have the required state of mind. Sophia doesn't have a suitable city center that is required for this to happen. Nonetheless, there is a lot of networking going on. Just recently, I set up a Franco-Indian club so that the Indians in the region would have a better opportunity to meet and so they would feel more at home. Soon we will create a Nordic Sophia club! This is an important factor for cross-fertilization. As soon as they feel at home, they will start to exchange ideas and thoughts between the different companies that they work in. I think that every region must think hard in order to exploit each and every possibility for networking and to have a lot of networking events. Many people ask me, "How are you organized? There are so many clubs and associations in Sophia, can't you just regroup them all under one umbrella organization?" I tell the people that this would contradict what we are actually trying to achieve, which is spontaneity, diversity, and organic developments. Indeed, the development of Sophia took 30 years. However, when we celebrated our 20th birthday 10 years ago, we invited many Americans who were amazed at how we managed to attract so many companies to an area that had practically been a "desert" before. Surely, I was an optimist when I estimated that Sophia would have 20,000 people 20 years after its foundation. However, 30 years after its foundation, it is near to 40,000. I do not think we should grow much further because this would provoke certain bottlenecks such as constant traffic jams that would compromise the actual reason why everyone is here: the quality of life. We will naturally grow a little bit, but in terms of real growth, we will have to build satellites around the core of Sophia and employ teleworking technologies to link the individual players. Of course, we would like to double the number of people that currently work in Sophia, but 100,000 jobs implies a city of 300,000 citizens . A city of 100,000 engineering jobs would imply a population of nearly one million. Urban concentration will not be necessary if we employ teleworking technologies. Otherwise, the key competitive advantage, namely the higher productivity through reduced stress, will be lost. Getting people to properly use these technologies requires a period of training and an adjustment of management practice. As a result, millions of kilometers worth of car pollution could be spared, companies would have lower turnover rates, less days would be lost due to employee illnesses, the satisfaction at the workplace would be higher, and everyone would benefit. In a recent experiment, the efficiency of face-to-face contact between colleagues at work actually increased dramatically when they only met at the office for one day a week and worked apart for the rest of the week. Anyway, I am convinced that cross-fertilization works better with hundreds than with thousands of people in one place. I am convinced of the fact that the huge First Tuesday events in Paris are less efficient than the smaller start-up club events that we have in Sophia. Here, the people know each other, there is a greater feeling of proximity. I think there is a critical mass of people that should not be exceeded in order to optimize cross-fertilization. A marker in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other Of course, physical distance matters. The R&D center of a big company in the United States hired MIT to conduct a study for them to find out how the level of contact between people was affected by their distance from each other at work. The first thing the study found was that the level of contact was highest when the people were sitting right opposite each other in the same room. How surprising! However, the study interestingly also found that the distance between individuals increased incredibly when people were sitting on a different floor. The results corresponded to being 300 meters away from each other. This distance could be reduced if there was visual contact between the different floors. The distance again increased considerably if people were located in different buildings even if they were located right next to each other. This corresponded to a distance of approximately one kilometer! The company responded to the study by constructing a building with two floors and a stairway that allowed visual contact between them. Also, they placed a coffee machine on one of the floors with a blackboard right next to it. It worked! Soon, engineers from the different floors could be seen discussing problems with a marker in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other! In the beginning, I forbade companies in the park to have their own cafeterias. This rule was adopted, and now you have groups of people from different companies in exchange over lunch , even if they have their own cafeteria! Also, I systematically insisted that groups of students visit the park in order to show them that there are no physical barriers, that one can freely walk around among the companies, and that there is nothing mysterious about it. Concerning the new interdisciplinary campus they are currently building in Sophia, I predict that even though the planners conceived it for increasing proximity, the different university departments will still be confined to their own buildings, which is a mistake. Twenty years ago in Chinese universities, students and professors were permitted to enter only their own faculty's library. They were banned from all the rest. The spirit in France is still a little bit like this. Innovation occurs when people are anti-conformist, when they think differently. I tried to locate language and arts faculties within the park, but I failed. Those that did give it a shot returned to Paris after a couple of months because they felt Sophia was too far away from where the distribution of government funds was decided and too distant from the best students. We tried to convince the University of Nice to locate an R&D center of the arts in Sophia, but we have not yet succeeded. The concept is still too new. The university is on the way with a new usage laboratory for telecom services. It is in its own interests to do this. The phenomenal potential of a center of multimedia development, for instance, is connected with artistic, humanistic , and scientific studies working together. It is not too late for other regions to try and start their own innovations park but they should take care not to copy. One has to take into account the characteristics of each environment, which are essential for innovation, even if innovation is generally based on an open spirit and on frequent exchange between cultures and disciplines. Many events need to be hosted that invite people from other countries and regions to attend . The role of the coordinating organization should be to motivate those that wish to change something to do so. They should help the people to accomplish things rather than doing everything for them. | Senator Laffitte's vision was far ahead of its time when it was first formulated in the 1970s. Today, companies, research and academic institutions, as well as regional politicians still need to be convinced of the importance of entrepreneurship. Those who have understood the implications of the global Innovation Economy are working hard to create an entrepreneurship culture in the park, as our next section indicates. |
