The 2021 MIT Paris Symposium is jointly hosted by the MIT Industrial Liaison Program and Groupe Bouygues, bringing together MIT academics, industry leaders, and startups to explore the impact of technology and non-linear changes on organizations, urban environments and innovation ecosystems.
When the future is uncertain, how can organizations feel confident in adapting to the changes to come? How can your organization expect and plan for the unexpected? Disruptive innovation is always possible across industry and consumer life, but with resilience through design, both through physically adaptive structures and flexible business frameworks, you can indeed be broadly prepared for change. From the invention of new technologies to the application of old ones in the physical world, the systems of today are responsive to the needs of our evolving environments.
In this conference you’ll learn how organizations are adapting to non-linear changes and discovering paths forward in highly unfamiliar times. You’ll also listen to experts discussing the impact of technology in the way cities evolve, how to build robust technology organizations and how corporations, academia and startups can work together to improve our societies.
Christophe Lienard joined the Bouygues Group in 2011 and was appointed Chief Innovation Officer for Bouygues SA in September 2017. From 2013 to 2017, he was Chief Innovation Officer at Colas, one of the world leaders in mobility infrastructures, and created and ran the Colas Innovation Board. In October 2015, Colas announced the launch of Wattway to produce photovoltaic energy from roads, which won the climate solution trophy at COP21. Previously, Lienard was Deputy CEO and Director of the Anovo Group from and earlier started his career with the Swedish group Atlas Copco. Lienard is a graduate from “Arts et Métiers ParisTech,” a National Graduate Engineering School engineer, has an advanced degree from UPMC Paris on energy conversion, and an Executive MBA from ICG. He is cofounder of the think tank Futura Mobility, cofounder and Vice President of IMPACT-AI, and a member of the Scientific Committee of the Global Center for the Future.
Karl Koster is the Executive Director of MIT Corporate Relations. MIT Corporate Relations includes the MIT Industrial Liaison Program and MIT Startup Exchange.
In that capacity, Koster and his staff work with the leadership of MIT and senior corporate executives to design and implement strategies for fostering corporate partnerships with the Institute. Koster and his team have also worked to identify and design a number of major international programs for MIT, which have been characterized by the establishment of strong, programmatic linkages among universities, industry, and governments. Most recently these efforts have been extended to engage the surrounding innovation ecosystem, including its vibrant startup and small company community, into MIT's global corporate and university networks.
Koster is also the Director of Alliance Management in the Office of Strategic Alliances and Technology Transfer (OSATT). OSATT was launched in Fall 2019 as part of a plan to reinvent MIT’s research administration infrastructure. OSATT develops agreements that facilitate MIT projects, programs and consortia with industrial, nonprofit, and international sponsors, partners and collaborators.
He is past chairman of the University-Industry Demonstration Partnership (UIDP), an organization that seeks to enhance the value of collaborative partnerships between universities and corporations.
He graduated from Brown University with a BA in geology and economics, and received an MS from MIT Sloan School of Management. Prior to returning to MIT, Koster worked as a management consultant in Europe, Latin America, and the United States on projects for private and public sector organizations.
Eduardo Garrido is a Program Director at the Office of Corporate Relations at MIT.
Eduardo Garrido has a strong multicultural and multidisciplinary background, with deep expertise in higher education, banking and management consulting, acquired in Argentina, Spain and USA. He currently serves as Program Director at the Industrial Liaison Program, Office of Corporate Relations (MIT), the largest conduit between corporations and MIT.
Before joining MIT, Eduardo was the Director of Santander Universities at Santander Bank, N.A., based in Boston, MA. In this role, he managed the institutional and business relationship with 46 universities, mainly in the northeastern US. He also served as Santander US representative at President Obama’s 100,000 Strong in the Americas initiative and the Woman for Africa Foundation, among other relevant global higher education projects, and as Member of the Global President’s Council at NYU and the Advisory Boards of the Deming Cup, ECLA (Columbia University) and Newcastle University Business School.
