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Press Release
The Creation of Technology Clusters to Drive Research and Innovation, a lecture by: Edith Cresson
Doha, 19 Nov 2009: Qatar Science & Technology Park was honored to host Madame Edith Cresson as a guest speaker as part of its TECHtalks series. Her lecture, titled "The Creation of Technology Clusters to Drive Research and Innovation," took place on November 19th at the Four Seasons Hotel.
Edith Cresson was appointed Prime Minister by President François Mitterrand in 1991, and is so far the only woman to have held this office in France. For the previous ten years she was a deputy of the French National Assembly and served as Minister of: Agriculture, Foreign Trade, Industry, and European Affairs. After a career in politics, Cresson became President of the Institute of European Studies, a position she continues to hold since 1992, and she served from 1995 to 1999 as European Commissioner for Research and Education. In 2002 she became President of the Foundation of Second Chance Schools which she remains actively involved in.
Cresson is a member of the Council of Women World Leaders, an International network of current and former women presidents and prime ministers whose mission is to mobilize the highest-level women leaders globally for collective action on issues of critical importance to women and equitable development. Cresson is a graduate in economics of 'Haut Etudes Commerciales' in Paris and is a Doctor of Democracy Honoris Causa from the Weizmann Institute and the Open University in the UK.
During her speech, Edith Cresson highlighted that research in France was typically regarded as a public initiative, conducted by universities, engineering schools and national research laboratories. In 2004 the French government launched an industrial policy to drive competition in research and to increase innovation capacity. This resulted in the creation of 71 technology clusters, aiming to break the barriers between research and industry, and to encourage synergies between the public and private sectors. The research institutions and private companies are therefore undergoing a form of 'horizontal' integration, which favours the evolution of research far more than the traditional 'vertical' integration. In parallel, the government encourages creation of innovative start-ups and allocates an annual budget to their development. French research is integrated in the EU Research Framework Programme, and is renegotiated every four years, aiming at creating synergies between two or more European countries.
During her visit to QSTP, Edith Cresson also visited some of the research and development facilities established there, including the laboratories of Total and EADS.
Dr. Tidu, Science and Technology Advisor, Chairman Qatar Science & Technology Park, said of her visit and seminar: "It is important to learn from the experiences of others, whether individuals or states, too see if their models could either be imported exactly or modified to accommodate the needs of the recipient."