The Success of Apprenticeships

3Innovation at the Heart of the Company and Apprenticeship Methods

3.1. Introduction

The aim here is to examine a collaborative business model from the public laboratory culture with a flexible entrepreneurial approach. How is this model interesting to companies? What are, or will be, the HR challenges in the management of employee apprentices in the context of the company’s rise to power?

3.2. An apprentice entrepreneur

We look at the experience of a start-up, created five years ago by a teacher-researcher and university professor, who has achieved excellence in her field by promoting 30 years of fundamental (INSERM laboratory) and applied research (former top-level sportswoman and qualified coach).

The company is created and managed by an apprentice entrepreneur from the public service. It is imbued with the notion of continuous learning that mixes different cultures¹. This particularity of the profession and the profile of the researcher gives the creator of this company a profile that we will develop below. Its approach is to consider that every apprentice is a fully fledged collaborator, since laboratories work with doctoral students, and all apprentices, whoever they are, have “atypical” relationships with motivation². The head of this company defines her approach as normal. It is characterized by a strong need for autonomy and recognition in the face of the anxiogenic activity that is creation. Our company manager, strengthened by her background, considers that every ...