Paris

Entrepreneurship is finally making a mark on French public research, according to at least one important measure.

Last week the CNRS, France's main basic research agency, celebrated the creation of the 100th start-up company by its researchers — three years after a law was passed allowing such activity for the first time.

“The 1999 law is really behind the change of mentality that we are seeing in French researchers,” says Nicolas Mouz, a structural biologist who helped set up Protein'eXpert, a biotechnology company, while on sabbatical from a CNRS laboratory in Grenoble.

The law, which was championed by the research minister at the time, Claude Allègre, opened the door for researchers working in public universities and research agencies to run or own companies built on their research findings. France was later than most of its competitors in allowing publicly funded researchers to do this, and the law's supporters thought that this was constraining innovation in biotechnology and other sectors. The French law also provided around 80 million euros (US$80 million) to help support such companies.

Geneviève Berger, director general of the CNRS, says that the fostering of these small companies remains a top priority for the agency. It now aims to spin off at least 50 more companies each year from its laboratories, most of which are located in universities. The entrepreneurial culture needs to extend even further into the laboratories, she says, until researchers “are prepared to accept failures”.

But Tristan Rousselle, Protein'eXpert's chief executive, says that more needs to be done to pick up on innovations with potential, and to overcome reservations about commercial activity that, he says, still exist at some CNRS laboratories. “The system still relies on resourceful researchers finding ways to promote their own projects,” he says.

Researchers can expect France's new centre-right government to push hard for more business start-ups. Research minister Claudie Haigneré says she intends to reinforce her ministry's support for new companies, and the government is also expected to implement tax breaks for businesses that do research.