FRANCE MEANSINNOVATION

Surprising ideas and creations

FRANCE MEANSINNOVATION

Surprising ideas and creations

What 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 fi nd 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

qualifi ed 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”?

Pu b l i s h e d b y

I n v e s t i n F r a n c e Ag e n cy

54

When my father drew one of his breathtak-

ing Cx tailfi ns, 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.

Some signs thrown up from the waves of history confi rm

my intuition: a Chateau of Versailles built using modules

that can be infi nitely multiplied, and whose purpose was

the effi cient management of a business, and one of the

very fi rst political and commercial publicity campaigns.

An Eiffel Tower that employs a brilliant intuition for the

defi nitive 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 effi cient

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 fl ourish,

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 specifi cations

for the Citroën 2CV. It is pure poetry, where each word

makes sense. The specifi cations talk of umbrellas, diag-

onals made in freshly-plowed fi elds, 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.

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 fi nd.

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”

Preface

Philippe Starck

76

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

PHILIPS ANTARÈS CRÉALIE

... you could see your

city in a new light?

... the depths of the ocean

were the best place to view

the sky?

... your time machine looked

like an ordinary fridge?

What if... What if... What if...

Contents

innovations in France

98

A soundwave

that literally

cancels out

unwanted

background

sounds

Q u i e t y s

How loudspeakers and microphones are making things less noisy

What if life came with a volume control?

Summer in the city. It’s nearly midnight and the

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

acoustic comfort bubble’s control box and

everything dissolves into silence. As the

breeze from the window drifts over the bed,

you can feel yourself slipping away.

With the acoustic comfort bubble from RNS

Engineering, a company based in Montpellier,

Southern France, you can surround yourself

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 fi ction, 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.”

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 fi ne-tune its effects.

The more controllers you use, the bigger the

size of the bubble. A single control box can

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.

Thomas cantoni

1110

Philips’

new lights

also save a

lot of energy

P h i l i p s

How to make monuments more beautiful and eco-friendly

What if you could see your city in a new light?

Matthieu Roussel

You’ve passed the building a million times.

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

at a dinner party.

But tonight, you stop dead in your tracks.

Wow ! Look at that detail ! The texture of the

façade ! That play of shadows ! You gaze on

in wonder. What did they do to your dull old

building ? They fi tted it with the revolutionary

low-energy LED lighting technology

developed by Philips.

Aiming a beam of light at a building from across the street

can have an unfl attering effect: the relief of the façade is

fl attened into a single monotonous plane. Philips’ luminaries

are placed on the façade itself, producing a grazing light

that highlights the buildings’ features and produces a

variety of effects depending on the artist’s intentions.

Philips’ new lights also save a lot of energy. Unlike

incandescent bulbs, which use electricity to heat up a

filament and – almost incidentally – give off light,

Philips’ LEDs produce light by polarizing a diode inside a

crystal, drastically reducing wastage. But the main

innovation is Philips’ use of plastic optics – rather than a

refl ector – 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

for the Queen’s 80th birthday – using a total

of only 1500W, no more than a standard

household iron!

Not only can cities afford to light up more

buildings, bridges, arcades, trees and so on,

but they can pick their colors. In addition to

the slightly bluish LEDs we are used to,

Philips R&D center in Lyon developed a neutral white

(the color of the midday sun) and warm white (like

incandescent bulbs) – as well as a full range of reds,

greens, yellows, etc.

It’s no coincidence that this new lighting technology was

invented at the confl uence of the Rhone and Saone rivers.

The city of Lyon has long sought ways to promote intelligent

lighting, even staging a Festival of Lights every year in early

December. Philips’ team of optics experts is considered

one of Europe’s best. It benefi ts from fundamental research

carried out at public laboratories and partnerships with

universities in the Lyon area. The factory exports massively

across Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

1312

Imagine if

you could

use the same

handset for

all your

calls

O r a n g e

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

What if every time you left home,

your home phone went with you?

Can you remember what it was like before you

had a mobile phone? The phone numbers

scribbled in Filofaxes and address books, on

cigarette packets and used envelopes? Trying

to fi nd a payphone that wasn’t out of order? And how the

number you needed at work was always at home, and

vice versa?

Before long, your landline could feel just

as old-fashioned. Imagine if you could use

the same handset for all your calls,

wherever you happen to be. If you only had

one phone number and one electronic

address book.

If your mobile gave you unlimited talk time

at home or in the offi ce; if every time you left

home, you could take your home phone with

you.

A brand new service from Orange gives you all that and

more. For the fi rst time ever, Unik offers subscribers

the convenience of a mobile alongside all the advantages

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 offi ce, at an airport or hotel – your mobile switches onto

the Internet via a Wi-Fi connection.

That means unlimited phone calls and

broadband connection at no extra cost. Using

your mobile phone to access the Internet

suddenly becomes an attractive option.

In France, Orange’s network of Wi-Fi hotspots

is already offering full broadband facilities at

30,000 locations across the country.

And Unik will soon be coming to the UK,

Holland, Spain and Poland – bringing home comfort to

your mobile across Europe. So take a good look at your

home phone next time you get a chance. Pretty soon, you’ll

hardly remember what a landline is.

Stéphane Tartelin

1514

The drugs’

porous

structure

dissolves

instantly in

the mouth

C e p h a l o n

How one researcher bet on intelligence and won

What if brainpower fuelled growth?

James Joyce

In 2001, new-lab-on-the-block Cephalon was looking

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.

Now it was ready for a big step forward.

Cephalon’s founder, Dr. Frank Baldino, a

researcher and still the current Chairman

and CEO, already knew where to look. Years

earlier, the French Lafon Laboratory had

invented a new way of taking medication,

which he called Lyoc®.

