Recherche

Yesterday, with a view to identifying future technological partners in the field of radiocommunications, Thales met around thirty innovative SMEs to a one-day event under the terms of the "Pacte PME" (SME pact), an initiative launched in 2005 by OSEO and the Comité Richelieu that aims to make relations between large corporations and SMEs easier.

SMEs: Essential Thales partners

Thales, whose strategy for innovation is driven by real industrial and scientific cooperation, has always considered SMEs to be essential partners to its development. In 2007, through its active participation in competitiveness clusters and its signature of the Pacte PME, the group dedicated more than 30% of its purchasing in France to SMEs.
"In 2007, Thales spent no less than 18% of its income, more than €2.2 billion, on R&D," explained Marko Erman, Vice-President, Research and Development, Thales Land and Joint Division. "Beyond research itself, innovation is clearly the core of our strategy and one of the foundations for Thales' success. This process pushes us on to constantly seek out partners capable of helping us meet the technological challenges of our clients - armed forces and security groups from all over the world - as effectively as possible. With a project like RadioTech, our approach is to clearly identify the innovative SMEs that can effectively support us in our approach, with the help of the Pacte PME. In return, we also believe that a partnership with a company such as Thales would help SMEs boost their own growth."

A one-day event for meeting and sharing ideas...

With this in mind, on Tuesday 1st July, Thales met with around thirty companies specialized in the radiocommunications sector, which the group selected from a list the Pacte PME prepared, to take part in a workshop on "New-Generation Radiocommunications."

After an introductory plenary session designed to present Thales' projects and the group's policy for working with SMEs, RadioTech continued with thematic workshops on the following topics:
· Transmission/reception modules,
· Antennas and antenna networks,
· Single - and multi-channel modulation - demodulation.

This event gave Thales' technical and purchasing managers the chance to talk about their expectations and let the SMEs demonstrate their skills and their command of technologies related to radiocommunications.
RadioTech kicked off these long-term partnerships that will progressively enable interested SMEs to help Thales explore new avenues and prepare the radiocommunications programs and products of tomorrow.

About Thales
Thales is a leading international electronics and systems group, addressing defense, aerospace and security markets worldwide. Thales' leading-edge technology is supported by 22,000 R&D engineers who offer a capability unmatched in Europe to develop and deploy field-proven mission-critical information systems. To this end, the group's civil and military businesses develop in parallel and share a common base of technologies to serve a single objective: the security of people, property and nations. The group builds its growth on its unique multi-domestic strategy based on trusted partnerships with national customers and market players, while leveraging its global expertise to support local technology and industrial development. Thales employs 68,000 people in 50 countries with 2007 revenues of €12.3 billion.

About the Pacte PME
The Pacte PME, which was introduced in late 2005 by OSEO and the Comité Richelieu, is a program that aims to make relations between innovative SMEs and large corporations easier. It combines support schemes with a standard-setting policy based on a voluntary commitment to transparency by the large corporations that sign the pact. This non-restrictive approach is an updated version of the American Small Business Act that shares this act's prime objective: emulating competition, which, by reducing SMEs' age- and size-related obstacles, is beneficial for the economy as a whole.
The Pacte PME's support schemes encourage all stages of relations between innovative SMEs and large corporations: identification, assessment, contract formalization, and export support.
In 2007, the figures published in the Pacte PME's activity report shows that SMEs made up €7.2 billion of large corporations' purchasing volume. In 2006, the proportion of SMEs in large signatory corporations' purchasing increased from 19% to 20%, a €1.3 billion increase.
In the foreword to this report, French President Nicolas Sarkozy called the Pacte PME "A key program for the French economy" and asked the State's departments "to carefully examine all the information published on relations between large signatory corporations, be they public or private, and innovative SMEs."
For further information: www.pactepme.org
For details on all of OSEO's initiatives in favor of SMEs: www.oseo.fr
For further information on the Comité Richelieu: www.comite-richelieu.org