Abstract 

For more than fifty years now in France, technological transfers between public research laboratories and the economy have been a central concern of the ministries in charge of Research and Industry. After the approaches based on a “technology push” during the 1970s, the organization of such transfers now involves recognizing the needs of companies, small and middle-sized in particular. In the middle of the first decade of the new century, the virtues of open innovation were being played up through the creation of “poles of competitiveness” and the Agency of Industrial Innovation (AII). Nowadays, efforts are being devoted to all aspects of innovation and to the follow-up with firms thanks to the new know-how developed in particular by the social and human sciences.