Can you tell us about your background?

I very quickly started out on my own in parallel with my studies at ENSCI, with a dual activity as interaction designer and sound designer. I moved back and forth between projects for R&D centers (Thomson, EDF, France Télécom) and those for fashion shows and contemporary dance companies. In design agencies, I did the same job on interaction issues. Then I joined Décathlon to help reorganize the largest design center in France at the time, in line with the new business model of business units relocated to sports venues. This meant reinventing the profession and setting up a cross-functional organization to maintain emulation between designers and the company's ability to help them grow.

"What drives designers? How can we support them to maintain their skills and creativity? I've always been driven by these concerns.

Within the PSA Group, I have favored innovation driven by new uses rather than innovation driven by technology. I developed the User Experience Innovation team , an internal laboratory-agency at the service of all PSA departments. Within this framework, we created theOpenlab design , which encourages collaboration between students from different design schools and other professions.

"In a team, it's enriching to be able to draw on profiles with distinct postures, complementary skills and the ability to work together. We absolutely must develop the collective pedagogy of design schools."

Then, little by little, I was put in charge of the "life on board" of the autonomous vehicle project, i.e. what the interior experience of a connected, intelligent and protective car looks like, when you're no longer driving it. An incredible technological and human adventure. In 2016, I was finally appointed R&D Director of Machine Interactions, reporting to the COMEX. With my R&D teams made up of engineers, developers, electronics engineers, ergonomists, designers and many other professions around the world, our challenge has been to stay one step ahead of our competitors by leading the cockpit revolution and supporting the development of clean powertrains.

In 2020, when the director of Strate asked me to take over from him, I realized that I would feel even more useful if I got involved in the higher education of creative and innovative profiles to meet the challenges of the ^21st century. For the past two years, I've been President of the ENSCI Board of Directors, and I've seen just how disoriented students are by the health crisis. Until then, I devoted 10% of my time to teaching at various schools, including Strate.

"I said to myself that it was time to reverse the balance and devote 90% of my time to the challenges of training in the design of a sustainable world.
to the challenges of training people to design a sustainable world,
and keep the remaining 10% for R&D."

What resources do you draw on to move your projects forward or exercise leadership?

Whatever the level at which I've been able to intervene - on my own account, in an agency, in front of COMEX members - the main resources I've called on to feel right are sincerity and frankness, so as never to have to question my commitments to the last detail.

Thanks to our sincerity, our teams see us not just as a captain of industry, but also as a human being with convictions who can also be convinced. By remaining accessible, attentive and benevolent, people can speak freely. Employees are more inclined to talk about problems than to keep quiet about them. To err is human. But to learn from mistakes, you need to be in a position to share them.

What are your current projects and challenges?

As part of the courses offered at the "Stratos"[1], we are developing a new area of local involvement: Strate action sociale. The aim is to infuse design into associations, town halls, départements, the Ile-de-France region...

"The public sector needs to reinvent itself, and design can serve this purpose. From the start of the new academic year, we're going to enable our student designers and all those interested in social innovation to work together."

We intend to develop this concept, adapting it to the cultural context, in Africa with the YUX Design agency, and then in India via our Bangalore campus. It's important that our students learn to design for an environment that demands frugality.

Progress is at the heart of the design approach. But progress and innovation are not synonymous. An innovation may be motivated by a market, growth or technological objective, but does not necessarily constitute social, societal or environmental progress.

"We're building a school that's open to the world, to both private and public issues,
with an awareness of the impact of design on society and the planet."

Our second challenge is to maintain skills throughout a career, so as to keep innovative profiles such as designers employable and to keep their "little creative engine" going. The world is changing, as are methods, tools and software, and environmental and health emergencies are accelerating... As a result, the continuous transformation of skills is crucial to ensure that profiles remain innovative and have a positive impact. This is part of the schools' social responsibility.

What message would you like to send to young and future innovation leaders?

We've just made a space-time leap into the ^21st century. In retrospect, I think it's very interesting for young people to have gone through this experience of telecommuting as a way of imagining a new, chosen balance. Their flexibility between face-to-face and remote work and their ability to relate to others at a distance are strengths that will stay with them for the rest of their careers, including international ones.

"At Strate, we train the makers of tomorrow. The design profession has the ability to turn the tables, reverse paradigms and change society."

What's more, the crisis we're living through is conducive to a more humanistic approach, focused on the environment, social issues, CSR... In our experience, when a company goes through a crisis, it often ends up calling on the design approach, because it allows it to operate differently, to implement new processes, new business models, new product and service offerings... History has shown that all companies that have been able to place design at the right strategic level have been rewarded and have overcome crises. At Strate, we're fond of this quote from Abraham Lincoln: "the best way to predict the future is to create it".