How does it work? Suppose you are rushing

to catch a plane. While you are queuing for

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.

Lyoc® is a unique method for manufacturing drugs, using

a low-pressure, ultra-cold freeze drying technique that

requires no solvents or other pollutants. It works with a

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

handy when giving medication to children or to elderly

people who fi nd it hard to swallow.

It is easily mixed with yogurt or cream, a big

bonus if the patient is feeling nauseous.

Moreover, it has huge potential in areas of

the world where drinking water can be

unsafe.

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.

Never did Cephalon regret trusting in the power of research

and innovation.

1716

Miniaturization

of motors and

drive systems

A l s t o m

How miniature motors powered the fastest train on the planet

What if getting rid of the locomotive made

the train go faster?

Roy and Farid

In some parts of the world, train travel may seem a bit

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

would be enough innovation for the prototype’s

manufacturer. It isn’t. Now they want to take

away the engine too.

To develop the AGV – a new generation high-

speed train – Alstom has taken train design

back to the drawing board.

By miniaturizing its motors and drive systems, the French

fi rm has been able to fi t them under the fl oors, the whole

length of the train.

The AGV’s carriages actually drive themselves. Getting

rid of locomotives makes the train 50 tons lighter than

today’s TGV, which translates into energy savings along

with increased speeds.

And because the wagons at the front and back are not

cluttered up with huge electric motors and transformers,

there’s more space for passengers too. The new carriages

offer more room to stretch out, reduced

noise and signifi cantly less vibration.

So it’ll be easier to get some work done or

have a nap. With average speeds 40 km/h

faster than the fastest TGV, you’ll reach your

destination even quicker than you do today.

Yet when the new train enters service in 2009, the biggest

benefi ciary of all may end up being the environment. Unlike

airplanes, the AGV doesn’t emit any greenhouse gases.

But it can cover 1,000 km in under three hours, from city

center to city center: far better than any plane. If – as

Alstom hopes – it coaxes passengers out of the skies and

onto the rails, it would be a big step forward in the fi ght

against global warming. Thanks to the French, train travel

never looked as modern as it does today.

1918

It changed

the way

radiology

was used

for good

G E H e a l t h c a r e

How 3d imaging has transformed medicine

What if the body was transparent?

It might have started in a garage, had Jérôme Knoplioch

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

become a cornerstone of the revolution

that medical imaging has experienced in

the past two decades. And it changed the

way radiology was used for good.

The Advantage Workstation – formerly

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,

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

real time, as if they had peeled back the

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.

Thomas Cantoni

2120

The heat of

your coffee

transforms

the biscuit

into a

succulent

dessert

P i l ê o

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

What if dessert came on top of your coffee?

June 2003 - Fabien Rouillard is having breakfast

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

hand and a chocolate muffin in the other.

He has an idea. What if you could just

eat the cover that keeps the drink hot?

July 2003 - Back in Paris, Rouillard has

two more ideas. What if the cover was a

biscuit that came with your espresso at

the end of a meal? And what if the heat

of your coffee transformed the biscuit

into a succulent mini-dessert? An

engineering school comes on board to

help with the production design. Rouillard

gets working on the recipe.

April 2004 - It’s settled. The biscuit is light, crispy,

cone-shaped and lined with chocolate. After 45

seconds on top of your coffee, the chocolate starts

to melt. Just how long you leave it is up to you. A lip

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.

August 2005 - Rouillard decides to go it

alone and produce Pilêo himself. His

friends chip in for the starting capital. He

finds a factory that is willing to take a

chance on a new kind of biscuit, and

together they start developing the

machinery to manufacture it. Pilêo goes

on sale 10 months later.

Summer 2007 - Pilêo now accompanies

after-dinner coffee in some of the best

French restaurants. Devotees can buy it by

the packet at the très chic Grande Epicerie de Paris.

Rouillard is putting the fi nishing touches to the rest of the

range, with special fl avors designed for tea and hot

chocolate. And soup: think savory biscuit lined with cream

of garlic. Hot drinks will never be the same again.

Stéphane Tartelin

2322

Yahoo built

the fi rst

prototypes of

Knowledge

Search

Ya h o o

How semantic research will revolutionize the online search experience

What if your search engine guessed what you want?

“Where can I buy some fi ne chocolates?”

“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 fi nd what we are looking for.

We still put up with this at home or the

office, but nobody wants to spend long

minutes keying in words and browsing

useless links on our handsets – let alone

on the GPS/Internet terminals we’ll soon

have in our cars. Could we get our answers

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 fi rst prototypes of Knowledge Search. Then

Gilles went over to Sunnyvale, California, to present his

project at the Yahoo! head offi ce.

“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.

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.

With R&D spread out between several sites

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 fl ick 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.”

Laurent Cilluffo

2524

What if

your tires wore

back in again?

2726

Tire that

throws

the aging

process into

reverse

M i c h e l i n

How new rubber technology is extending tire life

What if your tires wore back in again?

Imagine you could turn back time. That instead of looking

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.

Michelin’s XDN 2 GRIP is a tire that throws the

aging process into reverse. Thanks to a network

of channels and grooves buried inside the

rubber, it recovers all the performance of a new

tire as soon as it’s worn down by two-thirds.

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.

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 traffi c

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 fi nally wear out, Michelin can

remold the rubber to make the tire as good

as new again.

Ever since it was launched in 2005, the XDN

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?

Thomas Cantoni

2928

Europe’s fi rst

industrial

park to receive

an ISO 14001

certifi cate for

environmental

quality

E c o v e r

How good for the environment can also be good for business

What if your detergent was made in a garden?