Before coming to the US, Eduardo had several roles at Banco Santander Rio (Argentina). As Director of Santander Universities, he started the first entrepreneurship initiative at Grupo Santander worldwide, including the launching of a business plan competition, the Technology Innovation Venture Capital Fund, and a national competitiveness development initiative. He also sponsored the first edition of MIT 50K in Argentina. As Director of Organization and Quality at Banco Santander Rio, he led the team that obtained the first Global ISO 9001:2000 certificate for a financial institution in Latin America, certifying all main processes and areas of the bank. He also steered the business process reengineering project for the whole Bank, partnering with Ernst & Young and McKinsey and Co and implemented the Retail Banking new operating model.
Before joining Banco Santander Rio, Eduardo was Senior Manager of the Financial Services and Capital Markets Group at Price Waterhouse Management Consultants in Madrid, Spain. He was the Practice Leader of Business Process Reengineering, Financial Risk Management and Risk Adjusted Profitability Measurement.
Before his assignment at Price Waterhouse he served as Director of Consulting Services at MSA International, Inc. and as Financial Control Manager at Citibank España, S.A.
Eduardo graduated as Industrial Engineer at Universidad de Buenos Aires and has a MBA degree from IE Business School.
How some organizations generate value faster than others, with rewards for all stakeholders, is the focal question for Steve Spear (DBA MS MS), senior lecturer at MIT, author of The High Velocity Edge, and patent holder for the See to Solve Real Time Alert System. Winners create new knowledge and skills faster—ideally, everyone discovering something new always. These ideas have been expounded across Harvard Business Review, Annals of Internal Medicine and Academic Medicine, School Administrator, and Proceeding of the US Naval Institute. Proofs in practice include Pratt and Whitney’s winning the F-35 engine contract, the Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Systems “Perfecting Patient Care System,” standing up the Alcoa Business System, and development/promotion of the Navy’s High Velocity Learning initiative.
Even before the social and economic disruptions of the pandemic, we were already in a period of non linear changes—huge advances in data sciences for retrospective (machine learning) and predictive (artificial intelligence) modeling and a revolution in biotech to name but a few all in the context of an international order trying to reconfigure its multipolarity and domestic situations being buffeted by once in a generation social fluxes. Non-linear change is particularly vexing; our past is abruptly a poor predictor of our future yet we still have to navigate ourselves and our organizations so they maintain a high degree of social relevance.
Fortunately, even if we cannot extrapolate experience into prediction, we can discover where we need to go and how to get there by building mechanisms for fast and frequent exploration and prospecting of unfamiliar situations. Done rigorously and reliably enough, we can push out quickly the frontiers of where we are comfortable and confident operating.
These points about why and how to discover our paths forward in highly unfamiliar times will be illustrated by examples drawn from various sectors—high-tech, services, governmental and public sector operations, and others. The objective is that participants will be exposed to a number of useful frameworks, the use of which in their own situations will offer clarity on how to manage in situations that are otherwise unfamiliar.
Luis Perez-Breva, PhD (http://linkedin.com/in/lpbreva) is an innovator, entrepreneur, educator and the author of Innovating: A Doer’s Manifesto (The MIT Press, 2017). He is an expert in technology innovation, venture labs, taking deep tech to impact, and applying artificial intelligence to solve real-world problems. He has enjoyed success with inventions and new companies in security, telecom, fintech, and genetics to name some. Chiefly among them is the AI-based system to locate 911 calls in case of emergency deployed worldwide. His work has been featured by the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, BBC, Wharton Business Radio, Entrepreneur, Zdnet, Quartz, Epsilon Theory and several other national and international media.
Currently, Luis is the Faculty Director of Innovation Teams (iTeams http://iteams.mit.edu), MIT’s flagship joint enterprise between MIT Engineering and MIT Sloan to put the Institute’s deep tech advances to work to solve real-world problems. Through iTeams, he has helped nearly 200 MIT technologies find a path to impact leading to the formation of some 40 new, enduring deep tech companies across all industries from mining to telecommunications.
Luis has worked with venture capital and numerous corporations and adapted his work to develop innovating factories. Currently, Luis is developing a technology repurposing fund to rescue, recycle, and, in essence, turn around technologies analogous to how private equity seeks to turn around companies.
Dr. Perez-Breva holds a PhD in artificial intelligence from MIT and degrees in chemical engineering, physics, and business from leading universities in Spain (Institut Quimic de Sarrià), France (Ecole Normale Supérieure), and the United States (MIT). In 2011, the Spanish government recognized his career achievements by awarding him the Order of Civil Merit of the Kingdom of Spain.