[1] École Strate students

What was your career path as head of Norsys?

Norsys developed very early on according to the virtuous model of global performance, which I wanted to push as far as possible. The turning point came in 1998, at the time of the 35-hour working week law. At the time, the IT sector was preparing for the transition to the year 2000 and the Euro - a very lucrative but one-off market. This prompted me to think about the future. Without being clairvoyant, I had the intuition that the balance between professional and personal life was going to become essential. I proposed to the employees a project capable of absorbing the financial impact of 47 days' CP and RTT. As an IT service provider, this necessarily meant adding more value. We developed our first training programs along these lines. These decisions were decisive for Norsys, as this level of training and expertise is still the company's trademark today. In fact, we have created our own Corporate University.

How did the perma-company concept come about?

The world of work quickly locks you into a professional network, especially when you become a manager. It's important to stay in touch with the field and with others. My path towards perma-business is correlated with a series of personal realizations linked to my involvement in the associative world, whether it be with the Réseau étincelle that I created, at the Centre des jeunes dirigeants (CJD) that I chaired, within Greenpeace that I preside over, or by joining the Conseil national du développement durable.

"This commitment has given me a clearer view of the problems facing our society.
It's only a short step from lucidity to action.

As early as 2005, we committed ourselves to the fight against discrimination, with anonymous CVs, training on prejudice, the overhaul of decision-making processes and, of course, equal pay for men and women. The carbon footprint followed in 2007, and so on.

In 2019, I asked a working group to challenge the concept of permaculture in an attempt to apply it to Norsys. Then I consulted former CEOs of foundations committed to preserving the planet about the benefits of such an approach. They told me to go for it.

Perma-Company is based on three ethical principles: caring for people, preserving the planet, setting limits and redistributing the wealth created. From these principles flow 23 impact objectives with thresholds to be reached. This approach is symbolized in the Norsys logo by the three interdependent rings: red (human), blue (economic) and green (environmental). In concrete terms, for each project, we must ensure that each ethical principle is implemented.

"Through this model, I'm trying to demonstrate that by anticipating change
and adopting a global vision, the company wins sooner or later.

The best example of successful anticipation is telecommuting. This development was not self-evident, since some of our employees work at our customers' sites. Nevertheless, we took the plunge in 2016, as it represents a major lever for reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. By 2019, 40% of our employees were already teleworking. So at the start of the lockdown, when many companies had to close for several weeks, we hardly had to do anything, and 2020 was a very good year for Norsys.

What's your recipe for anticipation?

It's not so much a question of vision as of research and decoding. The challenge is to accumulate and analyze information in a decompartmentalized way. What is happening to us with COVID was predicted as early as 2003! Access to knowledge is therefore crucial. It saddens me to see young people only reading titles and subtitles on social networks. On this point, I believe that the company is the 3rd stage in access to information and knowledge, after the family and the world of schools and universities.

What resources do you draw on to exercise your leadership and convince your teams or peers?

More than the energy deployed or the method used to get a group on board, what counts is the credibility and confidence you inspire as someone who dares to do things or dares to do things differently. This is gradually acquired through experimentation and results. In 2019, in the early days of permaentreprise, some employees said: "Sylvain has already done this to us. At first, we don't understand anything, but each time, it gives Norsys incredible strength".

What's your current challenge?

It is my hope that I will be able to encourage leaders to adopt a different development model. Jean Mersch, the founder of the CJD, once said: "It is not the masses who make history, but the values that act on them through convinced minorities". This is what I'm trying to bring about through the perma-company model.

"My guiding principle is to open people's minds to a different way of positioning the company, so as to break away from the deleterious one-size-fits-all global thinking around profit maximization."

What message would you like to send to young and future corporate leaders?

I'm a great believer in the power of young people, like the 30,000 signatories of the Manifesto for an Ecological Awakening, whose determination scared the big corporations.

"So I say to them: don't be afraid to be very demanding.
Your demands will change the world of business.

In a few months' time, for example, when the world is less constrained, some companies will be tempted to turn off the telecommuting tap. I'm convinced that if young people leave these companies, they'll get the ball rolling.

Can perma-companies be applied to the world of associations and NGOs?

The perma-company model can also be applied by associations and foundations, such as Réseau étincelle, which will soon be experimenting with perma-associations. On the one hand, everything can be built on the ethical principles of perma-business, including a personal project. On the other hand, only a global vision of the issues at stake, with varied and interdependent objectives, is likely to move things in the right direction.

Tell us about the "food and eating well" chair at the Fondation Rennes 1

The raison d'être of this chair is to bring together the points of view of scientists and eaters. It's time to work on the sociology of food. On the one hand, we note a lack of acceptability with regard to scientific consensus. One example is cholesterol, often considered to be enemy number 1 within the body, but classified for several decades by experts as a factor of little importance.

