The rest of the 100 (in alphabetical order): Laurent Baly, president, Satt Sud-Est

Laurent Baly has been president of Satt Sud-Est, one of France’s regional tech transfer operations, since 2015. He was president of Satt Network, the association that oversees all 14 offices, between 2016 and September 2018.

He previously spent 11 years at retailer Decathlon from 2003, during which time he established a research lab before becoming R&D director of the group in 2008.

Satt Sud-Est invests in five core areas – digital and connected information society; environment, energy and territories; health and life technologies; industrial processing; and culture, heritage and digital humanities.

Its shareholders include the universities of Aix-Marseille, Nice Sophia Antipolis, Toulon, Avignon and the Vaucluse, Corsica and Ecole Centrale de Marseille, among others.

Baly said: “I was attracted through a personal interest. If you look at my career, I knew the industry part very well, and before my dissertation I spent a lot of time in research labs. I have always wanted to be in the middle of those two ecosystems to unite them.”