FRANCE MEANS

INNOVATION
Surprising ideas and creations
 FRANCE MEANS
INNOVATION
Surprising ideas and creations

W
hat if your craziest ideas actually came true?
What if a good night’s sleep could come at the
touch of a button?
What if we could turn waste into something precious?
What if the greatest bicycle performance was effortless?
The list is as endless as your imagination and in France you’re
bound to find the creative answers you’ve been seeking.
This book’s ambition is to present some of the most innovative
ideas developed by different companies in France, each illus-
trated by specially commissioned artwork showcasing some
of the most ingenious artists on the French scene.
The abundance of skills and talent found in a dedicated, highly
qualified workforce; research and development tax credits and
cutting-edge innovation clusters: these are just a few reasons
behind the success of these ambitious projects in a country
with a long tradition of original thinking.

And what if your next great idea was “made in France”?

Published by
Invest in France Agency
 W
hen my father drew one of his breathtak-
ing Cx tailfins, he would say to me: I drew it
with “de chic”. Later, when I was working
on my prototypes, I would ask for them to be
made “dans les règles de l’art”. It is amazing that, although
a large part of my time is spent working abroad, I have never
been able to translate these two French expressions.
I have come to realize, to the detriment of my dreams
that were not coming true as they were dreamt, that
these two expressions reveal, both unfortunately and
fortunately, an essentially French state of mind.
P reface Some signs thrown up from the waves of history confirm
my intuition: a Chateau of Versailles built using modules
that can be infinitely multiplied, and whose purpose was
the efficient management of a business, and one of the
Philippe Starck
very first political and commercial publicity campaigns.
An Eiffel Tower that employs a brilliant intuition for the
definitive advantage of emptiness over fullness, simply
in order to provide a temporary testimony to the depth of
our desire to shine.
A Panhard motorcar that, like Voisin, foresees that the
lightness of aircraft is the key to the future of motor ve-
hicles: modern engineering, precision mechanics, the
use of aluminum to produce vehicles that are efficient
and economic, and which we are only just beginning to
perceive on the horizon.
And Concorde. Ah, Concorde! A vision, a strategy, a whim,
a slight of hand! Absolute style, a musketeer’s flourish,
so French. For we who love to make others jealous…
Since everyone has a favorite example, we could go on
for ever. But in the selection that I have deliberately cho-
sen from the past (history will judge our present) I should
not forget a quintessential illustration: the specifications
for the Citroën 2CV. It is pure poetry, where each word
makes sense. The specifications talk of umbrellas, diag-
onals made in freshly-plowed fields, the smell of morn-
ing mist, baskets of fresh eggs, it exudes the aroma of a
country breakfast. And all this describes one of the most
intelligent and revolutionary automotive concepts of all
time. 4
5
And do these effortless examples cause us to be crushed
by materialism? Do we hear the eructation of marketing?
No.
We have talked only of poetry, humanity, vision, muta-
tion, elegance, quality. The cold orthogonal is replaced
by the sublime diagonal.
In France we do not search, we find.
With all our faults and a few of these qualities, we have
always been and may always be the vessels for this
sweet concept that is the intrinsic beauty of engineering
and the seductive elegance of intelligence.
“De chic”
 What if... What if... What if...
... you could see your ... the depths of the ocean ... your time machine looked
city in a new light? were the best place to view like an ordinary fridge?
the sky?

Contents 6
7
PHILIPS ANTARÈS CRÉALIE
innovations in France

QUIETYS - p.8 / PHILIPS - p.10 / ORANGE - p.12 / CÉPHALON - p.14 / ALSTOM - p.16 / GE HEALTHCARE - p.18 / PILÊO - p.20 /

YAHOO - p.22 / MICHELIN - p.24 / ECOVER - p.28 / L’ORÉAL - p.30 / SIEMENS - p.32 / SAINT-GOBAIN - p.34 / BLUESTAR

SILICONES - p.36 / ANTARÈS - p.38 / TOYOTA - p. 40 / KAERYS - p.42 / SIEMENS - p.46 / CROSSJECT - p.48 / CRÉALIE - p.50 /

PSA - p.52 / ST MICROELECTRONICS - p.54 / ESSILOR - p.56 / DELPHI - p.58 / JEAN NOUVEL - p.60 / SOLVAY - p.64 /

BIO UV - p.66 / EBLY - p.68 / INFOTERRA - p.70 / TORAY - p.72 / OLMIX - p.74 / BOMBARDIER - p.76 / VARIOPTIC - p.78 /

GENZYME - p.80 / LOOK - p.82 / PATRICK BLANC - p.84 / RENAULT TRUCKS - p.86 / TOUCH COMMUNICATION SYSTEM - p.88

/ GE ENERGY - p.90
 What if life came with a volume control?
How loudspeakers and microphones are making things less noisy
ummer in the city. It’s nearly midnight and the
S temperature is still pushing 30°. With the windows
wide open, your bedroom might as well be out in
the street with the car horns and the engine
rumble. The bass from the party next door is thudding
through the wall. You have to be up in six hours.
No problem. You hit the button on your
A soundwave
acoustic comfort bubble’s control box and
everything dissolves into silence. As the that literally
breeze from the window drifts over the bed,
you can feel yourself slipping away.
cancels out
unwanted
With the acoustic comfort bubble from RNS
Engineering, a company based in Montpellier, background
Southern France, you can surround yourself sounds
with peace and quiet whenever you feel like it.
There are no headphones and no earplugs : the area around
your head simply becomes a noise-free zone.
The system operates by generating a soundwave that literally
cancels out unwanted background sounds. And if you think
that sounds like science fiction, you are in good company.
“The whole acoustic industry thought I was crazy,” says Jean-
Claude Odent, the bubble’s inventor. “They all said : if you add
noise to noise, you’re just going to get more noise.”
Thomas cantoni Quietys
In fact, Odent’s unique acoustic equation produces silence.
The system consists of loudspeakers and microphones
hooked up to a control unit. One microphone picks up the
unwanted noise and transfers it to the controller, which
analyzes the sound and creates an acoustic mirror-image
– all in real time. The loudspeakers then superimpose
this mirror-image onto the original sound,
neutralizing it.
Two microphones inside the comfort zone
monitor the process and fine-tune its effects.
The more controllers you use, the bigger the 8
size of the bubble. A single control box can 9
silence an area roughly 20cm across.
Since early 2007, Odent’s comfort bubbles
have been installed in France to protect
workers in noisy factories. He’s now working on a system
capable of silencing a whole room.
Before long, RNS Engineering will be installing sanctuaries
of quiet in busy public places like stations and airports,
as well as private homes. So if you’ve ever wished you
could make your noisy neighbors disappear, help is at
hand. With your own acoustic comfort bubble, you’ll be
able to do just that.
 What if you could see your city in a new light?

How to make monuments more beautiful and eco-friendly

ou’ve passed the building a million times. innovation is Philips’ use of plastic optics – rather than a

Y Somehow, it never really grabbed your attention.

In fact – now you think about it – it gives you an
awkward, uneasy feeling. You resent the fact that
it’s an important monument, that you should take an
interest in it – while in fact you’d be unable to describe it
reflector – to direct 100% of the emitted light wherever it
is wanted.

The results are impressive. In 2006, Philips made the

headlines by lighting up the entire Buckingham Palace
at a dinner party. for the Queen’s 80th birthday – using a total
of only 1500W, no more than a standard
But tonight, you stop dead in your tracks.
Philips’ household iron!
Wow ! Look at that detail ! The texture of the new lights
façade ! That play of shadows ! You gaze on Not only can cities afford to light up more
in wonder. What did they do to your dull old
also save a buildings, bridges, arcades, trees and so on, 10
building ? They fitted it with the revolutionary lot of energy but they can pick their colors. In addition to 11
low-energy LED lighting technology the slightly bluish LEDs we are used to,
developed by Philips. Philips R&D center in Lyon developed a neutral white
(the color of the midday sun) and warm white (like
Aiming a beam of light at a building from across the street incandescent bulbs) – as well as a full range of reds,
can have an unflattering effect: the relief of the façade is greens, yellows, etc.
flattened into a single monotonous plane. Philips’ luminaries
are placed on the façade itself, producing a grazing light It’s no coincidence that this new lighting technology was
that highlights the buildings’ features and produces a invented at the confluence of the Rhone and Saone rivers.
variety of effects depending on the artist’s intentions. The city of Lyon has long sought ways to promote intelligent
lighting, even staging a Festival of Lights every year in early
Philips’ new lights also save a lot of energy. Unlike December. Philips’ team of optics experts is considered
incandescent bulbs, which use electricity to heat up a one of Europe’s best. It benefits from fundamental research
filament and – almost incidentally – give off light, carried out at public laboratories and partnerships with
Philips’ LEDs produce light by polarizing a diode inside a universities in the Lyon area. The factory exports massively
crystal, drastically reducing wastage. But the main across Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Matthieu Roussel Philips

 What if every time you left home,
your home phone went with you?

How a phone company wants you to have one phone, wherever you go

an you remember what it was like before you the convenience of a mobile alongside all the advantages

C had a mobile phone? The phone numbers

scribbled in Filofaxes and address books, on
cigarette packets and used envelopes? Trying
to find a payphone that wasn’t out of order? And how the
number you needed at work was always at home, and
of their home broadband connection.

When you’re on the move, it’s business as usual. But as

soon as you’re within range of a base station – at home, in
the office, at an airport or hotel – your mobile switches onto
vice versa? the Internet via a Wi-Fi connection.

Before long, your landline could feel just Imagine if That means unlimited phone calls and
as old-fashioned. Imagine if you could use broadband connection at no extra cost. Using
the same handset for all your calls,
you could your mobile phone to access the Internet
wherever you happen to be. If you only had use the same suddenly becomes an attractive option. 12
one phone number and one electronic 13
address book. handset for In France, Orange’s network of Wi-Fi hotspots
all your is already offering full broadband facilities at
If your mobile gave you unlimited talk time 30,000 locations across the country.
at home or in the office; if every time you left calls
home, you could take your home phone with And Unik will soon be coming to the UK,
you. Holland, Spain and Poland – bringing home comfort to
your mobile across Europe. So take a good look at your
A brand new service from Orange gives you all that and home phone next time you get a chance. Pretty soon, you’ll
more. For the first time ever, Unik offers subscribers hardly remember what a landline is.

Stéphane Tartelin Orange

 What if brainpower fuelled growth?

