Innovation and Industrial Policies

3Reindustrialization Through Innovation

As the Commission nationale d’évaluation des politiques d’innovation (National Commision for the Evaluation of Innovation Policies) (CNEPI 2016, p. 9) notes, the consensus around the predominant role of innovation in the process of economic growth has resulted in a major institutional reorganization with the establishment of two new actors. The first is the Secrétariat général pour l’inverstissement (SGPI) (General Secretariat for Investment), whose function is in particular to manage the Programme d’investissement d’avenir (PIA). The second is the Banque publique d’investissement (Bpifrance), a public investment bank, which is in charge of supporting and financing companies’ innovation efforts. This observation could suggest that the principle of an innovation policy has fully replaced that of an industrial policy.

However, such an interpretation cannot be accepted since, during the same period, the marked action in favor of innovation has gradually been accompanied by a renewed interest in questions relating to the organization, structuring and development of the industry. This renewal was only the direct consequence of the realization of an inexorable movement, if not decline, at least of “industrial disengagement” (Cohen and Buigues 2014). The alarming nature of these consequences has led to the mobilization of all socio-economic partners, which led to the organization, at the end of 2009, of the États généraux de l’industrie (General ...