.png)
Alcatel-Lucent launches season 3 of Défi ENTREPRENDRE
14 September 2009:
Alcatel-Lucent has officially launched the third season of its Défi ENTREPRENDRE. Défi ENTREPRENDRE is the French version of Alcatel-Lucent’s Entrepreneurial Boot Camp, an internal program launched in Belgium in 2006 with the objective of generating breakthrough innovations by making it the responsibility of every employee - not just the R&D people. The program aims at encouraging employees to think more like entrepreneurs, empowering new teams and helping them identify and generate concepts for future profit opportunities.
For its third season, which runs until January 2010, the program will reward projects that are more specifically in line with Alcatel-Lucent’s strategy in application enablement.
Défi ENTREPRENDRE is open to all Alcatel-Lucent employees in France whether from research and development, manufacturing, sales, finance, marketing or communications. Employees are invited to form teams and file their projects until September 25, 2009. By October 22, 5 teams/projects will be selected. They will be then requested to further develop their project and set up a business plan.
Using the expertise of professors from ESCP-Europe, one of the most prestigious management schools in France, they will learn how to create a business model, do a market study, convince investors and find customers for their project. This MBA-like crash course is intended to help them step into the shoes of an entrepreneur.
A final presentation of each selected project will be made before a jury on January 21, 2010. The jury is made up of members of Alcatel-Lucent’s Innovation Board as well as representative of investment funds specialized in telecoms.
Pierre Barnabé, president of the Innovation Board and of Alcatel-Lucent France said: " Défi Entreprendre represents a major agent of change for Alcatel-Lucent as it propagates and stimulates a spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship which is critical to the Group. Fostering an idea with the objective of making it as concrete and marketable as possible provides the opportunity of a remarkable human adventure, both individually and collectively. The kind of adventure where one comes out transformed! "
The previous seasons of Défi Entreprendre had rewarded the projects Green Mobile Base Station in 2008 and ContactMeMyWay in 2009.The Green Mobile Base Station project helped create the first commercial wireless base station to use renewable energies – wind, solar or fuel cells. A world first Lab and pilot station has been operational since spring 2009, and the complete services range is ready for large scale deployment. ContactMeMyWay is an application that allows end-users to manage their accessibility in terms of communications and delivers value to the end-user through IMS and Web community convergence.
Alcatel-Lucent’s Entrepreneurial Boot Camp has also been present in the US since 2009, and will soon be declined in China and India.
For more information on Défi ENTREPRENDRE, watch Alcatel-Lucent's WebTV.
About successes generated with Alcatel-Lucent’s Entrepreneurial Boot Camp
touchatag™ was funded by Alcatel-Lucent Ventures. touchatag™ uses RFID technology to connect real world objects with online information and commerce through mobile devices. This venture was launched as a beta in October 2008, has been adopted by thousands of users, has a growing catalog of third-party applications from 120-plus developers, and has signed its first contract.
“Humanitarian Meeting Place”. The Alcatel-Lucent “Humanitarian Meeting Place” project enables aid organizations to promote their work and initiatives and allows donors to receive direct and more regular feedback from the specific project they support or would like to support. The “Humanitarian Meeting Place” has also received the Alcatel-Lucent CSR Champions award. The platform can be made available via Internet or Interactive digital TV and enables users to interact via chat or blog, access videos or podcasts, manage contacts and projects, or directly donate to one of the featured aid organizations
About Alcatel-Lucent
Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) is the trusted partner of service providers, enterprises and governments worldwide, providing solutions to deliver voice, data and video communication services to end-users. A leader in fixed, mobile and converged broadband networking, IP technologies, applications and services, Alcatel-Lucent leverages the unrivalled technical and scientific expertise of Bell Labs, one of the largest innovation powerhouses in the communications industry. With operations in more than 130 countries and the most experienced global services organization in the industry, Alcatel-Lucent is a local partner with a global reach. Alcatel-Lucent achieved revenues of Euro 16.98 billion in 2008 and is incorporated in France, with executive offices located in Paris. For more information, visit Alcatel-Lucent on the Internet: http://www.alcatel-lucent.com
Source: Alcatel-Lucent