How one researcher bet on intelligence and won

n 2001, new-lab-on-the-block Cephalon was looking requires no solvents or other pollutants. It works with a

I for a good opportunity to expand its business. By then,

the 14 year-old Philadelphia-based biotech start-up
had proven the value of its “balanced risk business
model”, based on acquiring new products and innovative
drug delivery technologies to reinvest the income in R&D.
broad range of over-the-counter, prescription and
veterinary drugs, to treat anything from stomach spasms
and diarrhea to coughs and fever, for instance.

Even in the comfort of the home, Lyoc® comes in very

Now it was ready for a big step forward. handy when giving medication to children or to elderly
people who find it hard to swallow.
Cephalon’s founder, Dr. Frank Baldino, a The drugs’
researcher and still the current Chairman It is easily mixed with yogurt or cream, a big
and CEO, already knew where to look. Years porous bonus if the patient is feeling nauseous.
earlier, the French Lafon Laboratory had Moreover, it has huge potential in areas of 14
structure
invented a new way of taking medication, the world where drinking water can be 15
which he called Lyoc®. dissolves unsafe.

How does it work? Suppose you are rushing

instantly in
to catch a plane. While you are queuing for the mouth
security and customs, your headache kicks
in. You always have your painkillers with you but… no
water to gulp them down. Typical. Now you’ll have to wait
for the plane to get above the clouds to call the steward
and get the water you need.
Lyoc® is changing that. Unlike normal tablets, its porous
structure dissolves instantly in the mouth without any need
for water. Wherever you are – at the wheel, on the bus,
walking the dog – just pop it in and Bob’s your uncle.
Dr. Frank Baldino saw all this. With Cephalon’s
other drug delivery technologies, such as bad
taste masking, Lyoc® could greatly improve
existing drugs and allow new selected treatments with better
compliance.
The acquisition of Laboratoires Louis Lafon marked the
beginning of Cephalon’s rapid development in Europe: in
eight years, the company invested close to $1 billion
dollars here and operated a spectacular take-off. From
$115 million in 2000, the company’s worldwide revenues
soared to $1.773 billion in 2007.

Lyoc® is a unique method for manufacturing drugs, using Never did Cephalon regret trusting in the power of research
a low-pressure, ultra-cold freeze drying technique that and innovation.

James Joyce Cephalon

 What if getting rid of the locomotive made
the train go faster?

How miniature motors powered the fastest train on the planet

n some parts of the world, train travel may seem a bit And because the wagons at the front and back are not

I dated. In France, it is cutting-edge. In April 2007, a

French experimental high-speed train reached
574.8 km/h - a new land-speed record.
You would think making a train go that fast
cluttered up with huge electric motors and transformers,
there’s more space for passengers too. The new carriages

would be enough innovation for the prototype’s Miniaturization

offer more room to stretch out, reduced
noise and significantly less vibration.

manufacturer. It isn’t. Now they want to take So it’ll be easier to get some work done or
away the engine too.
of motors and have a nap. With average speeds 40 km/h
drive systems faster than the fastest TGV, you’ll reach your
To develop the AGV – a new generation high- destination even quicker than you do today.
speed train – Alstom has taken train design
back to the drawing board. Yet when the new train enters service in 2009, the biggest 16
beneficiary of all may end up being the environment. Unlike 17
By miniaturizing its motors and drive systems, the French airplanes, the AGV doesn’t emit any greenhouse gases.
firm has been able to fit them under the floors, the whole
length of the train. But it can cover 1,000 km in under three hours, from city
center to city center: far better than any plane. If – as
The AGV’s carriages actually drive themselves. Getting Alstom hopes – it coaxes passengers out of the skies and
rid of locomotives makes the train 50 tons lighter than onto the rails, it would be a big step forward in the fight
today’s TGV, which translates into energy savings along against global warming. Thanks to the French, train travel
with increased speeds. never looked as modern as it does today.

Roy and Farid Alstom

 What if the body was transparent?
How 3d imaging has transformed medicine
t might have started in a garage, had Jérôme Knoplioch
I owned one twenty years ago. Fortunately for hundreds
of thousands of patients around the world, he and a
few fellow engineering graduates found an employer
who was willing to take his chances.
The result, introduced in 1992, was to It changed
become a cornerstone of the revolution
the way
that medical imaging has experienced in
the past two decades. And it changed the radiology
way radiology was used for good.
was used
The Advantage Workstation – formerly for good
Advantage Windows or AW for short – is
one of the most widely used 3D visualization and analysis
solutions in the world.
Its applications range from the early detection of tumors
to the diagnosis of heart disease and the assessment
of brain disorders and women’s health.
Medical imaging scanners work by dividing the body
into digital “slices”. The greater the scanner’s resolution,
Thomas Cantoni GE Healthcare
the more slices it makes and the more data it produces.
The big challenge is to create software capable of
processing all the data quickly and accurately so
practitioners can work with all the flexibility they
need.
The AW Engineering team and its Chief
Engineer Jérôme Knoplioch did just that.
His software performs much faster than
dedicated hardware implementations.
Doctors can manipulate the 3D images in 18
real time, as if they had peeled back the 19
skin and were looking directly at the mus-
cles, organs, bones or brain of the patient. And the
software is so smart it adapts to new scanners and other
hardware features as they emerge.
Today, more than 25,000 Advantage Workstations have
been installed in the world. After its 9th release in 18
years, it is still the reference in the marketplace for its
unique speed, reliability and depth of tools that help
doctors do a better job every day.
 What if dessert came on top of your coffee?

How a breakfast in Starbucks transformed a simple espresso into a pastry

une 2003 - Fabien Rouillard is having breakfast to melt. Just how long you leave it is up to you. A lip

J in New York City. He is a pastry chef, the crème

de la crème, with a two-year stint designing
desserts at Paris’ 3-star Lucas Carton under
his belt. This morning, he’s trying to read the New
York Times with a Starbucks coffee in one
round the base of the biscuit stops melted chocolate
running into your finest Arabica. It’s called Pilêo.
Rouillard starts pitching the concept to the big food
companies. No one is interested.

hand and a chocolate muffin in the other. The heat of August 2005 - Rouillard decides to go it
He has an idea. What if you could just alone and produce Pilêo himself. His
eat the cover that keeps the drink hot? your coffee friends chip in for the starting capital. He
transforms finds a factory that is willing to take a
July 2003 - Back in Paris, Rouillard has chance on a new kind of biscuit, and
two more ideas. What if the cover was a the biscuit together they start developing the 20
biscuit that came with your espresso at machinery to manufacture it. Pilêo goes 21
the end of a meal? And what if the heat
into a on sale 10 months later.
of your coffee transformed the biscuit succulent
into a succulent mini-dessert? An Summer 2007 - Pilêo now accompanies
engineering school comes on board to
dessert after-dinner coffee in some of the best
help with the production design. Rouillard French restaurants. Devotees can buy it by
gets working on the recipe. the packet at the très chic Grande Epicerie de Paris.
Rouillard is putting the finishing touches to the rest of the
April 2004 - It’s settled. The biscuit is light, crispy, range, with special flavors designed for tea and hot
cone-shaped and lined with chocolate. After 45 chocolate. And soup: think savory biscuit lined with cream
seconds on top of your coffee, the chocolate starts of garlic. Hot drinks will never be the same again.

Stéphane Tartelin Pilêo

 What if your search engine guessed what you want?
How semantic research will revolutionize the online search experience
here can I buy some fine chocolates?”
“W “Can the new Britney video really be
any good?” Increasingly, we look for
answers online. But we often have
to wade through scores of irrelevant hits
before we find what we are looking for.
Yahoo built
We still put up with this at home or the the first
office, but nobody wants to spend long
minutes keying in words and browsing prototypes of
useless links on our handsets – let alone Knowledge
on the GPS/Internet terminals we’ll soon
have in our cars. Could we get our answers Search
quicker?
This is the question Yahoo! project director Gilles Vandelle
asked himself in 2006. With his R&D team in Grenoble,
he checked what various labs were up to, asked around.
They built the first prototypes of Knowledge Search. Then
Gilles went over to Sunnyvale, California, to present his
project at the Yahoo! head office.
“Nobody had asked us to do this; but when I showed the
proof-of-concept to our American bosses, they
immediately saw the potential and gave us full support,”
Vandelle says.
Laurent Cilluffo Ya h o o
With help from Yahoo’s London-based engineers, the
Grenoble team went ahead, exploring the semantic systems,
the networks of concepts we use in everyday language – and
especially online. Their goal is to identify the actual intention
behind each search query.
In the second quarter of 2008, a limited group
of users in the UK “bucket-tested” Knowledge
Search. Yahoo! wants the service to be an
immediate winner, because Internet users
are unlikely to give it a second chance.
22
With R&D spread out between several sites 23
in Europe, Asia and North America – as well
as external research institutes and private sector partners –
the project team relies on cutting-edge telecommunications,
especially videoconferencing. Two experiments are being
carried out in California? No problem, just flick on the
monitor and let the meeting begin.
But why did the project originate in France anyway? Vandelle
ventures an explanation. “We French like to talk. We bring
things together. In some countries, researchers are extremely
capable but tend to be over-specialized, digging the same
tunnel deeper and deeper. In our case, I always say that all
the ingredients were there, we just didn’t have the recipe.”
 What if
24
your tires w ore 25

