A Joint Conference “ENAC Alumni & TBS Alumni Aerospace” has been organized on March 28th at ENAC (Toulouse) with the support of TBS Aerospace MBA.
The topic was “how to innovate with a StartUp mindset”. ENAC Alumni and TBS Alumni were invited to share their experience and expertise regarding StartUps. This was a good opportunity to meet up with TBS Aerospace Graduates. Among the attendees, some MBA Aerospacers: Nicolas Osorio & Jean-Michel Barthez (respectively Aerospace MBA Alumni President and Administrator), Giovanna De Gennaro (PT12), Xavier Suchocki (PT10), Dr. Christophe Bénaroya…
Opening address by Michaël Benhamed highlighting the benefits of joint conferences with ENAC Alumni & TBS Alumni.
Jean-Charles Burguière (ATR), TBS Alumni and Head of the Aerospace Chapter emphasizes the role of interaction with Enac Alumni and with Aerospace MBA: “we’re all interested in the same sector, we have the same employers while we’re coming from diverse backgrounds. There are many bridges between ENAC & TBS (programs, students, professors and now Alumni)”.
Bruno Guttieres, Head of Airbus BizLab, ‘Aerospace accelerator’ and TBS Alumni, shares the reason why of Airbus BizLab: “We accompany the development of start-ups (fin tech, blockchain, gaming…) on short period of time (1-3 years). In a digital world, speed is key: fast access to the market, getting immediate and real time feedback from the customers. Don’t wait for a final mock-up! At early stage, the main driver for a startup is being… eager to survive! Constraints are pushing creativity, they are speeding up the activities. One rule at Airbus BizLab: all start-ups keep their IP”. A3 and Airbus BizLab are positioned in the same way. A3 is rooted into Silicon Valley and addresses specific topics: they create their own projects (5 years) and look for experts & techno in the Silicon Valley.
Projects presented are pitched towards Airbus BizLab and then they get (or not investment) accordingly. Paul Eremenko new CTO (head of R&T) has changed the processes with similar approach regarding project teams as those developed within Airbus BizLab: “demonstration centers”. Bruno firmly considers that “negative tests are fruitful, rich of lessons learned, they are definitively not a failure!”.
The first Airbus BizLab has been launched in March 2015 in Toulouse. Out of 5 startups, 3 have already been fundraised, and 4 are currently working with Airbus. Last year, 2 startups have succeeded out of 6. In Hamburg as well, 2 startups did succeed, including one already onboard A350 for Lufthansa! In Bangalore, while the first edition did suffer from real difficulties owing to cultural differences, the new edition is very promising!
Aurélie Baker, Aerospace Valley: “Space is a flourishing garden for startups!”. There are a lot of opportunities in the space sector. New convergence now with open data, big data… new satellites enabling the collection and storage of data, a lot of new and more precise data. A unlimited source for innovation! Earth observation enables the creation of startups to watch vineyards… players that are not from the space sector are creative and might use these data for new services. FabSpace is a recent program to promote space initiatives. Act in Space contest has been launched to develop projects and startups based on patent, data… ESA’s goal: use the data (provided by Copernicus, Sentinel…) to develop new services
Stéphane Bascobert, co founder of Innov’ATM. ENAC IT Engineer and 15 years at Thales. ATM are safe but not necessarily efficient. We’re providing solutions for Air Navigation stakeholders (including ATCOs, Airport and Airlines) based on Artificial Intelligence. We had an excellent techno but no one wanted to purchase it. We had an argumentation based on the features. The incubator brought us support to turn our argumentation into benefits sought. To finance this product we had to sell our expertise but it was difficult to find the right balance. We wanted to sell the product alone as well. We did wrong choices. Thanks to the diverse experiences and challenges we took part to contests, innovation awards… and we got first subsidies from various players. We decided to open our company to new investors. Industrials enable to have access to their customers but they do not want your to grow as they intend to buy out your company. Institutional bodies (for instance IRDI) want to add value to the company. Flexibility, multitasking, agility are asset of the startup. Test, experiment, iterations, are strong enablers for startups. Series of setbacks are shaping the core business of the startup. Most of the startups are succeeding on markets and with products far different from the original basic ideas and the first developed projects.
Nicolas Muller, co founder of eMindHub: “Passion is key”. Google cannot have access to human effective and proven expertise, we make it possible. We have created a platform to look for expertise and to find solutions enabling to address specific issues in aerospace. It allows experts to prove their expertise in various fields. Our objective is to reach soon 100,000 experts.