Carine Brancowitz

Jean-Louis looked out of the window. A few paces

away, a deer was chewing thoughtfully on a fl owery

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.

The deer wasn’t deaf, though. Thanks to a

careful choice of machinery, Ecover’s new

factory near Boulogne, on the North Sea

coast, produces a level of noise easily covered

by casual humming or the distant passing of

a car.

When it opened this second site in May 2007

in the landscaped Parc de Landacres,

Europe’s fi rst industrial park to receive an

ISO 14001 certifi cate 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

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 fi tted, the factory will become entirely

energy self-suffi cient 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 fi ne,” factory

manager Jean-Louis assures us. “But water

quality and marine life is in Ecover’s DNA,

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.

3130

The skin

actually

starts getting

younger

again

How trees are helping people look younger

What if your skin was evergreen?

L’ O r é a l

People have gone to extraordinary lengths to make

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

convenient. L’Oréal has just created the

most effective weapon yet in the battle

against aging skin. It comes directly from

nature. And there’s no cruelty to animals

or people involved.

L’Oréal’s chemists were trying to fi nd 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.

For L’Oréal, the question was how to coax the body into

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

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-

kles and dry patches as it is against sagging.

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

3332

Neurospin

will help

explain

neurological

diseases

S i e m e n s

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

What if your doctor could read your mind?

It is the most complex and fascinating system in the

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

Resonance Imaging (MRI) has revolutionized

medical diagnostics by revealing the inside

of our bodies – without using radiation. But

why not increase the scanners’ magnetic

fi eld strength from 2 or 3 teslas currently

to more than 10 teslas? That would multiply

the image resolution by a factor of ten to a

few hundredths of a millimeter. Researchers could

observe brain cells by groups of a few thousand, rather

than a million today. And they could map neural reactions

to stimulus within a hundredth of a second, rather than

a second now. So why not build a bigger magnifying

glass?

Because a magnetic fi eld that strong would be like a high-

speed train crashing into a concrete wall. Hundreds of

tons of steel casing would not be enough to contain it.

Yet when the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA)

commissioned a feasibility study for an ultra high fi eld

strength MRI system, in 2004, Siemens, the industry

leader in the fi eld of imaging, took up the challenge.

The 11.7 tesla scanner will be ready in 2011. Siemens

provides the system components (including gradient

coils, high-frequency electronic systems and software

for data visualisation and analysis), while Alstom’s

building the magnet at the CEA’s site near Paris – with

help from Guerbet, Bruker BioSpin MRI and

the University of Fribourg. The magnetic

fi eld will be enclosed in an “active casing”

– a secondary magnetic counter-fi eld.

“This project could shape the way medical

diagnostics are carried out in twenty years

time,” says Robert Krieg, head of the

Development and Molecular Imaging

department of Siemens Medical Solutions.

“And we want to be part of it.”

In fact, Neurospin will be open to research teams from

all over the world wishing to study the brain, its

cognitive processes and pathologies. The scanner will

reveal the molecular processes that occur sporadically

in the body. It will help explain neurological diseases

– like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis

– and psychological ailments like depression and

schizophrenia. Analyzing molecular deficiencies will

help create treatments that can be applied before

symptoms even appear.

The new scanner will also tell us more about how the

brain works: the functions of various groups of brain

cells and their relationship with particular genes

expressed in the brain. We might fi nally fi nd out what is

innate and what is learned!

Laurent Cilluffo

3534

And while

you stay

cool, you’re

helping to

fi ght global

warming

S a i n t - G o b a i n

How tungsten fi laments and a 1.5v current are all the sunblock your car needs

What if you could be master of the sun?

Provence. 11.30 am. The temperature is pushing

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

colors: clear and tinted. Designed by the

French glass manufacturer Saint-Gobain,

Sekurit’s electrochrome system now gives

you extremes and everything in-between.

Thanks to tungsten fi laments and a 1.5V

current, the high-tech windows lighten or

darken at the fl ick of a switch, allowing you

to choose precisely how much heat and light

you want to enter the vehicle. And while you stay cool,

you’re helping to fi ght global warming. Since the new

system reduces the need for air conditioning, it helps cut

fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

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 fi rst 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

manufacturers like Toyota, Ford and

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.

Roy and Farid

3736

It’s

almost

as amazing

as skin

itself

B l u e s t a r S i l i c o n e s

How chemical engineering led to a breakthrough in clothing

What if you could feel comfortable everywhere?

Skin is a wonderful thing. To start with, it keeps our

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

to all live naked in the shade of the coconut

trees.

But since there are not enough coconuts to

go around, most people end up throwing

extra layers of pseudo-skin on for protection.

Some of us even work in such hostile

environments that they are always on the

lookout for better clothing to keep them safe

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.

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.

Extremely rugged, this “softshell” textile can stretch in

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

professional protective gear are still being

explored.

Why did the French think of it fi rst? 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 confi rmed Bluestar Silicones’ head offi ce in France

and invested in the local production and research facilities

for the future…

Matthieu Roussel

3938

We can now

gaze further

into the

cosmos than

ever before

A n t a r è s

How an underwater telescope is revealing the cosmos

What if the depths of the ocean were

the best place to view the sky?

Imagine you wanted to know what was going on in the

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

a half kilometers beneath the surface of the

Mediterranean.

Instead of watching the skies, the French

have installed a grid of hyper-sensitive light

sensors in the darkness of the ocean fl oor.

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 fi ndings to a

base station on the coast 40 km away.

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

the trajectories of the neutrinos that reach

the Earth, we should be able to locate the

places where the basic energy of the

universe is generated.

Thanks to Antares, we can now gaze further

into the cosmos than ever before. By

combining its fi ndings 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 fl ashing lights in the sky. The

real visitors from outer space are blue and deep

underwater.