b ack in again?
 What if your tires wore back in again?
How new rubber technology is extending tire life
magine you could turn back time. That instead of looking
I older, your face actually got younger with each passing
year. Eternal youth is usually a job for plastic surgeons,
but in France the world’s most famous tire company is
getting in on the act.
Welcome to a world where tires don’t wear
out anymore – they wear back in again.
Tire that
throws
Michelin’s XDN 2 GRIP is a tire that throws the
aging process into reverse. Thanks to a network the aging
of channels and grooves buried inside the process into
rubber, it recovers all the performance of a new
tire as soon as it’s worn down by two-thirds. reverse
When the hidden channels reach the surface, they open up
to form a brand-new set of treads. That means more grip,
better road-holding and extended tire lifetimes. Michelin
spent eight years developing the new product, but it seems
to have been time well spent: the company reckons it now
has a 20-year lead on the competition.
Thomas Cantoni Michelin
Although the new tire is only available for trucks, it’s
already making life easier for all road-users. Its improved
grip not only makes driving safer, it also frees up traffic
by enabling trucks to stay on the move in even the wettest
weather.
And as a fully recyclable technology, it’s good
news for the environment too : when the
treads do finally wear out, Michelin can
remold the rubber to make the tire as good
as new again.
26
Ever since it was launched in 2005, the XDN 27
2 GRIP has taken the market by storm.
Michelin is now extending the concept to its
full range of truck tires and will soon be applying it to its
passenger vehicle models.
For the tire industry, the quest for eternal youth seems to
have reached its goal. How long before they invent a version
for people too?
 What if your detergent was made in a garden?
How good for the environment can also be good for business
ean-Louis looked out of the window. A few paces
J away, a deer was chewing thoughtfully on a flowery
patch. In the background, a Romanesque church lay
nestled in a picturesque valley.
Not such an incredible sight in some secluded parts of
France, one may think. Except that Jean-Louis Desmedt
was sitting inside his fully operating
factory.
Europe’s first
The deer wasn’t deaf, though. Thanks to a industrial
careful choice of machinery, Ecover’s new
factory near Boulogne, on the North Sea
park to receive
coast, produces a level of noise easily covered an ISO 14001
by casual humming or the distant passing of
a car. certificate for
environmental
When it opened this second site in May 2007
in the landscaped Parc de Landacres, quality
Europe’s first industrial park to receive an
ISO 14001 certificate for environmental quality, the Belgian
maker of biodegradable detergents knew it was setting a
new standard in ecological production. A considerable
part of the construction budget was dedicated to
environmental friendliness.
From above, the factory looks like a meadow. Like its older
sister-plant in Malle, near Antwerp, the roof is planted
with a sturdy type of grass and provides excellent insulation.
Cleverly spaced openings let in enough daylight for the
Carine Brancowitz Ecover
workers below to switch off the lights in summer. Rainwater
is collected for use in the toilets.
Floor heating reduces gas consumption. When the new
solar panels are fitted, the factory will become entirely
energy self-sufficient for heating and lighting. But the
company’s main priority now is to install an
extra water treatment system.
“The industrial park’s communal water
treatment plant works just fine,” factory
manager Jean-Louis assures us. “But water 28
quality and marine life is in Ecover’s DNA, 29
so we want to go even further.”
But it’s not just the trendsetting eco-park
and the company’s strong ties with the
ocean that brought Ecover to Boulogne. The
location near the British and Belgian
markets was strategic. Skilled labor was readily available.
And the local authorities embraced the newcomers as
exactly the kind of innovators they wanted to build their
future on.
Overall, according to Jean-Louis’ estimates, producing
eco-friendly detergents in an eco-friendly way costs just
15% to 20% more than churning out toxic products. And
more and more consumers are willing to pay a premium
to do their part for the planet.
 What if your skin was evergreen?

How trees are helping people look younger

eople have gone to extraordinary lengths to make For L’Oréal, the question was how to coax the body into

P themselves look younger. Cleopatra bathed in ass’s

milk. According to the myth, Faust sold his soul to
the devil.

The French have made it rather more

The skin
producing more of these crucial molecules. The key link
in their molecular structure turns out to be xylose, the
sugar that makes trees grow.

By grafting xylose from beech trees onto a

convenient. L’Oréal has just created the actually
most effective weapon yet in the battle
against aging skin. It comes directly from
starts getting
nature. And there’s no cruelty to animals younger
or people involved.
again
L’Oréal’s chemists were trying to find a way
to stop skin sagging. Their research was focused on
the tissue that lies beneath the visible skin. This tissue
contains a gel held together by long molecules, which
nourishes the skin and keeps it in good condition.
As the body ages, the molecules disappear and the gel
disintegrates. And the skin literally starts to collapse.
protein that the skin can absorb, L’Oréal’s
researchers have come up with a product
that kick starts the regeneration process. The
skin actually starts getting younger again.
L’Oréal’s Pro-Xylane is as effective against wrin- 30
kles and dry patches as it is against sagging. 31
Produced according to the strictest green guidelines, it’s
available in three cosmetic ranges, with more applications
in the pipeline – L’Oréal is now exploring its potential as
a post-operative treatment in plastic surgery. Thanks to
the beech trees of France, growing old gracefully is within
reach of us all.

Stéphane Tartelin L’ O r é a l
 What if your doctor could read your mind?

How a breakthrough in molecular imaging opens new perspectives for brain research

t is the most complex and fascinating system in the coils, high-frequency electronic systems and software

I natural world: the human brain. Only an extraordinary

machine – like a giant, high-tech magnifying glass –
can hope to pry open its mysteries.

Since its beginnings in the 1980s, Magnetic

for data visualisation and analysis), while Alstom’s
building the magnet at the CEA’s site near Paris – with

Neurospin
help from Guerbet, Bruker BioSpin MRI and
the University of Fribourg. The magnetic
field will be enclosed in an “active casing”
Resonance Imaging (MRI) has revolutionized will help – a secondary magnetic counter-field.
medical diagnostics by revealing the inside
explain
of our bodies – without using radiation. But “This project could shape the way medical
why not increase the scanners’ magnetic neurological diagnostics are carried out in twenty years
field strength from 2 or 3 teslas currently time,” says Robert Krieg, head of the
to more than 10 teslas? That would multiply
diseases Development and Molecular Imaging 32
the image resolution by a factor of ten to a department of Siemens Medical Solutions. 33
few hundredths of a millimeter. Researchers could “And we want to be part of it.”
observe brain cells by groups of a few thousand, rather
than a million today. And they could map neural reactions In fact, Neurospin will be open to research teams from
to stimulus within a hundredth of a second, rather than all over the world wishing to study the brain, its
a second now. So why not build a bigger magnifying cognitive processes and pathologies. The scanner will
glass? reveal the molecular processes that occur sporadically
in the body. It will help explain neurological diseases
Because a magnetic field that strong would be like a high- – like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis
speed train crashing into a concrete wall. Hundreds of – and psychological ailments like depression and
tons of steel casing would not be enough to contain it. schizophrenia. Analyzing molecular deficiencies will
help create treatments that can be applied before
Yet when the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) symptoms even appear.
commissioned a feasibility study for an ultra high field
strength MRI system, in 2004, Siemens, the industry The new scanner will also tell us more about how the
leader in the field of imaging, took up the challenge. brain works: the functions of various groups of brain
cells and their relationship with particular genes
The 11.7 tesla scanner will be ready in 2011. Siemens expressed in the brain. We might finally find out what is
provides the system components (including gradient innate and what is learned!

Laurent Cilluffo Siemens

 What if you could be master of the sun?
How tungsten filaments and a 1.5v current are all the sunblock your car needs
rovence. 11.30 am. The temperature is pushing
P 30°C and the inside of the car is like an oven. You
reach for a button on the dashboard and send the
sunroof gliding through the tones from blazing
clarity to ice-cool darkness. The sun’s back outside where
it belongs. Driving through the south of France in summer
suddenly feels fun again.
Until recently, car windows only came in two And while
colors: clear and tinted. Designed by the
you stay
French glass manufacturer Saint-Gobain,
Sekurit’s electrochrome system now gives cool, you’re
you extremes and everything in-between.
helping to
Thanks to tungsten filaments and a 1.5V fight global
current, the high-tech windows lighten or
darken at the flick of a switch, allowing you warming
to choose precisely how much heat and light
you want to enter the vehicle. And while you stay cool,
you’re helping to fight global warming. Since the new
system reduces the need for air conditioning, it helps cut
fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
Roy and Farid Sa i n t- G o b a i n
If you drive a Ferrari Superamerica, you already know
how it feels to be able to choose how much sunshine
suits your mood. Launched at the Detroit Motor Show in
2005, the Superamerica was the first car in the world to
feature the revolutionary technology. The Italian
manufacturer has now launched another new model with
electrochrome sunblock as standard.
And what Ferrari does today, the rest of the
world does tomorrow. With the high-end
market convinced, Saint-Gobain Sekurit is
setting its sights on high volume 34
manufacturers like Toyota, Ford and 35
General Motors.
“Right now the product’s aimed at an elite,”
says Saint-Gobain’s Bruno Pouillart, “but
before long it will be as popular as the
sunroof.” So you’ll be able to drive through the south of
France in perfect comfort and know you’re doing your
bit to save the planet at the same time. Motoring holidays
will never be the same again.
 What if you could feel comfortable everywhere?
How chemical engineering led to a breakthrough in clothing
kin is a wonderful thing. To start with, it keeps our
S insides in – separate from all the nasty things
outside. It also feels, which is always useful and
sometimes pleasant. And the amazing list goes
on: skin breathes, keeps us warm or cool, and even has
amazing self-repair abilities. We were probably intended
Extremely rugged, this “softshell” textile can stretch in
to all live naked in the shade of the coconut
trees.
It’s
But since there are not enough coconuts to almost
go around, most people end up throwing
extra layers of pseudo-skin on for protection.
as amazing
Some of us even work in such hostile as skin
environments that they are always on the
lookout for better clothing to keep them safe itself
and comfortable.
Take Reinhold. He’s a ski instructor. Every winter season,
he goes through several expensive suits, wearing them
down until they are useless.
Or Valerie. She’s a forensic expert. She can’t contaminate
what she manipulates – and vice versa – but she suffocates
in her plastic protection suit.
That’s where Bluestar Silicones comes in. After years of
using silicon to protect buildings from the elements, the
company – formerly called Rhodia Silicones – thought of
using the material’s skin-like properties to make clothes.
Matthieu Roussel Bluestar Silicones
In 2003, it teamed up with mountain sportswear expert
Salomon and – after three years of development and trials
with outdoors professionals – created advantex™, the new
talk of the snowy slopes.
both directions, giving the wearer fantastic
ease of movement. It is fully waterproof but
breathable, getting the moisture out. It’s
almost as amazing as skin itself. Salomon’s
new advantex ™ ranges are increasingly
affordable; and the applications for 36
professional protective gear are still being 37
explored.
Why did the French think of it first? Louis
Vovelle, the company’s Worldwide R&D Director, thinks
he might know: “The technology that went into advantex ™
is very sophisticated. We have an excellent team of
chemical engineers and we work with dozens of highly
specialized suppliers and research partners. The region
around the French Alps is a fantastic breeding ground
for textile expertise.”
In fact, when China National BlueStar Corporation
purchased the company in 2007, the new shareholders in
Beijing confirmed Bluestar Silicones’ head office in France
and invested in the local production and research facilities
for the future…
 What if the depths of the ocean were
the best place to view the sky?
How an underwater telescope is revealing the cosmos
magine you wanted to know what was going on in the
I farthest reaches of the universe. What would you need ?
A radio-telescope ? A spaceship ? A close encounter of
the third kind ?
Not if you’re French, you wouldn’t. France’s Antares project
has just started telling us about galaxies so
distant that their light never reaches the
Earth. And Antares is doing it from two and
We can
a half kilometers beneath the surface of the gaze further the Earth, we should be able to locate the
Mediterranean.
into the
Instead of watching the skies, the French cosmos than
have installed a grid of hyper-sensitive light
sensors in the darkness of the ocean floor. ever before
It’s there to detect high-energy particles
called neutrinos, which originate in distant galaxies.
Neutrinos travel in dead-straight lines and are in such a
hurry that they pass straight through most objects. But
when they run into the Earth, they generate an electron
that gives off a faint blue light. With no daylight to spoil its
view, Antares detects these electrons as they emerge
from the planet’s surface and transfers its findings to a
base station on the coast 40 km away.
Jean-Michel Tixier Antarès
The system is designed to shed light on one of astronomy’s
greatest mysteries. Space is criss-crossed by cosmic rays,
which are thought to be produced in distant galaxies containing
black holes billions of times bigger than our sun.
We don’t know where these black holes are, but we do
know that some of the energy they spew out
takes the form of neutrinos. So by plotting
now the trajectories of the neutrinos that reach
places where the basic energy of the
universe is generated. 38
39
Thanks to Antares, we can now gaze further
into the cosmos than ever before. By
combining its findings with the data from a
US installation on the opposite side of the planet, scientists
are compiling the most detailed map of the universe that’s
ever existed.
And from 2012, an enlarged version of Antares will be
pushing the boundaries back even further. So you can
forget little green men and flashing lights in the sky. The
real visitors from outer space are blue and deep
underwater.
 What if creativity had a preferred location?

