France Wants the Profits From French Inventions

摘要

In 1973, Frenchman Francois Gernelle built the world's first microcomputer equipped with a microprocessor. In the decades after, France looked on as IBM and Apple spawned a multitrillion-dollar industry around it. French business history is strewn with similar examples of missed opportunities. From the Internet precursor Minitel to Francois Mizzi's touchscreen patents in the 1980s, France has repeatedly failed to turn ideas and research into money-making global products, allowing others to ride away with the loot. The European Union's largest producer of math, science, and technology graduates needs to get out of "the Death Valley between what's developed in a lab and its future as a successful product or company," says Louis Gallois, former head of Airbus parent European Aeronautic Defence and Space and now France's competitiveness czar.