France Wants the Profits From French Innovation
A competitiveness czar hopes to prevent another PC fiasco
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In 1973, Frenchman François Gernelle built the world’s first microcomputer equipped with a microprocessor. In the decades after, France looked on as IBM and Apple spawned a multitrillion-dollar industry around it.
French business history is strewn with similar examples of missed opportunities. From the Internet precursor Minitel to François Mizzi’s touchscreen patents in the 1980s, France has repeatedly failed to turn ideas and research into money-making global products, allowing others to ride away with the loot.