There are four clusters. Like cardinal points. And like cardinal points, they show the right direction. The
Agri Sud-Ouest Innovation,
Aqua-Valley,
Derbi, and
Eurobiomed clusters are enthusiastically committed to
MedVallée. In fact, right after
the conference held by this world-class excellence cluster in global health, they organized their
first afterwork session entirely dedicated to MedVallée on August 30 at the Fabre Museum in Montpellier.
The theme of this first gathering was “Meet the members of Occitanie’s clusters”, with a focus on agriculture and agri-food, and featuring a pitch presentation by a member from each competitiveness cluster.
Basically, this cross-fertilization of different viewpoints will stimulate the emergence of innovative projects, as Montpellier Métropole has done with La
Fabrik MedVallée. That thinking is pointed out by Isabelle Guichard, General Manager of the 170-member Derbi cluster, which includes about a hundred companies.
“We will take a cross-sector approach. That is an interesting way to move forward for our members, as our skills can be applied to many other business sectors.”
And, in reference to the
Water and Energy in the City event held on July 5, 2022 at the “
Cité de l’Économie et des Métiers de Demain” (City of the Economy and Professions of Tomorrow), which focused on optimizing water and energy in buildings, and on the recovery of waste and by-products, with pitches from companies offering solutions.
The planets were in alignment: “Creating events, engaging in inter-industry collaborations, expanding internationally... MedVallée’s roadmap is perfectly consistent with our own. It’s a win-win situation,” she adds.
Yvan Kedaj, General Manager of the Aqua-Valley cluster, which has 212 members, shares the same point of view.
“Participating in MedVallée means getting our companies involved, especially startups, VSEs, and SMEs, in demonstrator projects and scaling up their individual and collective innovations,” he highlights.
Each competitiveness cluster will contribute its own recognized expertise.
“With the UNESCO International Center for Water Resources in Montpellier, ICIReWaRD, the driving forces of our territory - covering the Occitanie and Sud (South of France) regions - produce two thirds of all French scientific publications in the field of water,” adds Yvan Kedaj.
The contributions of MedVallée and the competitiveness clusters will be reciprocal. Nicolas Nguyen The, Occitanie project manager and European manager for Agri Sud-Ouest Innovation (430 members), is delighted:
“By uniting forces on a common goal, everyone is moving in the same direction. Our exposure and visibility will be increased under the banner of global health.
His competitiveness cluster is also already deeply involved in the Montpellier Métropole area with several projects, including one involving agrivoltaics and two others on the agro-ecological transition and digital agriculture.
“We are also leading our own European initiative, Aurora, which involves Montpellier Métropole, focusing on the relationship between people’s health and healthy, sustainable food”, he points out.
MedVallée is able to cover all of these major topics thanks to the convergence of the Health, Food-Agronomy-Agriculture, and Environmental sectors.
“Our positioning is quite different from what is being done in other European territories,” observes Émilie Royère, General Manager of Eurobiomed (more than 400 members), whose headquarters will move to Montpellier at the end of this year.
She concludes:
“MedVallée’s cross-disciplinary and inclusive nature will give us a head start. This is especially true since, at this point, I am convinced that we have not yet realized the extent of the projects that could emerge from MedVallée.”
