b<>com continues its transformation and unveils the arrival of three new investor members to its innovation circle and the introduction of a rotating presidency. These two major announcements reflect manufacturers' commitment to this model and the relevance of the transformation that began several months ago.
b<>com, companies' best ally for pooling R&I costs
b<>com accelerates technological transition by offering companies of all sizes access to semi-open innovation in a secure environment. By pooling research and combining their expertise, its industrial members, supported by the excellence of its academic members, reduce the economic risks associated with R&I and anticipate technological breakthroughs more effectively.
"In the current economic and geopolitical context, it is more essential than ever for companies and industries to innovate to remain competitive. Through our circle of trust, we offer them the opportunity to innovate while limiting risks and controlling their investments so that they can go faster and further," emphasizes Emmanuelle Garnaud-Gamache, CEO of IRT b<>com.
Three new SMEs join b<>com
b<>com continues to open up, offering SMEs simplified access to IRT skills. This new direction is reflected today in the arrival of three new members: Kinéis, Keyros Medica and Infogreen.
Kinéis, a Toulouse-based SME with an international dimension, has just deployed its 25 satellites to provide spatial connectivity for the Internet of Things (IoT). Creator of the first eponymous 100% European (and French) satcom constellation, it joins b<>com and a research project whose aim is to develop a 5G satellite connectivity technology NTN-IoT (Non-Terrestrial Network IoT), based on Nb-IoT technology. Kinéis wishes to draw on the expertise of b<>com and its members to launch its R&D work in preparation for its next-generation system.
"As a satcom operator specializing in IoT, Kinéis must rely on high-performance, mature, and industrialized technologies. However, we don't plan to explore all R&D topics ourselves, hence the interest for us to work with b<>om and thus benefit from their expertise in 5G/Nb-IoT connectivity. We're convinced that we need to put innovation at the heart of our future strategy," explains Vincent Deslandes, head of strategic projects at Kinéis.
Another SME to join the b<>com innovation circle is Keyros Medica. The company is developing an encyclopedia of immersive videos that is revolutionizing medical-surgical training. It hopes to draw on the volumetric video skills of b<>com and its members to add a new practical dimension and complete the user experience of its training library. The collaboration will take place within the framework of a project aimed at removing several technological barriers holding back the industrial adoption of immersive technologies.
"Extracting elements of interest from a real video and integrating them into our training tutorials will provide a new approach that will considerably improve the performance of our solution. We want to take interactivity a step further. Innovation will enable us to stand out from the crowd, reduce production costs, and reinforce our approach, which, until now, has been based on optimizing the mimetic stage by adding constructivism (trial-and-error learning) stage. This is precisely what we're looking for from b<>com," explains Maxime Ros, CEO of Keyros Medica.
The Infogreen Factory collective will be collaborating with b<>com on a research project aimed at fostering the sustainable transformation of organizations, by improving their capacity for anticipation, redirection and collective intelligence. In concrete terms, this will involve work on the robustness of companies: identification of weaknesses in the digital production chain, criticality of minerals, geographical concentration of competition...
A new mode of shared governance, accelerating synergies
b<>com's governance is being transformed, adopting a more agile collaboration mode, with the introduction of a rotating presidency as of April 1, 2025. Guillaume Tardiveau, Director of Value Creation and Communications at Orange, becomes the new chairman of b<>com: "I am honored and proud to be the first to embody this new mode of governance. It's no mean feat to commit to a rotating presidency: it's a strong mark of the involvement of the industrial investors. Thanks to their complementary visions, each chairman will bring new ideas and enrich R&I within this common house that is b<>com." This distributed governance approach offers additional leverage for generating synergies and is an original feature of the IRT model. After Orange, TDF and Airbus will, in turn, take over the presidency.