How a technology park attracts investors and inventors

hen Shoichiro Toyoda – chairman of Toyota ED2’s latest invention is a revolution in urban

W and grandson of the company’s founder –

visited Sophia Antipolis to gauge the wisdom
of opening a design studio there, his hosts
used a stratagem that competitors from less fortunate climes
must have felt was unfair. They hoisted him on a crane to
transportation. The iQ is the first four-seater to fit within
a tiny 3-meter frame. The designers saved space by
fitting the tank below the microcar and by also
redesigning or relocating mechanical parts. Sliding the
front passenger seat forward makes room for two
give him a good view of the surroundings. persons in the rear seat. The result is a
Toyota’s comfortable, energy efficient, hi-tech
Shoichiro took in the beauty of the French vehicle.
Riviera: the curves of the coastline, the dark design studio
blue sea, the hills and cliffs rising up to the in Sophia- But performance, safety and comfort are
Alps. The breeze was rich with the smell of not everything, as car stylists know full well. 40
pine trees. The whole landscape bathed in Antipolis “85% of people become personally involved 41
the crisp, deep light of the Mediterranean. when buying a car,” explains Michel Gardel,
He breathed deeply. “This, he thought, is a
is France’s president of Toyota France. “It’s like a
place for dreaming… For creating beauty.” answer to second skin.”

He was not disappointed. Toyota’s ED2

the Silicon
design studio in Sophia-Antipolis – France’s Valley
answer to the Silicon Valley – only opened
in 2000, but has already left an indelible mark in the
automotive industry.
Among other new cars and upgrades, in 2005 the team
restyled the bestselling Yaris subcompact – a car
produced at Toyota’s French factory in Valenciennes. The
racy yet friendly-looking Lexus SC 430 convertible was
born here. ED2 also completely redesigned the legendary
Land Cruiser for its current generation in 2003.
ED2’s job is to make the cars appealing as
well as functional. The iQ’s contemporary
silhouette, for instance, has a distinctive
presence on the street. Its large windscreen and side
windows give a sense of space. It’s a car designed to
make its owner proud.
So who are the people behind these bold style statements ?
Toyota recruited 20 designers from ten countries –
graduates of the top design schools in the USA, the UK,
Germany, Italy and Japan. And how did the company lure
them to this tough location? That’s anyone’s guess.

Matthieu Roussel Toyota

 What if a g ood
nig ht’s sl eep coul d 42
43
come at the touch
of a b utton?
 What if a good night’s sleep could come
at the touch of a button?

How a chance encounter is finally bringing rest to the weary

eter wakes up feeling exhausted. He often has a Weighing in at just over a pound, Kaerys’s KXS device is

P headache too. His wife Sally sleeps in the guest

room because she can’t put up with his snoring.
He has trouble remembering things and falls
asleep whenever he sits down in a chair.
four times lighter than its nearest rival. And it’s not just
smaller than the competition.

If he has an important meeting at work, he
tries to pop out to the car for a nap beforehand
to avoid making a fool of himself. Sometimes
he nods off at the wheel when he’s waiting
for the lights to change.
in real time
Peter suffers from obstructive sleep apnea,
a condition in which patients are woken by
air at exactly
constricted breathing hundreds of times
each night.
Until recently, treatment meant sleeping in
a room kitted out with unwieldy breathing apparatus.
But since 2005 – when the French company Kaerys
launched a unique miniature solution – sufferers
have been able to opt for something resembling a
normal life.
Sleepers’
It’s the only model on the market to operate
with a battery pack, allowing patients to use
breathing it literally anywhere. Its software and
turbines – developed and manufactured
is analysed in-house – analyze sleepers’ breathing in
real time to deliver air at exactly the right
pressure whenever it’s required. And - unlike
to deliver the competition - they’re silent too. 44
45
For sufferers and their families, that’s a
the right powerful set of arguments. Based in the Côte
d’Azur region, Kaerys has already attracted
pressure 10% of the French market and distributes the
KXS in Asia and throughout Europe.
The company has now set its sights on America. Its
target: to become the US market leader in the next four
years. That might sound presumptuous for a small
French company. But then after a good night’s sleep,
anything’s possible.

Stéphane Tartelin Kaerys

 What if commuting was pleasant?
How next-generation people-movers change the travel experience
ommuter and subway trains: they’re the lifelines
C of our cities. They take millions of people to their
destinations every day. Without them our
metropolitan areas – the beating hearts of the
global economy – would come to a stop.
The benefits are very clear. Removing the driver can reduce
operational costs by more than 30%. Even single-carriage
So everybody loves the trains, right? Right.
Except when they are late. Or overcrowded. Nobody
Or stuffy. Or noisy. Or unsafe. Or overpriced.
Or a combination of the above.
thinks twice
any more
It was almost three decades ago when
Siemens Transportation Systems first about taking
presented its vision of a clean city where a driverless
people glide smoothly around in pleasant
carriages and are never late. One detail train
caused an outcry. “No driver! How could such
a train be safe?”
Still, the first fully automated metro was inaugurated in
Lille in 1983. Two billion passengers and eleven cities later,
from Toulouse to Seoul and from Turin to Chicago, not a
single system-related incident has been reported. Nobody
thinks twice any more about taking a driverless train.
Yet they are well worth a thought. Building on the initial
success, Siemens made its French sites of Paris and Lille
the company’s global center of expertise for transport
automation. In partnership with Lohr Industries, a
Laurent Cilluffo Siemens
transport and logistics expert based in Alsace, Siemens
is now introducing the new generation of people movers,
Neoval.
shuttles are viable – perfect for whisking
people between airport terminals.
On more heavily used routes, Neoval’s
clockwork punctuality allows trains to slide
into station more frequently. A fleet of six- 46
carriage trains can take 600 passengers per 47
minute in both directions.
600 relaxed passengers, that is. Lohr
Industries designed Neoval’s carriages as
a new experience in short-distance travel. They are
spacious and air-conditioned, with panoramic windows.
The rubber tires keep the ride smooth and quiet – to the
delight of both passengers and local residents. CCTV and
real-time travel information – for instance on flight
departures – puts minds at ease.
The lightweight Neoval is also kind to the environment.
Its advanced electronics recapture 40% of the train’s
kinetic energy during braking, considerably reducing
energy consumption. And when their tour of duty is done,
the trains are even fully recyclable!
 What if no one had to be scared
of injections ever again?
How airbag technology is bringing patients peace of mind
magine if having an injection threw you into a panic. If
I every time you saw a syringe, you completely lost control.
Imagine if it stopped you having essential treatments.
And that you might not be able to go through with having
an injection, even if your life was at stake.
Crossject
For one person in four, needle phobia is a
terrifying reality. A new system could soon be has developed
calming their fears.
a needle-free,
Using the same technology as the airbags in pre-filled,
your car, a French firm based in Paris called
Crossject has developed a needle-free, pre-
single use
filled, single-use injector that does away with injector
the traditional syringe for ever.
Airbags inflate using sophisticated compounds called
energetic materials. Tiny amounts of energetic materials
can generate significant volumes of pressurized gas.
Crossject uses this gas to drive liquid medicine through
the skin at high speed, via tiny holes in the injector’s nozzle.
Unlike other needle-free systems, it’s silent, user-friendly
and extremely quick. And it’s not just aimed at needle phobia.
With no used needles to be disposed of, there’s no risk of
Stéphane Tartelin Crossject
contamination for hospital staff and health workers. It could
also help reduce the risk of injection-related diseases, such
as HIV/AIDS and hepatitis, since the injector is a single-use
device.
And because the injector only activates when
correctly positioned, you don’t have to be a
health professional to use it.
So mass vaccinations could be carried out in
places where medical staff are thin on the
ground, while patients who need regular 48
injections can treat themselves safely at home. 49
With 17 billion injections performed
worldwide each year, the potential market is huge. And
it’s getting bigger: most of the innovative treatments
created by bio-technology can only be injected.
Crossject is developing specific applications with
pharmaceutical firms in Europe and the US, with the first
products scheduled to hit the market in 2009. For everyone
who goes queasy at the sight of a needle, it couldn’t happen
soon enough.
 What if your time machine looked
like an ordinary fridge?

How a team of engineers took a seemingly simple idea and made it actually look simple

ave you ever thought of baking your own ESG – found a way. The ready-to-use USB Memory Key

H croissants? It takes a bit of savoir-faire. Even

once you’ve made the notoriously difficult puff
pastry and rolled it into the dainty little crescents,
you’re not done. You will need to change the
oven’s temperature and fan settings several
A simple
Bridge appeared in 2006 and is already a hit in a dozen
countries in Europe and around the world.