On the other hand, I'm struck by the contradictions between the eco-vegetarian convictions and the habits of the 18-34 generation, who are by far the biggest consumers of meat; not in the form of Grandma's entrecôte, but of nuggets, burgers, pizzas... So much so that beef consumption, which had been falling steadily for 25 years, has risen again in 2019. This proves that classic qualitative survey methods are completely unreliable. In panels, consumers say they want to eat less meat, but quality meat. In reality, they eat more, and almost exclusively low-quality minced meat. That's why we have to take usage into account.

Has the health crisis reinforced your belief in the need to improve access to good food?

During the health crisis, it became clear very early on that people were not dying from the virus, but from excess inflammation (the infamous cytokine storm that causes pulmonary oedema). This resonates with the widely shared scientific knowledge that what we eat influences our immunity. The inflammation mechanism is managed in our cells by two fatty acids, which are 100% dependent on what we eat: omega 6 in the virus attack phase, then omega 3 in the tissue repair phase and, above all, in stopping the inflammatory process.

"I'm talking about barrier feeding. But no media covered the subject at Covid 19".

Together with Inserm and Rennes University Hospital, we have written an article on this subject for a scientific journal. This is fundamental, because we can see that the long-awaited miracle drug or vaccine is not on the way. By demonstrating that barrier feeding is effective, and that by better nourishing the soil and people, we are able to avoid the disaster associated with this or any other epidemic, we are giving value to consent around the question: "is this good for me?"

But knowing is not enough to save lives... This knowledge must be shared and accepted, which is far from being the case.

"Within this chair, we're going to try to understand why people don't expect from food what they expect from social distancing, medicines or vaccines."

The French want to eat local, healthier produce, with better-paid producers and employees, without necessarily paying more. How can we resolve this paradox? 

Personally, I don't think the health crisis will change much, apart from a slight inflection in the major trends that were already in place. The agri-food world is above all marked by a price war the likes of which has rarely existed. Most distributors are anticipating a social crisis. And the search for quality has taken a back seat.

Contrary to widespread belief in agri-food marketing, consumers know what they're going to buy before they get to the shelves. It's essential to take an interest in the consumer's background, beliefs, habits... in other words, the sociology of the eater. We recruited an agricultural engineer, sociologist and anthropologist to the Chair. He conducted a series of interviews during the confinement period. What emerged was an exacerbation of behaviors, but no changes. People who liked to cook cooked more. Those who didn't liked to cook bought frozen food, canned food...

Why has the purchase of pasta taken off? With the closure of public catering facilities, pasta is the simplest and most consensual dish. The common thread is usage and the time available to prepare meals.

"I'm not sure that good intentions can stand up to the discrepancy between what people say and what they do, and above all to economic and usage constraints. The world after will not be very different from the world before."

Like Danone, are mission-driven companies the future? What skills will they need to mobilize?

I chaired the Valorial agrifood cluster for 8 years. It brings together academics and industrialists (2/3 from the agrifood sector) with a view to collaborative innovation, which makes it an excellent observation post. The players have the impression that they are doing things very well, and they are doing things better and better, but are increasingly criticized. The eater-producer relationship is more about confrontation than mediation.

It's hard to call yourself a mission-driven company just by saying: "I'm a good person, I save tons of CO2...". Transparency has to be measurable and understandable, but that's not enough, because other factors come into play. Consumers don't pay much attention to the nutriscore. The nutriscore generates distrust, because it is affixed to the packet by the manufacturer. On the contrary, although 80% of Yuka's score is based on the nutriscore, the fact that it's the consumer who scans and calculates the score changes perception and generates support.

We've included a digital component in the Chair because we believe it can reconnect people with the realities of the farming and agri-food worlds.

In L'Homnivore, food sociologist Claude Fischler explains that man is as much a neophile as he is a neophobe: he fears everything, but eats everything. For a long time, this paradox was resolved by tradition, as a way of protecting our health. Thirty years ago, he announced that, since traditions were being shattered, the angst of the homnivore would return with a vengeance.

Today, we have to deal with the anguish of the homnivore. There's no point in thinking in terms of "hard sciences", because there's a resistance to rationality. Despite considerable progress in terms of health and the environment, people are increasingly afraid of what they eat. For example, Yuka receives complaints because eggs from caged hens score well. Yet, in purely nutritional terms, there's no difference between an egg from a free-range or a cage-free hen.

""I eat, therefore I am" . Concerns about animal welfare, the food chain, producer remuneration... are all part and parcel of what people incorporate when they eat. I'm convinced that digital coupled with human sciences can reconcile all these dimensions."