Jean-Michel Tixier

4140

Toyota’s

design studio

in Sophia-

Antipolis

is France’s

answer to

the Silicon

Valley

T o y o t a

How a technology park attracts investors and inventors

What if creativity had a preferred location?

When Shoichiro Toyoda – chairman of Toyota

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

give him a good view of the surroundings.

Shoichiro took in the beauty of the French

Riviera: the curves of the coastline, the dark

blue sea, the hills and cliffs rising up to the

Alps. The breeze was rich with the smell of

pine trees. The whole landscape bathed in

the crisp, deep light of the Mediterranean.

He breathed deeply. “This, he thought, is a

place for dreaming… For creating beauty.”

He was not disappointed. Toyota’s ED2

design studio in Sophia-Antipolis – France’s

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 latest invention is a revolution in urban

transportation. The iQ is the fi rst four-seater to fi t 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

persons in the rear seat. The result is a

comfortable, energy efficient, hi-tech

vehicle.

But performance, safety and comfort are

not everything, as car stylists know full well.

“85% of people become personally involved

when buying a car,” explains Michel Gardel,

president of Toyota France. “It’s like a

second skin.”

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

4342

What if a good

night’s sleep could

come at the touch

of a button?

4544

Sleepers’

breathing

is analysed

in real time

to deliver

air at exactly

the right

pressure

K a e r y s

How a chance encounter is fi nally bringing rest to the weary

What if a good night’s sleep could come

at the touch of a button?

Peter wakes up feeling exhausted. He often has a

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.

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.

Peter suffers from obstructive sleep apnea,

a condition in which patients are woken by

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.

Weighing in at just over a pound, Kaerys’s KXS device is

four times lighter than its nearest rival. And it’s not just

smaller than the competition.

It’s the only model on the market to operate

with a battery pack, allowing patients to use

it literally anywhere. Its software and

turbines – developed and manufactured

in-house – analyze sleepers’ breathing in

real time to deliver air at exactly the right

pressure whenever it’s required. And - unlike

the competition - they’re silent too.

For sufferers and their families, that’s a

powerful set of arguments. Based in the Côte

d’Azur region, Kaerys has already attracted

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

4746

Nobody

thinks twice

any more

about taking

a driverless

train

S i e m e n s

How next-generation people-movers change the travel experience

What if commuting was pleasant?

Commuter and subway trains: they’re the lifelines

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.

So everybody loves the trains, right? Right.

Except when they are late. Or overcrowded.

Or stuffy. Or noisy. Or unsafe. Or overpriced.

Or a combination of the above.

It was almost three decades ago when

Siemens Transportation Systems first

presented its vision of a clean city where

people glide smoothly around in pleasant

carriages and are never late. One detail

caused an outcry. “No driver! How could such

a train be safe?”

Still, the fi rst 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

transport and logistics expert based in Alsace, Siemens

is now introducing the new generation of people movers,

Neoval.

The benefi ts are very clear. Removing the driver can reduce

operational costs by more than 30%. Even single-carriage

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 fl eet of six-

carriage trains can take 600 passengers per

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 fl ight

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!

Laurent Cilluffo

4948

C r o s s j e c t

Crossject

has developed

a needle-free,

pre-fi lled,

single use

injector

How airbag technology is bringing patients peace of mind

What if no one had to be scared

of injections ever again?

Imagine if having an injection threw you into a panic. If

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.

For one person in four, needle phobia is a

terrifying reality. A new system could soon be

calming their fears.

Using the same technology as the airbags in

your car, a French fi rm based in Paris called

Crossject has developed a needle-free, pre-

fi lled, single-use injector that does away with

the traditional syringe for ever.

Airbags infl ate using sophisticated compounds called

energetic materials. Tiny amounts of energetic materials

can generate signifi cant 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

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

injections can treat themselves safely at home.

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 fi rms in Europe and the US, with the fi rst

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.

Stéphane Tartelin

5150

A simple

interface

to share

data with

machines

C r é a l i e

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

Have you ever thought of baking your own

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

once you’ve made the notoriously diffi cult 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

times to get that unique crispy-yet-melty

effect.

On the other hand, if you fi tted 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 fi nd 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 fi rst, 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

ESG – found a way. The ready-to-use USB Memory Key

Bridge appeared in 2006 and is already a hit in a dozen

countries in Europe and around the world.

Dissecting this multipurpose gateway to

reveal its inner workings would make Swiss

watch-making look like a primitive craft. But

unlike its technology, the success of this little

contraption is easy to explain: it enables

machines to communicate.

Machine operators love it. They no longer

have to stand by and punch all the right

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

5352

Robot

changes

the gears

instead of

the driver

P S A

What if your car was driven by

an environment-friendly robot?

How saving the planet is putting machines in the driving seat

How many of your best driving memories involve

something French? The fi rst 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

red convertible. Stopping for lunch at a “Les

Routiers” on the way down to the Riviera.

These days, the car industry is in the midst

of a green revolution. Under the terms of an

agreement struck with the EU, European car

manufacturers have committed to drastic

reductions in their cars’ average CO2

emissions by 2008.

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 fi tted a robot to change

the gears instead of the driver.”

True automatic gearboxes have long been recognized as

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

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

to shift so often,” says Malvache. “But the

MCP’s a machine. It doesn’t care how often

it has to change gear.”

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

5554

They help us

work, play,

share and

relax to

our heart’s

content

What if distance still mattered?

How a leader of remote communication set up shop in the middle of it all

S T M i c r o e l e c t r o n i c s

These days, you can sit your teenage son down,

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

mobile phones come up with new surprises.