Dissecting this multipurpose gateway to

times to get that unique crispy-yet-melty
effect.
On the other hand, if you fitted a couple of USB
ports onto your oven and stuck in a memory
key in with the recipe on it, it would be dead
easy, wouldn’t it. Ludicrous?
A bad joke?
Créalie’s engineers didn’t find it very funny in 2004 when
several of their clients asked for exactly that: a simple
interface to share data with machines. And the more they
looked into it, the less they laughed.
At first, they didn’t even think it was possible. Electronic
devices aren’t computers. They simply don’t have the
memory and processing capability to host peripherals. It
would be like asking your kid to tow the mobile home with
his tricycle. Against all odds, Créalie – an embedded
software design house and a subsidiary of German group
reveal its inner workings would make Swiss
watch-making look like a primitive craft. But
interface unlike its technology, the success of this little
contraption is easy to explain: it enables
to share machines to communicate.
data with
Machine operators love it. They no longer 50
machines have to stand by and punch all the right 51
buttons at the right time. Bakers don’t have
to tweak the knobs constantly. They can plug a keyboard
or USB key into their oven – and take a coffee break.
The Memory Key Bridge also makes monitoring and
traceability much easier. During open-heart surgery, for
instance, all the data relative to the operation is stored on
a USB key. Railway builders use it to monitor the automatic
welding of rails. And industrial weighing has become a
lot quicker too.
Sometimes it takes a lot of brainpower to make something
very simple.

Carine Brancowitz Créalie

 What if your car was driven by
an environment-friendly robot?

How saving the planet is putting machines in the driving seat

ow many of your best driving memories involve True automatic gearboxes have long been recognized as

H something French? The first time you saw a

Citroën DS for instance.

Bowling along one of those sun drenched country roads

lined with plane trees. Brigitte Bardot in a
gas guzzlers. But regardless of what drivers might like to
think, PSA has discovered that a machine can actually handle
a manual gearbox more effectively than a human being.

By shifting more often to the higher gears

red convertible. Stopping for lunch at a “Les Robot
Routiers” on the way down to the Riviera.
changes
These days, the car industry is in the midst the gears
of a green revolution. Under the terms of an
agreement struck with the EU, European car instead of
manufacturers have committed to drastic
the driver
reductions in their cars’ average CO 2
emissions by 2008.
that consume less fuel, the MCP cuts average
fuel consumption by 5%, with even greater
gains in built-up areas.
“Drivers usually spend more time in the
lower gears because they can’t be bothered 52
to shift so often,” says Malvache. “But the 53
MCP’s a machine. It doesn’t care how often
it has to change gear.”

To reach the targets, fuel consumptions must fall to over
17km per liter. Does that mean taking the fun out of
driving? Not if the French have anything to do with it.
PSA’s response to climate change is the piloted compact
mechanical gearbox – or MCP. “It’s all about reducing
fuel consumption,” explains PSA engineer Jean Malvache.
“We’ve taken a manual gearbox and fitted a robot to change
the gears instead of the driver.”
With no gear lever or clutch pedal to worry about, you’re
free to sit back and enjoy the ride. If you want to get
more involved, you can make clutchless shifts using
Formula One-style paddles on the steering column.
And in automatic mode, the system’s lightening-quick
gear changes produce a seat-hugging sense of
acceleration. Thanks to the French, it looks like the
thrills of motoring and saving the planet might just be
compatible after all.

Jean-Michel Tixier PSA

 What if distance still mattered?
How a leader of remote communication set up shop in the middle of it all
hese days, you can sit your teenage son down,
T stare him in the eye, and explain a few truths about
bicycle helmets, bedtime, and the value of
scholastic effort – without being in the same room
or even city. Then you can make up by playing a 3D game
or sharing some pictures.
Every year, the little devices we used to call
They help us
mobile phones come up with new surprises.
They have already become respectable digital work, play,
cameras and are fast becoming reasonable
video cameras. They can guide us to the nearest
share and
petrol station or flower shop. They show us the relax to
latest blockbuster in high definition. They give
us broadband access to music stored on the our heart’s
Internet or our home computers. They help us content
work, play, share and relax to our heart’s
content.
Until the battery runs out. All these extra things we do
require our phones to work harder. And while the processing
power of their tiny computers doubles every two years, the
batteries’ storage capacity inches painfully ahead. After a
few hours of 3G surfing, they are sure to die on us. Naturally,
industry labs around the world are working overtime to tackle
this barrier to development. Mobile multimedia leader
STMicroelectronics – supplier among others of Motorola,
Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson – has good reason to
push ahead. And it’s in France that the group’s engineers
made a major power-saving breakthrough.
Thomas Cantoni ST Microelectronics
Designed and developed in STMicroelectronics’ lab in
Grenoble, the Nomadik platform deals with electricity
consumption right where it happens: in the processor’s
core. Instead of handling all information simultaneously,
Nomadik has separate accelerators for audio, video,
graphics and other data. Called “parallel computing”,
this approach saves up to a third of the
energy.
And is there any particular reason that the
global semiconductor leader, with design
and manufacturing facilities on four 54
continents, developed this groundbreaking 55
platform in France? Plenty of good reasons,
says Patrice Meilland, Business Development
VP for ST’s mobile communication division.
“Our two largest European sites – with a total
of 7,500 people of which half are engineers – are located
miles apart in Grenoble and Crolles. And it’s no coincidence:
the area is Europe’s Silicon Valley. With top universities,
fundamental research center, start-ups and industry labs
covering the entire nanotechnology production chain, it’s
a fantastic breeding ground for innovation. To put it bluntly,
we couldn’t have done it somewhere else.”
And how do they get so many engineers in one place?
“Have you been to these parts? Beautiful mountains, a
modern city, excellent living standards: people are quite
happy to relocate here.”
 What if your glasses could see things
from your unique point of view?

How one man’s 50-year-old brainwave brought neuroscience to the optician’s

951. Something is bothering Bernard Maitenaz, a Essilor, the manufacturer, now involves wearers in the

1 25-year-old French research engineer with the

Paris spectacle lens manufacturer La Société des
Lunetiers. The ophthalmic profession has two ways
of treating long-sightedness: reading glasses and bifocals.
To Maitenaz, that just doesn’t feel right.
“Why correct a continuous process with a
A constant
barbaric system that breaks up the field of
vision,” he asks anyone who will listen at the interaction
lens manufacturer where he works. “There has
to be a progressive solution.” Alone at home,
between
he starts trying to find it. lenses, eyes
1956. Maitenaz realizes that for his
progressive lens to work, it’s going to have and brain
to make a clean break with lens-making
tradition. Ordinary spectacle lenses are spherical. But a
progressive lens is irregular, with its progressive quality
produced by a matrix of tiny projections and hollows that
covers its surface. Armed with a slide rule, Maitenaz set
about calculating the height of each point on the surface
of the lens individually.
1959. After eight years of development, the first Varilux
lenses go on sale at the company’s tiny workshop in Paris’
Marais district. The ophthalmic profession thinks Maitenaz
is crazy. Customers are skeptical and rival lens
manufacturers are up in arms. Yet over the next decade,
Varilux slowly becomes the industry standard.
development process, via something akin to clinical tests
in the pharmaceutical industry. On Physio - the latest
Varilux - the front and the back of the lens are both
sculpted, using a technique called digital surfacing. The
new method produces lenses one at a time, allowing for
a far more individualized approach.
“We now know there’s a constant interaction
between the lens, the eye and the brain,”
Maitenaz explains. “The ideal Varilux won’t
be the same for two different people, because 56
they’ll have different behavior patterns and 57
different brain reaction times.”
So in future, opticians won’t just measure
your eyesight. They’ll also determine which behavioral
and neurological parameters are most relevant to you as
a wearer.
Half a century after Maitenaz dreamed up the progressive
lens, over 1 billion of them have been sold worldwide. These
days, Essilor has an army of researchers working to ensure
that the next generation is as revolutionary as its
predecessors. “In 1959, a journalist asked me if I thought
we could improve the product,” Maitenaz remembers. “I
said yes, but I never imagined it would develop to the point
where it is today. It just goes to show that the future really
is limitless.”

Roy and Farid Essilor

 What if more cars could afford to be cleaner?
How faith in quality engineering cut both costs and emissions
limate change. Melting icecaps. Fingers get
C pointed. Resolutions are voted. Engineers go
back to the drawing board.
New EU regulations require all cars made in
Europe to cut their carbon emissions by 25% by 2015 – at
125g per kilometer. When they heard the
news, diesel engine makers rubbed their
hands: diesel produces less CO 2 per
Less emission,
kilometer than gasoline. Still, even diesel less noise,
carmakers are working to meet the ever
more stringent emissions legislation.
and more
performance
It’s not just a matter of technology. The
challenge is also to control costs and keep cars affordable.
In order to help diesel car manufacturers face these
challenges, Delphi is offering its common rail injection
system, which has already been fitted into many vehicles
from all around the world.
From the beginning, Delphi stood out from the competition
by taking major technological leaps only when the benefits
were substantial. Its engineers in Blois, in the Loire valley,
focused on perfecting proven technologies.
They developed the Delphi Multec™ Diesel Common Rail
System. Production of the first injector version, with a
1,400 bars injection pressure, started in Blois and La
Rochelle in 2000. The company then worked with French
Matthieu Roussel Delphi
labs and universities to upgrade the knowledge in materials,
electronic control, fuels and combustion, allowing an
increase of the system pressure to 1,600 bars in 2004 and
1,800 bars in 2007. A thousand times the pressure in a car
tire! To withstand this extreme stress, the parts must be
engineered and manufactured to microscopic perfection,
in dust-free white rooms.
Delphi’s software spurts the fuel into the
cylinders up to five times in the millisecond
of the motor’s cycle, just at the right moment.
This ensures the combustion is more 58
complete – with less emission, less noise, 59
and more performance.
But why did the Michigan-based equipment supplier
entrust its diesel engine innovation to a French plant and
Technical Center anyway? Philippe Bercher, Diesel
Deputy Engineering Director, ventures an explanation.
“France is a country of science. A great place to recruit
engineers.”
R&D cooperation is also a key advantage for Delphi. “We
use the knowledge produced by the French labs and
universities and participate in the competitive clusters set
up by the government,” Philippe Bercher adds. Delphi
also benefited from the French research tax credit, which
enabled the company to extend its R&D activities – for
example by expanding the Technical Center in Blois.
 What if
60
b uil dings reacted 61

