Competitiveness Clusters: integration in the local community creates business and social value

As a company, we have always strived for continuous improvement in our R&D activities, which includes accelerating the industrialization of our innovations – in other words, getting our technology into production as swiftly as possible. This is only possible through strong partnership and engagement with a number of different stakeholders, particularly within the local community.

Through this integration, we are not only creating value for the company, but we are creating employment opportunities and encouraging further investment in the areas around our sites. Our interaction with different facets of the local community, in particular local academic institutions, has a magnetic effect, attracting similar specialized activities.

These efforts have now been recognized by the French Government, which has given its official seal of approval, the 'Competitiveness Cluster', to three of our projects:

• 'Secure Communications Solutions' at Rousset brings together the microelectronics, telecoms, and software expertise of the region in projects directly related to everyday applications such as tracking of consumer goods, secure information to mobile phones, and medical follow-up of patients
• 'Minalogic' at Grenoble, where our nanotechnology expertise is used to speed up applications that benefit from our System-on-Chip approach, for example imaging or mobile terminals
• 'Sciences and systems for electrical energy' created at our site in Tours, where our challenges include improved management of energy and investigating new sources of electrical energy.