Opening symposium 2019-2020
Innovation confers functional value on some of the radically original discoveries made possible by fundamental research, and the resulting incremental progress, for markets, companies and our societies. In these activities, novelty is a central value, to which are linked scientific and industrial competitions for priority, and the legal and economic protection of inventions.
But novelty can also, as in the arts, be the fruit of creative differentiation, with no direct functional utility and therefore no foreseeable obsolescence.
Research has been internationalized at least since the Renaissance in Europe. Along with innovation, it is one of the vectors of globalization. It weaves powerful bonds of exchange, cooperation and competition between scientists and between countries. And it makes itself the object of study, so that we can better understand the driving forces behind invention, and the principles of good organization of activities that are as uncertain of their fruits as they are certain of their necessity.
The contribution of innovation, and upstream research, to economic growth is now well established.
It is more audacious to claim to define the precise contours of their contribution to "social cohesion", given that the effects of technological upheaval are so complex, generating hopes, concerns and fractures, but are, in the final analysis, impossible to distribute in a Manichean lexicon.
To take the measure of the multiple value of inventiveness, this Collège de France opening symposium will give a voice to those involved in research and innovation, in the spirit of disciplinary, international and thematic openness that is the signature of its annual opening symposium.
Scientific Committee
Dominique Charpin, Françoise Combes, Antoine Compagnon, Jean Dalibard, Hugues de Thé, Marc Fontecave, Pierre-Michel Menger, Alain Prochiantz, Thomas Römer, Jean-Marie Tarascon
Symposium organized with the support of the Fondation Hugot du Collège de France.