ETI, a real driver of the sustainable transition
SMEs are not followers of the sustainable transition. They are the driving force, because they unite performance, meaning and territory. The next step is not to make them “listed mini-groups”, but to give them the tools, frameworks and partnerships adapted to their reality. It is this mission that drives me every day: to help businesses in our territories to transform constraints into opportunities, and to prove that sustainability is above all a human and local story.
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Mid-cap Companies: The Beating Heart of the Real Economy
When we talk about sustainable transition, we often think of big companies, European plans or global announcements.
But the reality, the one that moves the lines, is played out elsewhere: in the ETI, tea Family SMEs, tea Companies Spread Across Our Territory. They are the ones who innovate, recruit, export, and above all who support our regions and cities.
They embody patient, rooted, human capital. They don't communicate much about sustainability, they Practise, every day, in their choices of recruitment, supply, production, production, energy, governance and interaction with the other actors in their ecosystem.
My Background: From Global to Local
I had the chance to work for more than twenty years in major international groups — at JC Decaux, at Johnson & Johnson, BPI group, then Moody's. Very different worlds, but with one thing in common: the search for customer satisfaction built on trust.
At JCDecaux, trust in services within cities and mobility, now a “Smart City” At J&J, trust in products, health and people. At BPIgroup, trust in transformation processes, in talents and in reindustrialization. At Moody's, trust in data, transparency and ratings.
Today, this same requirement of trust is at play in the Sustainable Transition also known as Just Transition, one of my subjects of commitment.
But the transition will not only come from markets or regulators: it will come from the women and men in their daily lives, from those companies and organizations that build resilient, entrenched and responsible models.
That is why we have chosen to focus on Businesses in the Grand Ouest, and more generally on those of our French Territories.
Global challenges, local responses
Sustainability issues are universal — climate, resources, resources, resources, inclusion, governance — but their Events are local. Les Businesses in the Grand Ouest Do not experience the same realities as those of Île-de-France or northern Europe:
- The agri-food industries face the tension between productivity and the preservation of soil and water.
- Maritime and logistics raises the question of energy and low-carbon transport.
- The attractiveness of rural areas depends on employment, access to services and quality of life.
That's where the Concept of “territorial IROs” Makes perfect sense:
- Identify together the Challenges, risks and opportunities specific to each local ecosystem,
- To Build Meaningful Sustainability Hither, and not “in Brussels”.
ETI, Pioneers of a Concrete Transition
SMEs have three valuable qualities for a successful sustainable transition:
- Agility : they can decide quickly, experiment, and adjust without waiting for the next stock market quarter.
- Proximity : their managers know their teams, their suppliers, their territories.
- The Common Sense : they think in terms of full costs, generations, and transmission — not only in terms of quarterly ROI.
It is this alliance of Responsibility and pragmatism That makes them so critical to the success of the transition.
A territorial partnership: the VSME+ Nouvelle-Aquitaine project
At Ascend Tech, we are working to create a VSME+ New Aquitaine, a regional framework inspired by the European framework VSME.
The idea: to build, with the economic actors of the territory, a common base of shared challenges and indicators. This will allow each business to:
- To position its ESG priorities in relation to those of its ecosystem,
- to pool solutions (energy, mobility, training, circularity...) ),
- and to strengthen the dialogue with funders and communities.
This Project Is Not Just Another Standard: It Is A Common Language of Territorial Sustainability, built by and for businesses in the region.
Connecting Actors, Sharing Value
In this context, my role — and that of Ascend — is toAnimate These Bridges : between companies, consulting firms, banks, insurers, local authorities.
Because sustainability cannot be decreed. She is Co-built. And the more we succeed in connecting actors, the more we will improve the transformation.
This is where technology becomes a great catalyst: platforms like Harnest Allow all these actors to share the same data, the same language, the same ambition.