Contrary to popular belief, building a robust technology organization doesn’t hinge on having a good (exponential?) idea but on surviving all your bad ones – systematically.
Most would rally behind the belief that technology ought to change the world for the better— solve problems that matter! Innovation!. That is all fine and well except that the last two decades of innovation methods don’t explain how to do any of that. And yet, using technology to level the playing field, doing good and doing well, and learning to invent and innovate with what you have are the kind of superpowers many hope for when the word innovation is invoked.
I’ve spent the last two decades wrestling with the question of how to do innovation, not just how it happens, or how it threatens what you do, but what it means and how do you do it. Along this time I’ve shepherded over 200 technologies from MIT (Deep tech!) to impact; educated thousands at MIT and worldwide across all disciplines from policy to business and engineering on how to innovate; helped translate research into societal meaning; built factories of innovation in industry and venture capital where we systematically invent and create new organizations; and have built technology companies myself using artificial intelligence to derive new uses from existing large scale infrastructures.
I’d very much like to engage you in a conversation about what about innovation, if anything, may be useful to you as we start the post-pandemic reconstruction—we’ve had enough disruption already. I’ll draw from my experience at MIT and building innovation factories to discuss how to innovate efficiently with technology; that is, how to conceive diversified technology organizations, how to meaningfully de-risk them, and what it takes to scale up a robust organization.
Join us for a conversation about what it takes to conceive, invent, design, plan, de-risk and ultimately build organizations that use technology as a tool to solve problems that matter sustainably. That is doing well and doing good.
An architect and engineer by training, Professor Carlo Ratti teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he directs the Senseable City Lab, and is a founding part-ner of the international design and innovation office Carlo Ratti Associati. He graduated from the Politecnico di Torino and the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris, and later earned his MPhil and PhD at the University of Cambridge, UK.
A leading voice in the debate on new technologies’ impact on urban life and design, Car-lo has co-authored over 500 publications, including “The City of Tomorrow” (Yale University Press, with Matthew Claudel), and holds several technical patents. His articles and interviews have appeared on international media including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Scientific American, BBC, Project Syn-dicate, Corriere della Sera, Il Sole 24 Ore, Domus. His work has been exhibited worldwide at venues such as the Venice Biennale, the Design Museum Barcelona, the Science Museum in London, MAXXI in Rome, and MoMA in New York City.
Carlo has been featured in Esquire Magazine’s ‘Best & Brightest’ list and in Thames & Hud-son’s selection of ‘60 innovators’ shaping our creative future. Blueprint Magazine included him as one of the ‘25 People Who Will Change the World of Design’, Forbes listed him as one of the ‘Names You Need To Know’ and Fast Company named him as one of the ’50 Most Influen-tial Designers in America’. He was also featured in Wired Magazine’s ‘Smart List: 50 people who will change the world’. Three of his projects – the Digital Water Pavilion, the Copenhagen Wheel and Scribit – have been included by TIME Magazine in the list of the ‘Best Inventions of the Year’.
Carlo has been a presenter at TED (in 2011 and 2015), program director at the Strelka Insti-tute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow, curator of the BMW Guggenheim Pavilion in Berlin, and was named Inaugural Innovator in Residence by the Queensland Government. He was the curator of the Future Food District pavilion for the 2015 World Expo in Milan and chief curator of the "Eyes of the City" section at the 2019 UABB Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism of Shenzhen. He is currently serving as co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Cities and Urbanization.
The way we live, work, and play is very different today than it was just a few decades ago, thanks in large part to a network of connectivity that now encompasses most people on the planet. In a similar way, today we are at the beginning of a new technological revolution: the Internet is entering the physical space – the traditional domain of architecture and design – becoming an “Internet of Things” or IoT. As such, it is opening the door to a variety of applications that – in a similar way to what happened with the first wave of the Internet – can encompass many domains: from production to citizen participation, from energy to mobility to public hygiene, all of which requiring new insights due to the changes brought forth by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The contribution from Prof. Carlo Ratti will address these issues from a critical point of view through projects by the Senseable City Laboratory, a research initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the design office Carlo Ratti Associati.