They have already become respectable digital

cameras and are fast becoming reasonable

video cameras. They can guide us to the nearest

petrol station or fl ower shop. They show us the

latest blockbuster in high defi nition. They give

us broadband access to music stored on the

Internet or our home computers. They help us

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 surfi ng, 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.

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

continents, developed this groundbreaking

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.”

Thomas Cantoni

5756

A constant

interaction

between

lenses, eyes

and brain

E s s i l o r

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

What if your glasses could see things

from your unique point of view?

1951. Something is bothering Bernard Maitenaz, a

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

barbaric system that breaks up the fi eld of

vision,” he asks anyone who will listen at the

lens manufacturer where he works. “There has

to be a progressive solution.” Alone at home,

he starts trying to fi nd it.

1956. Maitenaz realizes that for his

progressive lens to work, it’s going to have

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 fi rst 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.

Essilor, the manufacturer, now involves wearers in the

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

they’ll have different behavior patterns and

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

5958

How faith in quality engineering cut both costs and emissions

What if more cars could afford to be cleaner?

Less emission,

less noise,

and more

performance

D e l p h i

Climate change. Melting icecaps. Fingers get

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 CO2 per

kilometer than gasoline. Still, even diesel

carmakers are working to meet the ever

more stringent emissions legislation.

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 fi tted 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 benefi ts

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 fi rst injector version, with a

1,400 bars injection pressure, started in Blois and La

Rochelle in 2000. The company then worked with French

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 fi ve times in the millisecond

of the motor’s cycle, just at the right moment.

This ensures the combustion is more

complete – with less emission, less noise,

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 benefi ted 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.

Matthieu Roussel

6160

What if

buildings reacted

to light?

6362

The

practical

and the

aesthetic

come hand

in hand

J e a n N o u v e l

How a would-be painter is making architecture cool

What if buildings reacted to light?

Jean Nouvel didn’t want to be an architect. He set

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 fl air.

Nouvel became a household name in 1987,

with his design for the Institute of the Arab

World in Paris. The building features

expanses of plate glass lined with metal, its

surface punctured by geometric designs. So

far, so oriental: screened balconies – or

moucharabies – are vernacular features of

Arab architecture, designed to shield interiors

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

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.

Because the tower’s concrete shell retains

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 fl oat 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.

Roy and Farid

6564

How a chemical plant took an environmental headache and created an opportunity

What if we could turn waste into something precious?

A process

which

transforms

the “useless”

by-product

into a versatile

chemical

S o l v a y

Sally’s no eco-warrior, but like most people she would

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.

But Sally’s not so comfortable with the

biodiesel thing anymore. She read an article

about the glycerol glut: an icky by-product

nobody knows how to dispose of. Each tank

full of biodiesel leaves several litres of

glycerol. Not so good…

Meanwhile, Harry is scratching his head too.

His sailboat building business is not doing

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

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

of the Jura mountains (Eastern France),

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.

Carine Brancowitz

6766

A unique

chemical-free

disinfection

system

B I O U V

How UV light is making water germ-free

What if a sunlamp was all the disinfectant you need?

Back in 1999, Benoit Gillman heard about a gadget

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

had a pool himself, so he decided to take a

closer look. A year later, he’d given up his

job in the medical equipment business to

devote himself to the new system. “I was

completely won over,” he smiles. “I just

thought this thing should be available

everywhere.”

Unlike any other swimming pool system, the device that

Gillman found in the garage used ultra-violet light instead

of chemicals to kill germs in the water.

Gillman bought the rights to the invention and started his

own company in Southern France – Bio UV – to develop

it. The commercial version is now installed in over 7,000

public and private swimming pools across Europe.

And Bio UV recently opened a subsidiary in Los Angeles

that is bringing its unique chemical-free disinfection

system to US pools too.

To purify water, Bio UV pumps it through a “reactor”: a

length of pipe fi tted 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.

For users, that means safe water with no

taste or smell, and with no irritation to eyes,

nose or lungs. And with no chemicals in the

water, there’s no risk of pollution to the

environment either. Those benefi ts have

already established Bio UV as the leader in

its field, recognized by public health

authorities across Europe.

But the system’s potential applications extend way beyond

swimming pools. Bio UV is also providing green-friendly

water purifi cation for fi sh farms and aquariums, air-

conditioning systems and sewage treatment.

And it’s now working on a reactor that could bring clean

drinking water to some of the one billion people across the

planet who don’t have proper access to it. So next time a

Frenchman invites you to look round his garage, it could be

worth taking a look. You never know what you might fi nd.

Stéphane Tartelin

6968

A

revolution

in our

plates

What if the next superfood was growing

just across the road?

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

E b l y

On a deserted country road, a lonely fi gure stands

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.

We perfected it with the fl avor 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

of research. ANVAR lent the money to build a pilot plant,

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 fi rst product, 20-minute tender wheat Ebly,

arrived in supermarkets in 1995 and became

the talk of the town. By 2000, Mars, Inc.

offered to invest, seeing potential synergies

with Uncle Ben’s rice. The deal was done, and

Agralys worked with Mars’ R&D lab in Olen,

Belgium to develop 10-minute Ebly. In 2004,

this cooperation also spawned Ebly in

microwavable pouches.

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 fi ber, 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

7170

Farmstar

tells the

fi elds what

needs doing

and when

to do it

I n f o t e r r a

How satellites are helping to bring in the harvest

What if the best farming advice came from space?

Looking after a baby is pretty straightforward. When

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.

But for farmers, it’s a stressful business

where mistakes mean loss of earnings.

Imagine how much easier things would be

if plants could speak for themselves.

In France, a new system called Farmstar,

designed by satellite specialist Infoterra, is

keeping farmers informed about their crops’

inner feelings. By keeping an electronic eye

trained on subscribers’ fi elds 24 hours a day, Farmstar

tells them what needs doing and when to do it.

