This means both financial stimulation strong

In the heart of major economic crises, is still love infernal couple, one formed by innovation, heard as an invention which found its market, and its double, consumption. It is this extraordinary movement across the centuries and remains central in the explanation of our present woes, that tells the new and plentiful work economists Jean-Hervé Lorenzi and Alain Villemeur (1).

Any relationship between the current crisis and innovation Side battery, innovation is somewhat responsible for our woes. The information technology, great industrial revolution to the end of the last century, which allowed traffic continues capital, unbridled financial imagination and connection in real time of all of the world's economies.

Side face, the shock of the environment and raw materials returns us today in full figure the preparation of our societies but visible movements for many years. It has not enough innovated in this area. That is why, for the authors, the earthquake today is not only a crisis of demand and finance, as stated, but also a crisis of consumer and innovation. There was a coup, more fit between the consumer, desires, its financial resources and the products it offers. The standard of consumption is changing.

Economist David Flacher distinguishes 4 standards in recent history. The first, the more rudimentary, was from before the 17th century, the second appeared in the fantastic development of Indian XVIIIeavec, these cotton come from Asia, but China also. Going from the plating to the breakable and it is discovered the mode. The third standard is that of the 19th century, characterized by the appearance of a less high-hungry middle class of products beginning of range, more industrial, therefore less expensive. The fourth is the consumption of postwar society, enfantée in pain by the great depression. It was born of a mismatch between industrial and technological innovation unfettered, including in the car, in the absence of a real class average solvent. Insufficiently reflowed business profits have fuelled a rampant stock speculation. Ten years of recession and a war were required to give rise to a large middle class that has fueled the growth of the thirty Glorieuses.

Globalization has broken this continuous progress, maintained artificially by debt in the early 2000s. A new standard emerged so with new needs, more qualitative, more in phase with new global concerns, at least in developed countries: energy, ecology, demography and ageing. But history teaches us that these consumption standards are not innovations born but often precede and accompany them and stir up, like the wind on the embers. The madness of the Indian of the 18th century created the breeding ground for the development of the industry of weaving, point of departure of the first industrial revolution. It is therefore now to play the next 20 years and that he be put in place structures and means to promote and accelerate the emergence of this new innovation to these new needs. This means both financial stimulation strong. Found the trace in many plans for revival in America, the Japan or Korea.

But this also requires the establishment of what Alain Villemeur called "innovation system". I.e. the enabling environment for the development of innovative companies: infrastructure, public and private research laboratories, universities, financial ready to take risks. In this area, the most advanced model is the American, who was able to create a very fertile ecosystem mingling indirect State aid and private initiative. But there too, the debate rages on the role of innovation. Recently, the Economist editorial of "Business week" (2) Michael Mandel developed the theory of a crisis born of an insufficient focus on innovation. It was believed the US growth based on its technological strength while it was not based on the loan and bond investments. Result, the ravages of globalization were not sufficiently offset by local innovation.

And the France in all this Decentralized innovation, harmonious ecosystem, dynamic SMEs, is not his fort. One positive point, the creation of competitiveness clusters, unanimously recognized as the embryo of an innovation system which must strengthen other than by new TGV, highways and other Keynesian patches of the last century.