to l ig ht?
 What if buildings reacted to light?
How a would-be painter is making architecture cool
ean Nouvel didn’t want to be an architect. He set
J out to be a painter and got as far as the art school
in Bordeaux. But his parents weren’t so enthusiastic
about his chosen career. Nouvel ended up opting
for architecture instead, but never completely abandoned
his artistic vocation. Today he’s established an international
reputation for combining practical solutions
with unique visual flair.
The
Nouvel became a household name in 1987, practical
with his design for the Institute of the Arab
World in Paris. The building features and the
expanses of plate glass lined with metal, its
aesthetic
surface punctured by geometric designs. So
far, so oriental: screened balconies – or come hand
moucharabies – are vernacular features of
Arab architecture, designed to shield interiors
in hand
from the harsh Middle Eastern sun. But
Nouvel’s arabesques are light-sensitive.
Each one is an individually reactive iris, opening and
closing in response to the weather and controlling how
much light enters the building. Unlike much glass and
steel modernism, the Arab World Institute remains an
oasis of cool in even the brightest sunshine.
Fierce sun is even more of a problem in Barcelona than
it is on the banks of the Seine. So when he won the bid
Roy and Farid Jean Nouvel
to build a new headquarters for the city’s water company,
Nouvel took his self-cooling building concept one step
further. The 31-storey Torre Agbar uses a huge concrete
wall coated with colored aluminum panels as a shield
against the Mediterranean sun.
An external façade of moving glass blinds
forms a thermal buffer zone, with hot air
rising to be evacuated through vents in the
tower’s massive glass dome. By encouraging
natural ventilation, the energy-efficient
design reduces the need for air-conditioning. 62
Because the tower’s concrete shell retains 63
warmth, it saves on heating in winter too.
But as always with Nouvel, the practical and
the aesthetic come hand in hand. The Torre
Agbar’s translucent glass skin doesn’t just
cool things down: it endows the hulking concrete structure
with something close to weightlessness.
After dark, the tower seems to float in the air, as thousands
of lights installed beneath the glass by lighting designer
Yann Kersalé illuminate its colored panels, sending a
shimmering column of orange, pink, blue and red soaring
up into the Barcelona night. He may have made his name
as an architect, but the artist inside Jean Nouvel is still
alive and well and living in France.
 What if we could turn waste into something precious?
How a chemical plant took an environmental headache and created an opportunity
ally’s no eco-warrior, but like most people she would
S like to reduce her carbon footprint. That’s why she
switched to biodiesel: at least the carbon in her
exhaust fumes was captured by plants
from the air in the previous year or two.
A process
But Sally’s not so comfortable with the
biodiesel thing anymore. She read an article
which
about the glycerol glut: an icky by-product transforms
nobody knows how to dispose of. Each tank
full of biodiesel leaves several litres of
the “useless”
glycerol. Not so good… by-product
Meanwhile, Harry is scratching his head too. into a versatile
His sailboat building business is not doing chemical
so well. The main problem is the cost of
materials. Take the epoxy resins, which he
mixes with glass to make the super-resistant hulls of his
boats. Like all hydrocarbon products, their price soared
as crude oil shot through the ceiling.
Fortunately for Sally and Harry, a company has come along
to solve two problems with a single technology. Belgian
group Solvay invented a new process, dubbed Epicerol®,
which transforms the “useless” by-product into a versatile
chemical called epichlorohydrin.
This new renewable substance can replace its oil-based
predecessors at a fraction of the cost. And to make things
Carine Brancowitz Solvay
better, its production requires much less water and
involves less chlorinated waste.
It’s the main ingredient in the epoxy resins
used to make glue, paints, adhesives and
anything from ski boots to wind turbine
rotor blades, small airplane fuselages
and… the hulls of sailboats.
When Solvay first noted glycerol’s potential,
the company looked for the best place to
investigate. The Tavaux plant, at the foot 64
of the Jura mountains (Eastern France), 65
got the top grade: it had the technological
experience and the ability to conduct
small-scale trials. It could also win support
from the French government, keen to find
a way out of the glut and ready to offer funds to early
movers.
Solvay’s project got the funding and kicked off at the
Tavaux lab in 2005. Within a year the Epicerol® process
was approved by the Board, and in April 2007 a pilot
unit of 10,000 metric tons per year started operating
to test industrial and commercial feasibility.
The trial was conclusive indeed: Solvay is now building
a ten times larger plant in Thailand to address Asia’s
huge demand for epoxy resins.
 What if a sunlamp was all the disinfectant you need?

How UV light is making water germ-free

ack in 1999, Benoit Gillman heard about a gadget To purify water, Bio UV pumps it through a “reactor”: a

B invented in someone’s garage. It was supposed to

do away with using chlorine to disinfect the water in
swimming pools.

The garage was just across town and Gillman

length of pipe fitted with a high-power lamp like a neon
tube. The lamp emits ultra-violet light at levels that
penetrate the DNA of any micro-organisms in the water,
destroying them completely.

had a pool himself, so he decided to take a A unique For users, that means safe water with no
closer look. A year later, he’d given up his taste or smell, and with no irritation to eyes,
job in the medical equipment business to chemical-free nose or lungs. And with no chemicals in the
devote himself to the new system. “I was disinfection water, there’s no risk of pollution to the
completely won over,” he smiles. “I just environment either. Those benefits have
thought this thing should be available system already established Bio UV as the leader in 66
everywhere.” its field, recognized by public health 67
Unlike any other swimming pool system, the device that authorities across Europe.
Gillman found in the garage used ultra-violet light instead
of chemicals to kill germs in the water. But the system’s potential applications extend way beyond
swimming pools. Bio UV is also providing green-friendly
Gillman bought the rights to the invention and started his water purification for fish farms and aquariums, air-
own company in Southern France – Bio UV – to develop conditioning systems and sewage treatment.
it. The commercial version is now installed in over 7,000
public and private swimming pools across Europe. And it’s now working on a reactor that could bring clean
drinking water to some of the one billion people across the
And Bio UV recently opened a subsidiary in Los Angeles planet who don’t have proper access to it. So next time a
that is bringing its unique chemical-free disinfection Frenchman invites you to look round his garage, it could be
system to US pools too. worth taking a look. You never know what you might find.

Stéphane Tartelin BIO UV

 What if the next superfood was growing
just across the road?

How one man’s inspiration created a new product from an old ingredient

n a deserted country road, a lonely figure stands of research. ANVAR lent the money to build a pilot plant,

O near his car. He looks out over the amber

fields. The summer breeze sends golden
ripples through the ripe, heavy grain.

He sighs. The banker didn’t believe him. He even looked

amused. “So, Mr. Crapez, you want people to eat wheat?
Plain wheat?”
Some people don’t recognize a brilliant idea
when you hand it to them on a silver platter.
Sure, we’ve been grinding wheat before
eating it for ten thousand years. But now we
developed the technology and tested it for
three years at a specialized lab of INRA’s in
Montpellier, the prestigious French National
Institute for Agricultural Research.
only demanding repayment if the venture was successful.
“They kept sending our application back with annotations,”
Mr. Crapez remembers. “It forced us to ask ourselves
all the right questions, from equipment to business
model to marketing.”
The pilot plant was built, then a factory, and the loan was
repaid. The first product, 20-minute tender wheat Ebly,
arrived in supermarkets in 1995 and became
A the talk of the town. By 2000, Mars, Inc.
offered to invest, seeing potential synergies 68
revolution with Uncle Ben’s rice. The deal was done, and 69
Agralys worked with Mars’ R&D lab in Olen,
in our Belgium to develop 10-minute Ebly. In 2004,
plates this cooperation also spawned Ebly in
microwavable pouches.

We perfected it with the flavor experts at the Ensia lab
near Paris. We can produce a tasty whole grain wheat
product that people can just pop in a pot for a few minutes
and eat like a vegetable.
Those were the years of struggle and perseverance, back
in the eighties. At the end of 2007, Guy Crapez retired a proud
man, the inventor of Ebly: a revolution in our plates.
The lucky break came in 1991, when Mr. Crapez and his
farmers’ cooperative Agralys applied for a loan from
ANVAR – the French national agency for the application
Ebly now has its fans not only in France, but in Belgium,
Germany, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. And yet, to this
day, the brand sources its high-quality durum wheat,
packed with protein and fiber, entirely from a 35-kilometer
radius around its plant in Châteaudun, in the rich farmlands
of the Beauce region.
When he looks at the product of his labor, the box of Ebly
waiting in his kitchen cupboard for a quick dinner, Mr.
Crapez still marvels at the simplicity of it. Such a versatile,
easy-to-use, healthy and above all yummy food, waiting
centuries to be discovered…

Thomas Cantoni E b ly
 What if the best farming advice came from space?

How satellites are helping to bring in the harvest

ooking after a baby is pretty straightforward. When Farmstar uses a network of observation satellites, each

L they cry, you know there’s something you should be

doing. Plants are more complicated. If you’re an
amateur gardener, working out their
needs can be part of the fun.
precise enough to see inside individual fields. By observing
different parts of the spectrum, they can tell how much

Farmstar
of the sun’s energy is being absorbed by a
given crop.

But for farmers, it’s a stressful business tells the Sophisticated software then converts that
where mistakes mean loss of earnings. information into a snapshot of the plants’
fields what
Imagine how much easier things would be health and state of development. Subscribers
if plants could speak for themselves. needs doing receive regular updates for each of their fields,
In France, a new system called Farmstar, telling them exactly which zones need looking
designed by satellite specialist Infoterra, is
and when after. The age-old business of farming just 70
keeping farmers informed about their crops’ to do it entered the space age. 71
inner feelings. By keeping an electronic eye
trained on subscribers’ fields 24 hours a day, Farmstar It’s not just about keeping the plants happy. Farmstar
tells them what needs doing and when to do it. offers farmers improved harvests and – by eliminating
waste - substantial savings too. Ten thousand of them
Plants receive water, fertilizers and treatments in already use the service in France, and they’re being
exactly the quantities they require – no more, no less. joined by colleagues from the rest of Europe, Asia and
By eliminating waste, it saves farmers money. And with America. Having a satellite keep an eye on your crops
no excess products to pollute the environment, it’s good certainly takes the stress out of farming. If only they
news for nature too. did the same thing for kids.

Jean-Michel Tixier Infoterra

 What if your roof leaked energy – inwards?

How a new generation of solar panels is turning houses into power plants

he scene takes place in 2215, in a classroom. It without government support. Japan, the global leader in

T has two versions. In the first, when the teacher

asks: “And what do you know about the 21st
century?”, her shivering pupils answer in unison:
“It’s when they used up all the oil!” And clever Johnny
adds: “That’s why we have to live in the subway.”
solar power, stopped subsidizing it in 2005.