Plants receive water, fertilizers and treatments in

exactly the quantities they require – no more, no less.

By eliminating waste, it saves farmers money. And with

no excess products to pollute the environment, it’s good

news for nature too.

Farmstar uses a network of observation satellites, each

precise enough to see inside individual fi elds. By observing

different parts of the spectrum, they can tell how much

of the sun’s energy is being absorbed by a

given crop.

Sophisticated software then converts that

information into a snapshot of the plants’

health and state of development. Subscribers

receive regular updates for each of their fi elds,

telling them exactly which zones need looking

after. The age-old business of farming just

entered the space age.

It’s not just about keeping the plants happy. Farmstar

offers farmers improved harvests and – by eliminating

waste - substantial savings too. Ten thousand of them

already use the service in France, and they’re being

joined by colleagues from the rest of Europe, Asia and

America. Having a satellite keep an eye on your crops

certainly takes the stress out of farming. If only they

did the same thing for kids.

Jean-Michel Tixier

7372

Increasingly,

solar energy

is becoming

attractive

T o r a y

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

What if your roof leaked energy – inwards?

The scene takes place in 2215, in a classroom. It

has two versions. In the fi rst, 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.”

The second version is nicer. The classroom

is not in a damp tunnel littered with the

debris of another age, but in an airy, well-lit

room – and the children all look healthy. They

answer: “It’s when the people of all countries

agreed to work together to solve their

problems and stop destroying the planet.”

Though inertia and short-sightedness seem to draw us

in the wrong direction, many bright people are working to

make the second scenario come true. Every day, engineers

invent alternatives that only require popular and political

support to make the difference.

Solar panels appeared about 25 years ago. In 2005, they

accounted for 1% of global energy production. But the

installed capacity has been doubling every year and the

ratio could reach 10% by 2020. As production increases,

economies of scale kick in and the panels become cheaper.

Increasingly, solar energy is becoming attractive even

without government support. Japan, the global leader in

solar power, stopped subsidizing it in 2005.

And there’s more. Older solar panels used fl uoride resins

to protect the cells. After 25 years or so of honorable work,

these toxic coatings end up in the landfi ll or incinerator.

Fortunately, Japanese chemical pioneer

Toray found the solution. Its backsheets for

solar panels use polyester, leaving no nasty

waste to deal with when they have fi nished

their tour of duty.

Toray’s plastics plant near Lyon is located in

the Tenerrdis energy cluster, a European

network of leading energy players and research facilities.

Members such as the French Atomic Energy Commission,

the CNRS public research network and EDF work on

fundamental research, while others focus on product

innovation and production.

Together, they plan to offer every European house the

opportunity to cover up to a third of its energy needs with

solar energy – and sell any excess back on the grid.

With enough brains eager to do something right, there’s

still a chance the great grandchildren of our great

grandchildren will take pride in our generation.

Matthieu Roussel

7574

Olmix’s

green-friendly

philosophy

is based on

using nothing

but organic

materials

O l m i x

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

What if ecology was a veterinary science?

At low tide, the beach outside Hervé Demais’

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.

Demais gazes out at the beach as he ponders

the job at hand. He is a vet working for Olmix,

a company which specializes in organic

supplements for animal feed. Today, he’s

trying to fi nd a way to rid feeds of mycotoxins:

poisonous fungi that can kill animals at

doses of a few parts per billion. And the

answer is staring him in the face.

Demais’ research is focused on a special

kind of clay. The clay – called Montmorillonite

– is made up of very thin layers held together

by a static charge. When mycotoxins enter

the space between the layers, they are trapped and

neutralized by the electricity. But there’s a problem: the

layers are so close together that only the smallest

mycotoxins can get inside. Demais needs to fi nd a way to

push the layers further apart.

Up to now, that has been done by using synthetic

polymers to act as pillars between the minute layers of

clay. But Olmix’s green-friendly philosophy is based

on using nothing but organic materials. So Demais is

trying to fi nd a natural polymer to use instead. Looking

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.

Back in the lab, Demais’ hunch pays off.

The much-maligned weed yields a polymer

that can increase the space between layers

by a factor of ten. Demais calls his new

material Amadeite. Added to feed, it

successfully absorbs all mycotoxins and

even makes animals grow faster, by

breaking down nutrients so they can be

absorbed more effectively. And because

it’s made of natural raw materials – with

only water used as a solvent – it comes with

an ecological guarantee.

But that’s just the beginning. Demais discovers that he

can now separate the individual layers of clay to form

nanoparticles, which can then be used to make a

bioplastic that’s as strong as synthetic alternatives. And

because it’s fully recyclable and biodegradable too, it’s

a plastic that carries no risk for the natural environment.

All of a sudden, that seaweed on the beach outside looks

a lot less menacing. In fi ve short years, it’s gone from

being a problem to becoming part of the solution.

Roy and Farid

7776

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

It’s very

much a

customer

pull story,

not a

technology

push

What if you could take this train anywhere?

B o m b a r d i e r

You are off to Burgundy for a little gastronomic

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.

But things are changing: thanks to a world

first in rail technology, this stopover is

gradually being phased out and will soon be

history. France’s 22 administrative regions

– in charge of organizing regional transport

– have already ordered 700 of Bombardier’s

AGC, including over 130 new dual mode

trains, the AGC bibi. It can go everywhere.

It rides both France’s 1,500V and 20,000V

tracks and switches over to diesel where

the route is not electrifi ed.

“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.

Up to 250 people set to work at Bombardier Transport’s

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.