Vincent Maret is Open Innovation Director with Bouygues SA, where he focuses on open innovation, business development, and business transformation consulting across the whole group, with an emphasis on digital transformation, energy, and smartcities. Maret has experience as Marketing Manager, Deputy R&D Director with Bouygues Telecom, and previously as a Project Executive with IBM Global Services. He was the founder and CEO of the US Office of Bouygues Telecom (now Winnovation). Maret serves on the board of directors of Bouygues Asia, is also a board member of Cap Digital, serving as president of its Membership Committee, and sits on the board of ESPCI alumni. Maret is a graduate of ESPCI ParisTech with a master’s in physics and a master’s in chemistry and holds a master's in electronics from UPMC Paris.
Bouygues Bâtiment France Europe annonce la nomination de Fabrice DENIS au poste de Directeur général du pôle « Construire Autrement » à compter du 26 août 2021. Cette nomination fait écho à la stratégie carbone du groupe Bouygues Construction et illustre la volonté de Bouygues Bâtiment France Europe d’accélérer sa transformation pour apporter des réponses durables aux enjeux des territoires et de ses clients. Ainsi, le nouveau pôle « Construire Autrement » de Bouygues Bâtiment France Europe rassemble et mobilise des ressources logistiques et organisationnelles sans précédent dans l’objectif de limiter l’impact environnemental des projets et de construire mieux et différemment en créant une rupture dans la façon de concevoir et de construire.
Carole Desnost began her career in the automotive manufacturer PSA Group in 1986. She was successively materials and research engineer, project manager for recycling activities, deputy director for public affairs. In 1999 Director for market & Service and in 2003, deputy director for Asia Pacific, launching Peugeot activities in China.
In 2005, she became director for advanced technologies for the PSA Group, leading the Disruptive advanced technologies department, dedicated on Interior equipment (IHM), Electronics, Aerodynamics and Energy solutions for future vehicles.
In 2008, she joined RHODIA –SOLVAY as VP Innovation. She stimulated Research and Strategic Marketing teams with 150+ people around new growth territories and breakthrough technologies, contributed to company transformation in re-designing Innovation imperatives and launched Venture Capital activities.
In 2012, she joined PLASTIC OMNIUM as VP Research and Development. She drove R&D strategy through extended team of 1200+ resources focusing on growth and accelerating international development articulated around major objectives as projects management, process, design, quality and productivity. She shaped mid/long term Innovation strategy, defined Innovation key priorities, implemented new management structure and chaired new R&D reporting rhythm within COMEX, accelerated International expansion in launching new Design centers in China and India, doubling engineering footprint in Slovakia.
In 2015, she joined SNCF as Chief Innovation Officer. She is leading innovation at SNCF (team of 100 +) to promote the use of new technologies to improve competitiveness of railway system, developing in close cooperation with all keys actors of rail industry a new vision for the future of railway. She reinforces cooperative attitude in Research activities at European level, SNCF strongly supporting the major Research programs, Shift2Rail. She supports the definition of a strategic vision on mobility, with implementation of disruptive technologies as Artificial intelligence, autonomous train, etc. She launched programs and implemented disruptive technologies and imagine new business models for mobility activities. She reinforces a worldwide academic partnership (MIT, IVADO…).
In 2021, she joined SNCF COMEX and became Chief Technical officer still leading innovation and developing new activities and major programs reporting to CEO.
Fabrice Tocco, French entrepreneur, co-CEO and co-founder of Dawex, is a recognized expert in the data economy, and regularly invited to engage with the European and international institutions as a speaker. He strongly believes that data is the mirror of the economy, and to boost tomorrow’s economy it’s essential that organizations position data exchange at the core of their business strategy.
In 2015, Fabrice jumped into his second entrepreneurial adventure with Laurent Lafaye and co-created Dawex. The company’s mission is to facilitate and accelerate secure data exchanges between economic stakeholders, institutions and private organizations, contributing to the development of the data economy. In June 2020, Dawex was awarded “Tech Pioneer” by the World Economic Forum and joined the Global Future Council on Data Policy convening 30 of the most relevant and knowledgeable thought leaders on data.