And there’s more. Older solar panels used fluoride resins

to protect the cells. After 25 years or so of honorable work,
these toxic coatings end up in the landfill or incinerator.
Fortunately, Japanese chemical pioneer
The second version is nicer. The classroom Increasingly, Toray found the solution. Its backsheets for
is not in a damp tunnel littered with the solar panels use polyester, leaving no nasty
debris of another age, but in an airy, well-lit
solar energy waste to deal with when they have finished
room – and the children all look healthy. They is becoming their tour of duty.
answer: “It’s when the people of all countries 72
agreed to work together to solve their attractive Toray’s plastics plant near Lyon is located in 73
problems and stop destroying the planet.” the Tenerrdis energy cluster, a European
network of leading energy players and research facilities.
Though inertia and short-sightedness seem to draw us Members such as the French Atomic Energy Commission,
in the wrong direction, many bright people are working to the CNRS public research network and EDF work on
make the second scenario come true. Every day, engineers fundamental research, while others focus on product
invent alternatives that only require popular and political innovation and production.
support to make the difference.
Together, they plan to offer every European house the
Solar panels appeared about 25 years ago. In 2005, they opportunity to cover up to a third of its energy needs with
accounted for 1% of global energy production. But the solar energy – and sell any excess back on the grid.
installed capacity has been doubling every year and the
ratio could reach 10% by 2020. As production increases, With enough brains eager to do something right, there’s
economies of scale kick in and the panels become cheaper. still a chance the great grandchildren of our great
Increasingly, solar energy is becoming attractive even grandchildren will take pride in our generation.

Matthieu Roussel Toray

 What if ecology was a veterinary science?

Why what’s good for livestock is good for the planet

t low tide, the beach outside Hervé Demais’ trying to find a natural polymer to use instead. Looking

A laboratory window is covered with pale green

weed. The mysterious seaweed has triggered
an environmental panic here in Brittany, ever
since it appeared out of nowhere to choke the region’s
coastal waters.
out at the beach, the green weed catches his attention.
Seaweed – still largely off-limits for science – contains
substances that can’t be found on dry land. During the
next low tide, Demais is down by the waterline collecting
samples.

Demais gazes out at the beach as he ponders Olmix’s Back in the lab, Demais’ hunch pays off.
the job at hand. He is a vet working for Olmix, The much-maligned weed yields a polymer
a company which specializes in organic green-friendly that can increase the space between layers
supplements for animal feed. Today, he’s by a factor of ten. Demais calls his new
philosophy
trying to find a way to rid feeds of mycotoxins: material Amadeite. Added to feed, it 74
poisonous fungi that can kill animals at is based on successfully absorbs all mycotoxins and 75
doses of a few parts per billion. And the even makes animals grow faster, by
answer is staring him in the face.
using nothing breaking down nutrients so they can be
Demais’ research is focused on a special but organic absorbed more effectively. And because
kind of clay. The clay – called Montmorillonite it’s made of natural raw materials – with
– is made up of very thin layers held together materials only water used as a solvent – it comes with
by a static charge. When mycotoxins enter an ecological guarantee.
the space between the layers, they are trapped and
neutralized by the electricity. But there’s a problem: the But that’s just the beginning. Demais discovers that he
layers are so close together that only the smallest can now separate the individual layers of clay to form
mycotoxins can get inside. Demais needs to find a way to nanoparticles, which can then be used to make a
push the layers further apart. bioplastic that’s as strong as synthetic alternatives. And
because it’s fully recyclable and biodegradable too, it’s
Up to now, that has been done by using synthetic a plastic that carries no risk for the natural environment.
polymers to act as pillars between the minute layers of All of a sudden, that seaweed on the beach outside looks
clay. But Olmix’s green-friendly philosophy is based a lot less menacing. In five short years, it’s gone from
on using nothing but organic materials. So Demais is being a problem to becoming part of the solution.

Roy and Farid Olmix

 What if you could take this train anywhere?

How a bi-mode engine made all stations accessible to a single train

ou are off to Burgundy for a little gastronomic Up to 250 people set to work at Bombardier Transport’s

Y exploration. But just as you doze off, dreaming

pleasantly of the coq au vin awaiting you in
Auxerre, it’s time to get off your all-electric train
and wait for a diesel-powered connection.
site in Crespin, the largest French industrial rail site with
about 2,000 employees, in the north of France. In less than
three years, the AGC bibi was ready, tested and authorized.

It’s very
But things are changing: thanks to a world
first in rail technology, this stopover is
much a
gradually being phased out and will soon be customer
history. France’s 22 administrative regions
– in charge of organizing regional transport pull story,
– have already ordered 700 of Bombardier’s not a
AGC, including over 130 new dual mode
trains, the AGC bibi. It can go everywhere. technology
It rides both France’s 1,500V and 20,000V
tracks and switches over to diesel where
push
the route is not electrified.
“It’s very much a customer pull story, not a technology
push,” says Bombardier Transport’s CEO in France, Jean
Bergé. “In fact, our engineers were rather skeptical about
the project’s relevance.”
For years, communities in France and elsewhere complained
about noisy, smelly local diesel trains choking up their
stations while they wait for mainline passengers. Presidents
of Regions pressed for a cleaner option and – in 2001 –
France’s national train operator SNCF issued a call to tender
for a new generation of regional trains. So Bombardier
proposed a train family including a hybrid train.
A record for a new type of train. “We used to
test trains on the tracks for a couple of
years,” Bergé remembers. “Now a big part
of our work is the reliability trials, using tools
and expertise adapted from our global
aeronautics business.”
The dual-mode train saves rail operators 76
from maintaining two separate reserve 77
fleets: one for electrified and one for diesel
routes. But it’s another benefit that has
captured the public’s attention: the bibi is
eco-friendly. At the high output levels of a
locomotive, generating electricity on board is more fuel-
efficient than using diesel to power a hydraulic engine.
On a trip from Paris to Provins, for which 40% of the line
is electrified, the Hybrid AGC generates 52% less CO2
than former locomotives. And the direct trains on certain
lines will of course encourage more people to go by rail
– the most environmentally friendly method of
transport.
Bombardier Transport has no plans to outsource, Bergé
says. “Train production is difficult to automate; it’s like
industrial craftsmanship. Every part requires a huge level
of skill, not necessarily available in another country.”

Thomas Cantoni Bombardier

 What if lenses were liquid?
How water droplets are making cameras more human
runo Berge isn’t your average boss. In the
B early 90’s he was a research scientist, exploring
a little-known branch of physics in a Grenoble
University lab. And then - one day in 1995 - he
stumbled on a technique that has
transformed the camera inside your
mobile phone. His research was about to The liquid
lead him in an unexpected direction.
lenses:
Berge’s lab work centered on electrowetting,
miniature
a technique that uses electricity to alter the
shape of a drop of liquid: “I discovered a new dimensions
way of doing it,” he recalls. “The only problem
was, I had no idea what it could be used for.”
and high image
quality
He began by looking at bio-tech. Imagine using
electricity to move droplets of blood around
zones on a silicon chip, where various tests can be carried
out. Berge was ahead of the game. That idea is now a reality,
although his preliminary research was unsuccessful.
Instead, he turned his attention to the field of optics. Inspired
by the way the eye works, Berge thought that changing the
shape of a liquid droplet could be a way of making a variable
focus lens. In the human eye, the lens changes shape to
focus on objects which are near or far away.
Jean-Michel Tixier Va r i o p t i c
In 1995, Berge set about using his electrowetting technique
to make a drop of liquid do the same thing. “I wasn’t very
optimistic,” he says today. “But it actually worked first
time. I was looking at a potential product from day
one.”
Berge quit the academic world in 2002 to
start his own company, Varioptic, in the city
of Lyon. Before long, his invention had
attracted the attention of the mobile phone
industry.
78
The liquid lenses’ miniature dimensions and 79
high image quality made them ideal for
camera phones that were just hitting the
market. And with no moving parts, they are
shock resistant and immune to mechanical
wear and tear. Berge’s company now produces 10,000 of
them a month for leading phone manufacturers.
That’s quite an achievement for a high-brow academic
with no corporate experience. But then Bruno Berge
always was drawn to new fields of exploration. “When I
was working in a research lab, I never dreamed I’d end
up running a company,” he smiles. “But in fact I really
enjoy it. You learn something new every day.”
 What if you transplant intelligence
into a new corporate entity?

How an investor took an old body (of knowledge) and gave it a new lease of life

ccounts of body parts being grafted together also proved effective in treating very rare diseases, for

A are as old as storytelling – and steeped in

legend. From Saints Cosmas and Damian
replacing Justinian’s diseased leg by a dead
man’s healthy one to Dr Frankenstein building a
superhuman creature from corpses, these stories have
instance when a patient’s immune system turns against
itself.

But gradually this item of intelligence outgrew its “host”,

the old lab in Lyon. It needed a stronger body to fully
captured many a scientist’s imagination. develop its potential. In 2003, a suitable

Actual attempts at organ transplants as

Thymoglobuline® recipient was found: Genzyme, the world’s
third largest biotechnology company.
early as the 16 th century were often now ships around
successful – but only for a short time. Then The compatibility was complete. Though
the host’s immune system rejected the
the world Genzyme hails from Cambridge, 80
“intruding” cells – and vice versa. This Massachusetts, on the other side of the 81
problem, first documented in the early 1900s by French ocean, its DNA was very similar: the same focus on
surgeon and Nobel Prize winner Alexis Carrel, remains innovation, the same concern for employee welfare – just
to this day one of transplantation practitioners’ two major a more worldwide presence and a longer term vision.
headaches.
Rather than uproot Thymoglobuline® from its
For decades, researchers around the world looked for environment and disconnect it from the channels of
drugs that could temporarily suppress the immune intelligence it originates from, Genzyme is expanding
reaction, allowing the grafted part to be accepted. In its production capacity in Lyon. A new facility will open
France, the Institut Pasteur recorded major advances in 2010 in the world-renowned biotechnology district of
in the 1950s and 1960s, successfully controlling the Gerland. It will set a new standard for environmental
reaction of recipients to grafts. Its experimental serum friendliness.
was used in the world’s first heart transplants in Cape
Town and Paris in 1967 and 1968 – and later became a Thymoglobuline® now ships around the world.
patented drug, Thymoglobuline®. Practitioners have treated more than 100,000 patients
with the drug and have to a great extent mastered the
The drug was first approved for use in France in 1983 immune response. So what is their other major headache
and most EU countries followed suit. Thymoglobuline® regarding transplantation? Simple: the lack of donors.

Matthieu Roussel Genzyme

 What if the greatest bicycle
performance was effortless?

