In France, we love the idea of innovation. But too often, innovation stays in the realm of discourse: funded without producing, designed without being integrated, conceived without scaling up. Here are five concrete levers to help industrial innovation take off in France.

In France, we love the idea of innovation.
But too often, innovation stays in the realm of discourse: funded without producing, designed without being integrated, conceived without scaling up.
Meanwhile, industrial SMEs fight every day to keep systems running, serve their customers, and deliver reliable products, not promises.
So, how can we make innovation truly serve industry?
Here are five concrete levers
to help industrial innovation take off in France.
Too much public funding goes to ideas that will never reach the workshop.
What should be done:
Direct funding towards projects with a real potential for rapid industrialization those with a genuine chance to result in a tangible, delivered, tested, and used product.
→ What BIBUS France does:
We support our clients from feasibility study to the industrializable version and beyond.
The fact: “Invention” or “concept” often takes center stage, but the art of making all the technical pieces work together is just as strategic.
The challenge: Recognize the value of those who can coordinate expertise and manage constraints so that the system truly works.
→ What BIBUS France does:
Our engineers design robust technical architectures, built to integrate seamlessly with customer environments.
For us, innovation is first and foremost systemic.
The problem: Many projects fail not because of the technology… but because of poor coordination between disciplines.
The solution: Appoint a conductor from day one, someone who understands the technical challenges, but also production realities, timelines, purchasing, and field operations.
→ What BIBUS France does:
Our project managers and design office leads ensure strategic alignment between the client, our partners, and the production chain, guaranteeing project success.
We speak everyone’s language, so everyone moves forward together.
Innovation isn’t always about radical invention.
It’s often about a smart mix, an intelligent reuse, an effective transposition.
The challenge: Value those who can combine proven technical components to meet new needs.
→ What BIBUS does:
Since 1964, we’ve been a key player in industrialized solutions across:
In practice, we build reliable, precise, ergonomic, and production-ready systems by combining existing technologies with deep field expertise.
In industry, projects don’t fail because the idea is bad…
They fail because they weren’t designed with production, certification, and integration constraints in mind from the start.
And many SMEs simply lack the time or resources to invest in test benches or prototyping tools.
Strategic lever: Co-innovation doesn’t mean joining a project — it means co-designing with the client a system that will survive the transition from prototype to production.
That means:
→ What BIBUS France does:
Through our BIBUS Solutions division,
The result: fewer technical risks, fewer costly iterations… and a faster, safer, and more sustainable scale-up.
We benefit from the collective strength of the group's 50 companies, its presence in 30 countries, and an expansion dynamic that feeds our joint innovation drive.
Supply chains have been around as long as the concept of production itself, but technology and industrial expansion have made them even more complex.
We offer standard, long-proven solutions as well as innovative systems that are fully modeled and designed to meet complex technical challenges.
In 2017, one of our key account customers in the Defense sector asked us to provide him with our latest Ecovadis CSR assessment. This was the prerequisite for any collaboration between us...