Alain André, Denis Chambrier, and the CICA team, have reminded successes and they have revealed their projects : the animation of a private breeding-ground five hundred meters further.
What's the force of the CICA ? One of its secrets takes up in the conviviality and in the links that have been made in this high-tech numerous family which has round in the Lumière auditorium for the farewell drink of the CI COM organisation team. This complicity, this synergy that have been established between the start-ups, this constant technologic bubbling explain why this great white boat in Sophia Antipolis, built in 1989 by the regional council, has become the beacon of the new economy on the French Riviera; and why most of the success-stories have started from there : Echo interactive, Respublica, Odisei, Dust, e-acute…
They took up the challenge
Such successes were mentioned by Alain André, CI COM organisation manager. He also brought back to everybody's mind that the challenge was difficult at the beginning.' In 1995, when we entered the building there were only 9 companies. The CICA was almost empty. Today, it is composed of 60 firms. And every week, 5 or 6 demands are registered, accompanied with good business plans. Such demands we cannot accept. Even the roofs are occupied ! TDF and France Telecom put there antennas ! Within five years, CICA's companies ran off most of innovation prizes in France : Dust, e-acute, Mediasynthèse, 7 Ways, Wimba, etc.
Not to mention companies which were at the CICA before to settle bigger on the technopole : Andersen Consulting, which is today composed of more than 430 people, Siemens, which has become ever since Infineon, Sema Group which will soon go to its new 'Millennium' building…' According to Alain André, such results are obtained by the whole team : around thirty people that worked hard for five years in order to give the CICA its current splendour.
Bitterness and feeling of injustice
Of course, the team is bitter not to be able to go on while the acknowledgment for the work that have been done is international : an innovation European prize rewarded on last November 20th and the reception of ten CICA start-ups at the Elysée on November 15th by the president of the Republic. 'To join the bitterness is the feeling of injustice',declared Denis Chambrier, Alain André's associate, as he mentions that CI COM organisation had brought an action against the CICA bid before the tribunal dealing with internal disputes in the French civil service in Nice by considering that there have been favouritism in the attribution of a market of 85 million francs on seven years.
Such a reminder allowed him to criticize the politicians of the department. ' CI Com organisation was a victim of the great current struggle for the power in the technopole with the creation of the intermunicipality quite soon,Alain André said. Today, there are start-ups on one hand and an institutional machinery that doesn't understand you on the other. Sophia needs to be liven up. The technopole needs a real leader, otherwise prospects will go to Marseilles, London, and other European technopoles. A campaign in towns has to be made in order to make this situation change. It's time to change…'
A breeding-ground in the Dow Corning premises
And now, what CI COM organisation is going to do ? A part of the team is going to settle in the Dow Corning premises, only 500 meters further from the CICA as the crow flies. A 4.500 m2 building, a smaller one, in which they are going to develop a breeding-ground of private companies. The building is under way in order to open within the first six months of 2001. CI COM organisation, which is now very famous all over the world, has been made responsible for creating a breeding-ground in Casablanca, Morocco, in a 29.000 m2 building. The team is also called to work in Taïwan and in Austria.
Thus, on Thursday morning, it was only a temporary farewell that was sent to the CICA companies, during a meeting which was composed of the economic French Riviera, included the Francis Perrugini, president of the CCI…