How French carbon fiber technology has become an Olympic champion

he story begins in the 1980’s, when Look, a carbon bike frame – Greg Lemond used it to ride to victory

T company from Burgundy, set about reinventing

the bicycle pedal. Back then, when cyclists
strapped their feet to their pedals, cycling
accidents often left riders with broken legs.
in the Tour de France. Offering a combination of lightness
and rigidity that puts steel and aluminum in the shade,
carbon fiber soon became the material of choice for
serious cyclists.

The engineers from Look dreamed up a Look Look went on to win three “Best Bike of the
bicycle pedal that would automatically Year” awards and a glowing international
release the foot in the event of a fall, while launched the reputation. The company’s carbon fiber frames
increasing pedaling efficiency at the same world’s first now equip the French, American, Japanese,
time. In 1985, a year after the new pedal was Canadian and Polish cycling teams and brought
launched, Bernard Hinault used it to win the ever carbon home nine medals at the last Olympics. 82
Tour de France. 83
bike frame
The price of that success has been a flood
Inspired by that success, Look decided to of cheap imitations. Making a carbon frame
reinvent the rest of the bicycle too. It was a time when is a labor-intensive business, in which every part has to
the use of new composite materials in tennis racquets, be cut and positioned by hand.
Formula One cars and airplane components was boosting
performances in all three domains. Why not apply carbon Unsurprisingly, 90% of them are now made in China. Yet
fiber technology to bicycle frames? Once again, Look’s China’s own cycling federation chose the French company
engineers were ahead of the game. to supply the frames for its track, road and cross-country
teams at the Beijing Games. Proof that imitation is the
In 1986 – the year Look launched the world’s first ever sincerest form of flattery, after all.

Thomas Cantoni Look

 What if gardens were vertical?

How an artificial moss is bringing nature to walls

967. Most Parisian teenagers have Beatles posters a metal frame fixed to a wall. He bolts a sheet of PVC to

1 on their bedroom walls. Patrick Blanc has plants.

Ferns and philodendrons grow out of damp
floorcloths, pinned up from floor to ceiling. The
plants like it fine. His mother is less
enthusiastic: decomposing floorcloths don’t
smell very good. Blanc agrees to put his
the frame, then staples two layers of polyamide felt on
top. The roots of his plants grow into the felt, as if it were
moss covering a rockface.

Patrick An automatic system keeps the felt soaked with

a solution of water and nutrients. Blanc patents
experiment on hold. Blanc’s his brainchild as “a system enabling plants to
be grown without soil on a vertical surface”.
1972. Patrick Blanc dyes his hair green and
unique
sets off to explore the tropical forests of vertical 2007. Patrick Blanc’s unique vertical gardens
Malaysia and Thailand. What he finds takes are bringing wildlife to city walls, from LA 84
him right back to his bedroom wall. The gardens are restaurants to art museums in Japan. His 85
plants don’t just grow out of the ground. bringing 800 square-metre creation on the facade of
Paris’ Musée du Quai Branly brings together
They cover vertical surfaces too – tree wildlife to 15,000 plants from 150 different species.
trunks, cliffs and rock outcrops – spreading Future projects include a skyscraper in Qatar
city walls
anywhere they can find water. Back in Paris, and a harbor in Vietnam.
Blanc starts studying tropical botany. He
ends up with a doctorate and a few new ideas for his By creating urban habitats for birds and insects, Blanc’s
project. gardens promote biodiversity. They also act as an insulating
layer, reducing the building’s energy consumption. And
1988. With a house of his own to experiment in, Blanc has with no more decomposing floorcloths to worry about, you
been perfecting his vertical garden concept. He now uses could even put one in your bedroom.

Jean-Michel Tixier Patrick Blanc

 What if you could travel in style and get paid for it?

How a truck maker set out to transform the driving experience

very boy’s eyes light up when he sees a huge, overhead storage unit is three times larger and an extra

E gleaming truck cruise past. The French even have

an expression: “Beautiful as a truck.” But in fact
the truck driver’s life is far from glamorous: mile
after endless mile of tarmac, quick cafeteria meals with
strangers, nights spent on parking lots, in the back of
95 litre unit has been added behind the driver’s head.

When seated, the driver looks out over the traffic from
more than three meters above the road. The Magnum’s
windscreen is immense, offering excellent visibility. And
a cramped cab. because the glass is also flat, the truck’s unique electric
curtain covers it entirely. Modular interior
“Wait a minute,” said the young designer lighting matches each particular moment
in Renault Trucks’ design center in Lyon.
The cab of the day and the driver’s activities. And to
“This is where the man lives! We should remains the perfect the ambiance, the new range of radio
build the truck around the driver and make equipment includes a CD and MP3 player, 86
him feel at home.”
benchmark with Bluetooth and USB connections. 87
for driver
In 1990, the first Magnum rolled out of the Top specs are also evident under the floor.
factory. The sleek cab, designed by care ever The engine is the Group’s most powerful,
Lamborghini-shaper Marcello Gandini, was since delivering excellent acceleration even on a
immediately hailed a revolution and has slope with a full load. And the truck’s Optibrake
remained the benchmark for driver care is the best engine brake on the market.
ever since. After the Volvo Group acquired Renault Trucks
in 2001, it gave the French team a free rein to build the “For haulage companies, a key challenge is to retain the
new models – keeping the Magnum heritage intact. best drivers,” says Benoît Caron, Head of Renault Trucks’
Long Distance range. “And those who try out the Magnum
First, the floor of the cab: it’s totally flat. The engine’s have a hard time going back to other trucks.”
“dog-house” between the seats is gone, letting the driver
walk around freely. And he doesn’t bend over either: the And this rolling design icon still puts a sparkle in little
ceiling is more than two meters high. boys’ eyes when it turns the corner. With its chrome-
finished accessories, LEDs, sunshade with marker lights,
Based on a survey of drivers’ “dream truck”, further twin shade radiator and three-part bumper, the Renault
improvements were made to the 2008 model. The front Magnum flaunts its unique personality.

Thomas Cantoni R e n a u lt Tr u c k s
 What if shop windows could talk?
How seaweed is teaching window-dressers a lesson
n the way back from dinner, something
O catches your eye. A glow in the window of
the real estate agent’s on the corner. You
press your nose to the glass and suddenly
the whole thing comes to life.
Converting
Apartments and houses flit across the
surface of the window, in response to a stroke every shop
from your finger. You pause on one of them window
and call up the full description. It is a good
thing you decided to walk back. into an
There is something about ambling down a
street and peering into shop windows that
information
no amount of e-commerce can replace. portal
Now, by converting every shop window into an information
portal, Paris-based TCS’s Folio System is taking window-
shopping to a new dimension. Imagine using an interactive
screen to see what is in stock, check if they have your
size and find out the price – all without going into the
shop. You could read the latest news headlines too. Or
watch a film trailer. And you could do it 24/7, whenever
you happened to be out and about.
The technology that’s bringing all that to the high street
began life under the ocean. In his search for a screen that
could provide the brightest possible image, independent
Laurent Cilluffo Touch Communication System
French inventor Yves Fabre from Mulhouse, Eastern
France, studied the way that dozens of varieties of seaweed
react to light. His research led him to a unique iodine
treatment that transforms a thin sheet of plastic into the
equivalent of a high-definition TV.
In 2005, TCS bought the patents from Fabre
and started to work on a commercial version.
The result is breathtaking: stuck to a shop
window, the screen reflects images from a
video projector with outstanding clarity.
Viewers on the pavement outside can pilot 88
the system with their fingertips, thanks to 89
infra-red touch recognition.
The new technology is providing retailers with an exciting
new way to communicate with their customers. It’s been
presenting restaurant menus on the Champs Elysées and
detailing the Peugeot and Citroen ranges in car dealerships
across France. And it will soon be coming to shopping
malls in Dubai.
“In France alone, shop windows cover an area the size of
a town,” says TCS Managing Director Fayçal Slim. “Just
imagine how many there are across the planet.” When
you’ve succeeded in turning seaweed into a new kind of
window display, the world is your oyster.
 What if there could be fire without smoke?

How cleaner energy veterans invented zero carbon coal plants

ant electricity, but no emissions? Well, combined cycle plants, with 2,000 employees – including

W consider this: in the average power

plant, 70% of a fossil fuel’s energy goes
up in smoke. Literally. Only 30% is
converted into electricity.
900 engineers. Now they are back with a much cleaner
way of burning coal.

Through a process called Integrated Gazeification

Combined Cycle, they turn coal into a synthetic gas mostly
And yet, more than 25 years ago, a team of made up of carbon dioxide and hydrogen,
engineers in Belfort, Eastern France, played Electricity, which are then easy to separate. The hydrogen
a pivotal role in inventing the combined burns and the CO2 – once regulatory approval
cycle gas plant. With a conversion rate of
but no is obtained – can be stowed away. The method
60%, it is by far the most efficient method emissions also separates the other impurities, such as
of burning hydrocarbons – and the sulphur dioxide, mercury and particulates. 90
cleanest. 91
Naturally, the capture and sequestration of CO2 costs
Instead of just blasting the burning fumes through a money. But as emission allowance markets spring up
reactor and releasing them directly into the sky, this around the world, emitting carbon into the atmosphere is
system adds a boiler behind to capture the heat and beginning to cost utilities as well.
produce steam.
Many countries rely heavily on coal for energy production,
By doubling the fuel efficiency, combined cycle gas-fired and unlike oil and gas, there’s enough coal to last us more
plants have become the benchmark for producing cleaner than a century at current consumption rates. And yet coal
energy with fossil fuels. They release four times less burning is already the single greatest source of man-made
carbon dioxide per kilowatt than coal-fired plants. greenhouse gases.

So does that spell the death sentence of coal furnaces? As policy-makers become more concerned about
Not if our Belfort engineers have their way. The same pollution and climate change, we might discover a new
Belfort team that revisited gas burning has grown in the generation of energy-efficient thermal power plants,
process into GE Energy’s global center of expertise for producing no smoke whatsoever.

Thomas Cantoni GE Energy

 IFA would also like to thank
the companies

IFA would like to thank

everyone who took part in this project.
Jean Nouvel, Patrick Blanc,

Special thanks to Philippe Starck

for his preface.
Invest in France Agency (IFA)

IFA promotes and facilitates international investment

in France. The IFA network operates worldwide.
IFA works in partnership with regional develop-
ment agencies to offer international investors
business opportunities and customized services
all over France.

For more information, please visit www.investinfrance.org

 Director of publication:
David Appia
Chief editor:
Andrew Hawker, Nick Lequesne

Editorial coordination:
Julie Cannesan, Aurélia Guillou, Gwenaëlle Hennequin

Design and production:

agence@spherepublique.fr

Printed in 2009