ACCELERATING INNOVATION IN SUPPORT OF DEFENCE AND SECURITY
Generate by GICAT is a start-up accelerator dedicated to defense and security issues. In this sense, this program goes beyond simple operational support to also provide a strategic vision through the triptych
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Start-up accelerator for their strategy, visibility and commercial development
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Creator of content and thought leadership through several regular publications
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Animator of a network of innovation actors
This accelerator is a program of the Group of French industries for land and airland defense and security (GICAT) which has more than 270 members representing large groups, mid-size companies and SMEs. These members cover a wide spectrum of industrial, research, service and consulting activities for the benefit of military and civil, national and international components involved in land or air-land security and / or defense.
Generate Today supports 48 start-ups in a wide variety of fields including artificial intelligence, robotics, linguistics and cognitive analysis.
"Our mission is to create the most favorable conditions for the emergence and sustainability of start-ups in a sector where the economic issues specific to any innovation combine with specific customer requirements, including the armed and security forces. Beyond the need for profitability inherent to any business, these start-ups are also committed to support an ecosystem for the benefit of sovereign issues.
Changes in budgets and organisations mean that armies and security forces today adopt an approach of open innovation and collaboration with start-ups, some of which are not specialized in this sector. Our mission is therefore to promote this mutual and reciprocal acculturation, with rigor and responsibility, between the different actors of this vast ecosystem.
One of the critical aspects for our start-ups is obviously their financing, which today can no longer be based solely on public orders very early in the development cycle. This is how we set up with Patrick Giry-Deloison a Master Class and workshops program for start-ups which plan to raise seed funds, typically between € 200k and € 1m in capital. to which will be added grants and loans.
What our entrepreneurs appreciate about this system is Patrick's ability to provide both expertise in raising seed funds, in particular from Business Angels, but also entrepreneurial know-how in many sectors and markets. The workshops and the longitudinal follow-up over several months allow participants to implement the recommendations in their own situations and to have a benevolent "sparring partner" to become even more efficient thanks to personalised "business coaching".
Generate and SaMaTransformation share the same conviction: sharing and exchange, in other words collective intelligence, between different women and men, with projects that are not in competition and with complementary knowledge, are the keystone of successful innovation."
François Mattens, Co-founder of Generate and Director of Innovation and Public Affairs at GICAT