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

from maintaining two separate reserve

fl eets: one for electrifi ed and one for diesel

routes. But it’s another benefi t 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-

effi cient than using diesel to power a hydraulic engine.

On a trip from Paris to Provins, for which 40% of the line

is electrifi ed, 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 diffi cult to automate; it’s like

industrial craftsmanship. Every part requires a huge level

of skill, not necessarily available in another country.”

Thomas Cantoni

7978

The liquid

lenses:

miniature

dimensions

and high image

quality

V a r i o p t i c

How water droplets are making cameras more human

What if lenses were liquid?

Jean-Michel Tixier

Bruno Berge isn’t your average boss. In the

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

lead him in an unexpected direction.

Berge’s lab work centered on electrowetting,

a technique that uses electricity to alter the

shape of a drop of liquid: “I discovered a new

way of doing it,” he recalls. “The only problem

was, I had no idea what it could be used for.”

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 fi eld 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.

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 fi rst

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.

The liquid lenses’ miniature dimensions and

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 fi elds 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.”

8180

Thymoglobuline®

now ships around

the world

G e n z y m e

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

What if you transplant intelligence

into a new corporate entity?

Accounts of body parts being grafted together

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

captured many a scientist’s imagination.

Actual attempts at organ transplants as

early as the 16th century were often

successful – but only for a short time. Then

the host’s immune system rejected the

“intruding” cells – and vice versa. This

problem, fi rst documented in the early 1900s by French

surgeon and Nobel Prize winner Alexis Carrel, remains

to this day one of transplantation practitioners’ two major

headaches.

For decades, researchers around the world looked for

drugs that could temporarily suppress the immune

reaction, allowing the grafted part to be accepted. In

France, the Institut Pasteur recorded major advances

in the 1950s and 1960s, successfully controlling the

reaction of recipients to grafts. Its experimental serum

was used in the world’s fi rst heart transplants in Cape

Town and Paris in 1967 and 1968 – and later became a

patented drug, Thymoglobuline®.

The drug was fi rst approved for use in France in 1983

and most EU countries followed suit. Thymoglobuline®

also proved effective in treating very rare diseases, for

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

develop its potential. In 2003, a suitable

recipient was found: Genzyme, the world’s

third largest biotechnology company.

The compatibility was complete. Though

Genzyme hails from Cambridge,

Massachusetts, on the other side of the

ocean, its DNA was very similar: the same focus on

innovation, the same concern for employee welfare – just

a more worldwide presence and a longer term vision.

Rather than uproot Thymoglobuline® from its

environment and disconnect it from the channels of

intelligence it originates from, Genzyme is expanding

its production capacity in Lyon. A new facility will open

in 2010 in the world-renowned biotechnology district of

Gerland. It will set a new standard for environmental

friendliness.

Thymoglobuline® now ships around the world.

Practitioners have treated more than 100,000 patients

with the drug and have to a great extent mastered the

immune response. So what is their other major headache

regarding transplantation? Simple: the lack of donors.

Matthieu Roussel

8382

Look

launched the

world’s fi rst

ever carbon

bike frame

How French carbon fi ber technology has become an Olympic champion

L o o k

What if the greatest bicycle

performance was effortless?

The story begins in the 1980’s, when Look, a

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.

The engineers from Look dreamed up a

bicycle pedal that would automatically

release the foot in the event of a fall, while

increasing pedaling effi ciency at the same

time. In 1985, a year after the new pedal was

launched, Bernard Hinault used it to win the

Tour de France.

Inspired by that success, Look decided to

reinvent the rest of the bicycle too. It was a time when

the use of new composite materials in tennis racquets,

Formula One cars and airplane components was boosting

performances in all three domains. Why not apply carbon

fi ber technology to bicycle frames? Once again, Look’s

engineers were ahead of the game.

In 1986 – the year Look launched the world’s fi rst ever

carbon bike frame – Greg Lemond used it to ride to victory

in the Tour de France. Offering a combination of lightness

and rigidity that puts steel and aluminum in the shade,

carbon fi ber soon became the material of choice for

serious cyclists.

Look went on to win three “Best Bike of the

Year” awards and a glowing international

reputation. The company’s carbon fi ber frames

now equip the French, American, Japanese,

Canadian and Polish cycling teams and brought

home nine medals at the last Olympics.

The price of that success has been a fl ood

of cheap imitations. Making a carbon frame

is a labor-intensive business, in which every part has to

be cut and positioned by hand.

Unsurprisingly, 90% of them are now made in China. Yet

China’s own cycling federation chose the French company

to supply the frames for its track, road and cross-country

teams at the Beijing Games. Proof that imitation is the

sincerest form of fl attery, after all.

Thomas Cantoni

8584

Patrick

Blanc’s

unique

vertical

gardens are

bringing

wildlife to

city walls

P a t r i c k B l a n c

How an artifi cial moss is bringing nature to walls

What if gardens were vertical?

1967. Most Parisian teenagers have Beatles posters

on their bedroom walls. Patrick Blanc has plants.

Ferns and philodendrons grow out of damp

fl oorcloths, pinned up from fl oor to ceiling. The

plants like it fine. His mother is less

enthusiastic: decomposing fl oorcloths don’t

smell very good. Blanc agrees to put his

experiment on hold.

1972. Patrick Blanc dyes his hair green and

sets off to explore the tropical forests of

Malaysia and Thailand. What he fi nds takes

him right back to his bedroom wall. The

plants don’t just grow out of the ground.

They cover vertical surfaces too – tree

trunks, cliffs and rock outcrops – spreading

anywhere they can fi nd water. Back in Paris,

Blanc starts studying tropical botany. He

ends up with a doctorate and a few new ideas for his

project.

