French connection in Silicon Valley

On the thirteenth floor of the WeWork², the Winnovation team has installed its offices. In a meeting room overlooking Salesforce Park, Clément Anthonioz-Blanc, CEO of the consulting firm, and Viviane André, an analyst specialized in building construction, are making a Teams presentation to Edward Bouygues, chairman of Bouygues Telecom and the Group’s Deputy CEO and head of Innovation and Sustainability.

In California, a quest as intense as the Gold Rush in underway, with innovations, not nuggets, as the prize. A city of tantalizing promises, a magnet for the daring and adventurous, a cradle of nonconformity, San Francisco was a natural to become the gateway to Silicon Valley, a technological and sociological laboratory for the world. The boldest thinkers and most innovative companies on the planet have made this city and the surrounding Bay Area their home. No surprise, then, that it is the birthplace of today’s most powerful businesses – GAFA¹, LinkedIn, Twitter, Netflix and the like.

In 2002, a group of “Frenchies” debarked in San Francisco with no contacts and no offices, just the mission to meet with tech start-ups. The aim was to help Bouygues Telecom make decisions about its structure at the dawn of the mobile Internet. Winnovation progressively broadened the scope of its activities to construction and media. It accompanied delegations from the Group to the CES electronics trade show in Las Vegas and on learning expeditions to identify start-ups and innovative companies for Bouygues management and decision-makers in the Business Segments. The office also does studies on specific subjects on request. “We keep a close eye on all the new trends and disruptive innovations. We want to spot the ones that will play key roles in the coming years and anticipate their impact on our activities,” explains Clément Anthonioz-Blanc. 

Drawing on this ten years of experience at Bouygues Telecom, Anthonioz-Blanc is analyzing trends in the telecom market. One observation: in the United States, mobile phone subscription prices are in the vicinity of 70 dollars a month. “That’s much more expensive than in France,” exclaims Winnovation’s CEO. “Operators in the US have succeeded in increasing revenue per user by moving upmarket and partnering with content providers like Spotify, for example.” Anthonioz-Blanc relies on multiple sources to do his tracking: 
″We talk regulary with the American operators. It is a win-win exchange. They are interested in our experience with Bbox 4G router. They are only just beginning to develop something comparable to make up for late rollout of fiber.”

On the 61st floor of the Salesforce Tower, the atmosphere is studious but relaxed. Salesforce proudly bills itself as an advocate of “new ways of working”. Winnovation has come for a talk with this customer relations partner of Bouygues Immobilier and Bouygues Telecom. “We are in regular contact with GAFA to learn about their latest products and to keep track of fast-developing technologies like the metaverse⁸, lNFTs ⁹, blockchain¹⁰, and others,” comments Anthonioz-Blanc. “But we also want to learn about new processes and original ways or organizing work that might be of interest to the Group’s human resources departments.” There is always something innovative and exciting happening in Silicon Valley. And it is always on Winnovation’s radar screen.