Innovation in all its forms

Updated on: 06/05/2025

The University of Bordeaux fulfils the mission entrusted to it by the government – to innovate. By carrying out research, providing education and promoting entrepreneurship, it helps to strengthen the region’s capacity to innovate and develop.

Photo : Mind map © AdobeStock — Mind map © AdobeStock

The University of Bordeaux positions itself as a key player in innovation, providing the skills and tools necessary for transforming ideas into concrete innovations, thereby enriching the region’s social and economic fabric.

For several years, the University has developed and structured its capacity to innovate, both independently and together with its partners. It has set up several large-scale programmes relating to innovation (IdEx, InnovationS, PUI, etc.). It has also strengthened its capacity to provide support through a dedicated department and new skills such as creativity, business development, economic intelligence and more, all backed by close-knit teams. The University has also introduced specific support and funding measures, with programmes such as Prématuration (in french), Spark, Mature Your PhD+, Labcom’up, etc.

What is innovation, anyway?

Innovation means successfully introducing new ideas that meet society’s needs. Whether the innovation relates to developing products or services or to introducing processes or – at a larger scale – an entire organisation, the journey is one of transformation. Innovation can take root in people’s individual initiatives, but it is often richer and faster when it’s part of a collective measure.
It is often portrayed as a funnel where many ideas jostle about at the start, cross many milestones (design, feasibility, prototyping, etc.), and mature to ultimately become projects and then products or services that will be made available to the users.
Innovation cannot exist without putting in place conditions that promote its development, namely state of mind, proficiency in the innovation methods in question, openness to change, dedicated support and funding, and more.

What are the main types of innovation?

There are two main types of innovation:

Breakthrough innovation radically changes our lifestyle. Often based on technology, breakthrough innovation most often alters usage, for example a digital book versus a paper book or music on MP3 versus record players. It must be said that breakthrough innovations are also found in business models, as was the case with Uber.
Incremental innovation is based on the step-by-step theory. It involves changing a product or service without altering its fundamental features. This type of innovation is not intended to overhaul market habits but to suggest an improved version of the existing offer.

What’s the difference between invention and innovation?

An invention is a new idea or technique. It is often the fruit of one person’s efforts. We talk about innovation only if the idea is put into practice as part of a comprehensive and widely available solution, i.e. one that meets the needs of a given market.

How to identify and describe a potential innovation?

Various tools help to measure the maturity level of an innovation before it is put on the market. The most common tool, the TRL (Technology Readiness Level), is a nine-point scale that measures how mature a technology is. TRL allows the University’s teams to adjust their support depending on the maturity of a project. Given that the tool is limited to the fields of science and technology, other scales have been created, such as SRL (Social Readiness Level), which relates to human and social sciences. The University has also developed in-house tools to complement project diagnostics.

Technology Readiness Level scale © université de Bordeaux

Illustrations in French

Our support tools target specific stages in developing ideas born from work carried out in our laboratories, at different levels on the TRL or SRL scales. We also offer tailor-made solutions, however, because we are aware that all laboratories do not operate in the same way, regardless of whether they’re working on a drug molecule, software, or an anthropological study.

Antoine Bouteilly, Director of development through innovation, entrepreneurship and partnerships with socio-economic players

Push or pull?

Innovation can find its origin in needs expressed by the market and in users (‘pull innovation’) or be born from research findings obtained in our laboratories (‘push innovation’).
To meet the needs of the socio-economic world (pull), the University must first understand them well, then match those needs to its own resources and put forward tailored partnership models in order to develop new products or uses.
When research findings with a potential for use are identified in our laboratories (push), the university and the affiliated company provide support to the researchers. This means that the findings can be protected, have their TRL increased, with pre-maturation and maturation resource agreements in place if necessary, followed by transferring the results or even hosting the startup using them, if that scenario is chosen.

Areas of innovation

The diagram highlights the research strengths and the specific strategy used by the University of Bordeaux, such as public health, advanced materials, embedded computing, connected objects, and more.