1988. With a house of his own to experiment in, Blanc has

been perfecting his vertical garden concept. He now uses

a metal frame fi xed to a wall. He bolts a sheet of PVC to

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.

An automatic system keeps the felt soaked with

a solution of water and nutrients. Blanc patents

his brainchild as “a system enabling plants to

be grown without soil on a vertical surface”.

2007. Patrick Blanc’s unique vertical gardens

are bringing wildlife to city walls, from LA

restaurants to art museums in Japan. His

800 square-metre creation on the facade of

Paris’ Musée du Quai Branly brings together

15,000 plants from 150 different species.

Future projects include a skyscraper in Qatar

and a harbor in Vietnam.

By creating urban habitats for birds and insects, Blanc’s

gardens promote biodiversity. They also act as an insulating

layer, reducing the building’s energy consumption. And

with no more decomposing fl oorcloths to worry about, you

could even put one in your bedroom.

Jean-Michel Tixier

8786

The cab

remains the

benchmark

for driver

care ever

since

R e n a u l t Tr u c k s

How a truck maker set out to transform the driving experience

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

Every boy’s eyes light up when he sees a huge,

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

a cramped cab.

“Wait a minute,” said the young designer

in Renault Trucks’ design center in Lyon.

“This is where the man lives! We should

build the truck around the driver and make

him feel at home.”

In 1990, the fi rst Magnum rolled out of the

factory. The sleek cab, designed by

Lamborghini-shaper Marcello Gandini, was

immediately hailed a revolution and has

remained the benchmark for driver care

ever since. After the Volvo Group acquired Renault Trucks

in 2001, it gave the French team a free rein to build the

new models – keeping the Magnum heritage intact.

First, the fl oor of the cab: it’s totally fl at. The engine’s

“dog-house” between the seats is gone, letting the driver

walk around freely. And he doesn’t bend over either: the

ceiling is more than two meters high.

Based on a survey of drivers’ “dream truck”, further

improvements were made to the 2008 model. The front

overhead storage unit is three times larger and an extra

95 litre unit has been added behind the driver’s head.

When seated, the driver looks out over the traffi c from

more than three meters above the road. The Magnum’s

windscreen is immense, offering excellent visibility. And

because the glass is also fl at, the truck’s unique electric

curtain covers it entirely. Modular interior

lighting matches each particular moment

of the day and the driver’s activities. And to

perfect the ambiance, the new range of radio

equipment includes a CD and MP3 player,

with Bluetooth and USB connections.

Top specs are also evident under the fl oor.

The engine is the Group’s most powerful,

delivering excellent acceleration even on a

slope with a full load. And the truck’s Optibrake

is the best engine brake on the market.

“For haulage companies, a key challenge is to retain the

best drivers,” says Benoît Caron, Head of Renault Trucks’

Long Distance range. “And those who try out the Magnum

have a hard time going back to other trucks.”

And this rolling design icon still puts a sparkle in little

boys’ eyes when it turns the corner. With its chrome-

fi nished accessories, LEDs, sunshade with marker lights,

twin shade radiator and three-part bumper, the Renault

Magnum fl aunts its unique personality.

Thomas Cantoni

8988

Converting

every shop

window

into an

information

portal

What if shop windows could talk?

How seaweed is teaching window-dressers a lesson

Touch Communication System

On the way back from dinner, something

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.

Apartments and houses flit across the

surface of the window, in response to a stroke

from your fi nger. You pause on one of them

and call up the full description. It is a good

thing you decided to walk back.

There is something about ambling down a

street and peering into shop windows that

no amount of e-commerce can replace.

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 fi nd out the price – all without going into the

shop. You could read the latest news headlines too. Or

watch a fi lm 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

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-defi nition 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 refl ects images from a

video projector with outstanding clarity.

Viewers on the pavement outside can pilot

the system with their fi ngertips, thanks to

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.

Laurent Cilluffo

9190

What if there could be fi re without smoke?

How cleaner energy veterans invented zero carbon coal plants

Electricity,

but no

emissions

G E E n e r g yThomas Cantoni

Want electricity, but no emissions? Well,

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.

And yet, more than 25 years ago, a team of

engineers in Belfort, Eastern France, played

a pivotal role in inventing the combined

cycle gas plant. With a conversion rate of

60%, it is by far the most effi cient method

of burning hydrocarbons – and the

cleanest.

Instead of just blasting the burning fumes through a

reactor and releasing them directly into the sky, this

system adds a boiler behind to capture the heat and

produce steam.

By doubling the fuel effi ciency, combined cycle gas-fi red

plants have become the benchmark for producing cleaner

energy with fossil fuels. They release four times less

carbon dioxide per kilowatt than coal-fi red plants.

So does that spell the death sentence of coal furnaces?

Not if our Belfort engineers have their way. The same

Belfort team that revisited gas burning has grown in the

process into GE Energy’s global center of expertise for

combined cycle plants, with 2,000 employees – including

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

made up of carbon dioxide and hydrogen,

which are then easy to separate. The hydrogen

burns and the CO2 – once regulatory approval

is obtained – can be stowed away. The method

also separates the other impurities, such as

sulphur dioxide, mercury and particulates.

Naturally, the capture and sequestration of CO2 costs

money. But as emission allowance markets spring up

around the world, emitting carbon into the atmosphere is

beginning to cost utilities as well.

Many countries rely heavily on coal for energy production,

and unlike oil and gas, there’s enough coal to last us more

than a century at current consumption rates. And yet coal

burning is already the single greatest source of man-made

greenhouse gases.

As policy-makers become more concerned about

pollution and climate change, we might discover a new

generation of energy-effi cient thermal power plants,

producing no smoke whatsoever.

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.

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

Invest in France Agency (IFA)

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