This report which title could be translated as At the Origins of disruptive Innovation: Who Conducts Research? Who Innovates? is published by La Fabrique de l’industrie, a think-tank on industrial issues, whose author, Vincent Charlet, is its general delegate. In their preface, the two co-chairmen of La Fabrique, Pierre-André de Chalendar and Louis Gallois, point out that the report comes at a time when France needs to mitigate the risks of technological dependence on non-European states—the risks of which were highlighted in a previous report.[1]
Charlet Vincent, Aux sources de l’innovation de rupture. Qui cherche ? Qui innove ?, Paris: Presses des Mines / La Fabrique de l’industrie (Les Notes de la Fabrique), March 2025, 148 p.
It compares the global share of patents filed by several countries—members of the European Union, the United States, China, Japan and Korea—for 12 breakthrough technologies (hydrogen for transport, batteries for electric vehicles, offshore wind turbines, the quantum computer, messenger RNA [ribonucleic acid], biological recycling of plastics, etc.). It describes the stages in the innovation process.
In the first chapter, the author points out that the debate on the relationship between science and innovation is not new: does it follow a linear model? Although this is disputed, it is relevant, according to Vincent Charlet, with recent statistics showing that the proportion of patents based on scientific knowledge has increased over the last 25 years.
The second chapter details the relationship between articles and breakthrough patents (100,000 patent families filed between 2010 and 2021). On average, each of them cites eight other patents as well as 1.6 references and 108,600 article
