News
Collaboration Digitale will officially launch in France
June 2018 by Marc Jacob
On July 3rd, 2018, Collaboration Digitale will officially launch in France. As a demonstration of our intention to activate the economy locally and reduce the digital gap, the launch will take place not in Paris but in the East of France. Another conference will happen in Paris, in September.
Your mission is collective success, but how can you achieve this?
Thriving in the digital era requires 3 main skills:
1 - expertise and understanding of the digital environment;
2 - the ability to leapfrog to the technologies that optimize the local environment; and
3 - the agility and the culture that enables an efficient collaboration between individuals, the private and the public sectors.
Cybersecurity & cyber resilience are two transversal pillars of this technological revolution.
Collaboration Digitale is the French entity of Cyber-AID (AID for Artificial Intelligence and Digitalisation).
What is Collaboration Digitale?
Collaboration Digitale is a platform aiming at catalysing economic growth at local level through the understanding and the use of new technologies.
The platform is global but seeks local impact with an inclusive bottom-up approach. We are defining strategies starting with people and companies’ expectations. The objective is to build local inter-generational collaboration.
Operationally, we distinguish 3 pillars:
– an EDUCATION pillar: a training programme tailor-made for individuals and companies based on individual expectations,
– a RESEARCH pillar: applied research and transfer of technology pillar, and
– a COLLABORATION pillar: a more behavioural approach in change management in order to help people to harness the benefits of new technologies.
We work at the same time on the micro level (individual) and on the systemic level (ecosystems and governance).
Bottom-up?
We believe that an effective strategy needs to emerge from the local needs and expectations from individuals and companies. We observe that past top-down attempts to finance local structures have had limited success and are mostly underutilised.
Each person or company that joins us has first to share their expectations and future needs around new technologies. To give a few examples from these questionnaires, some request to cyber-educate the kids, others request to create an ecosystem around artificial intelligence. Others want to create and value local big data.
When we summarise thousands of expectations, a few strategic directions emerge. It then becomes possible to efficiently mobilise collective intelligence and resources in a direction aligned with local motivation.
The programme that we put in place can be adapted to the local skills and optimised for the local development potential.
We work with municipalities, groups of cities as international governance. It is a real added value to stay close to the ground, all this whilst remaining connected to a global world.
Why do you also focus on Cybersecurity & cyber resilience?
Before moving all your assets to the digital world, we have to be able to protect them online. Car safety, health and physical protection of assets are essential in a digital world. Going digital should not be synonym of going-careless.
Cybersecurity entails technical expertise, we all know that. Nevertheless, the human factor is the weakest link. Human behaviour is the biggest flaw in our systems. In an ultra-connected world, the rule of the weakest link applies fully. For example, your client, your friend or your contact can be the door to you for a virus or a malware.
We talk about collective responsibility and care for others in the same way that we value first assistance in the real world. For SMEs, mutualising a part of everyone’s defensive tools can bring a lot of benefits.
Our goal is to build solid cyber-foundations on which we can achieve sustainable growth.
So your final goal is to lift local economy and to improve overall life-conditions?
It is rare to find someone that is naturally interested in cybersecurity. For most of us, we live busy lives and we juggle too many priorities already.
Motivating people that are somehow sensitive to the question remains difficult. Engaging people who have no idea or think that it “only happens to others” is a tremendous challenge.
In this light, our model is both defensive and offensive. We promote a positive mindset, inspiration, hope and a future in which we can all thrive.
All this increases the complexity to grasp what a centre does, but also creates a stronger engagement from people.
Tell us about the Team Collaboration Digitale. What are your strengths?
Motivation, being mission-driven, generosity and a lot of laughter! We adopt a start-up mindset, with a lot of engagement and varied responsibilities.
In terms of hard skills, our members bring experience as engineers, master in cybersecurity or in business schools, and have graduated from IIE, ESCP, ESSEC or Harvard. The team is international, one of our designers lives in Sydney, Australia.
We are looking to recruit motivated people who are passionate about new technologies. No matter what your technology level is, please contact us on info@cdigitale.eu
Cities, people & companies who want to board our ship can contact us on info@cdigitale.eu
We look forward to welcome you at Collaboration Digitale!