Gataca: Building a new identity layer for the Internet
Boundless Digital: Bringing efficiency to enterprise IT network management through automation
Interpretable AI: Bridging the gap between performance and interpretability
Dawex: Facilitate and accelerate secure data circulation between economic stakeholders, institutions and private organizations.
Geoflex: Hypergeolocalisation everywhere, 4cm positioning on land, at sea and in the air
Mobilus: Full-stack voice and data solution to enable teams of any size, to connect at any distance, from any environment
Defined by Forbes as one of the 21 leaders of change in 2021, Irene is an entrepreneur, researcher and business leader currently serving as CEO at GATACA, a cybersecurity company on a mission to give users back control over their personal data through Decentralized Digital Identity technology. In addition to being an expert in blockchain-based enterprise solutions, she is a professor of Blockchain Applications at OBS, and regularly speaks at international conferences. Irene started GATACA after conducting extensive research on decentralized architectures for identity and energy financing systems while working at MIT’s Media Lab. Before MIT, Irene spent a decade advising U.S. and European Multinational Corporations on IT strategies and global product architecture. She holds an MBA from MIT, a Master of Aeronautics from EOI, and a Master of Science in Telecommunications Engineering.
Sidney graduated from MIT in 2003 with dual undergrad degrees in Math and Physics. He later moved to France to study at the Ecoles des Mines of Paris, and obtained a PhD in Quantum Physics from UPMC. He then left academia to move to the world of startups, having worked in or founded several startups over the last 11 years. He has vast experience in leading the design and development of network management and infrastructure automation solutions.
Maxime Amram is a Research Scientist at Interpretable AI, where he develops cutting edge machine learning research to drive value for organizations. For the past 3 years, he has been working with a team of researchers led by MIT Professor Dimitris Berstimas to deliver interpretable and transparent predictions to industry partners. Maxime also leads product development and market expansion in the company’s new Paris office. He graduated from Ecole Centrale Paris in 2017 and he holds a master’s degree from the MIT Operations Research Center.
A serial entrepreneur in GPS/GNSS technology, Romain Legros is currently CEO and founder of Geoflex, a startup born in 2012, delivering corrections to satellite navigation services (GNSS constellations) to provide centimetric accuracy worldwide. Customers and partners include companies such as Airbus, Orange, Renault, Thales Alenia Space, SNCF or TotalEnergies.
Prior to Geoflex Romain was at the inception of Geodata Diffusion, a French provider of GNSS correction service, where he was a shareholder and Managing Director. Geodata Diffusion was sold to Hexagon AB in 2014.
Romain Legros holds a Master degree of Engineering from Ecole Nationale des Sciences Géographiques and a Master degree in GIS Architecture.
Jordan is the CEO and Founder of Mobilus Labs. As an Inventor, Engineer, and Entrepreneur he has focused his career on developing intelligent systems to operate in extreme environments. His experience in this field includes working with MIT, Lockheed Martin, and Co-Directing the NASA Frontier Development Lab. He’s a member of the Royal Academy of Engineers, former TEDx speaker and enjoys working with under represented youth in STEM fields. Jordan received his degrees from MIT and Stanford University in Aeronautical / Astronautical Engineering with a focus on Ocean and Space Robotics.
Olivier Roussat is a graduate of INSA – Lyon. He began his career in 1988 at IBM, where he occupied a number of positions in data network services, service delivery and pre-sales. He joined Bouygues Telecom in 1995 to set up the network management centre and network processes. He then became head of network operations and telecoms and IT service delivery. In May 2003, he was appointed network manager and became a member of the Executive Committee of Bouygues Telecom. In January 2007, Olivier Roussat took charge of the performance and technology unit which groups Bouygues Telecom’s cross-disciplinary technical and IT departments, including networks, information systems, process engineering, purchasing, corporate services and property development. He was also given responsibility for Bouygues Telecom’s headquarters and Technopôle buildings. Olivier Roussat became Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Bouygues Telecom in February 2007 and was appointed Chief Executive Officer in November 2007. He was then Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Bouygues Telecom from May 2013 to November 2018, before being appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors of Bouygues Telecom on 9 November 2018. On 1 October 2019, he was appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors of Colas SA. On 30 August 2016, Olivier Roussat was appointed Deputy CEO of Bouygues and on 17 February 2021, he was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Bouygues.