The face-off between the world of research and that of the corporate sector is interesting. Although it is not easy to set up, dialogue between the world of action and the world of research is extremely fertile, when properly organised, for corporate management and researchers alike.
For companies of global scope and scale, the exchange of ideas and information improves the mutual intelligibility of cultural diversity and provides a useful means for monitoring intellectual property rights. Researchers in turn are confronted with field experience requiring them to refine their categories of analysis.

For this reason, the Institute for Advanced Studies (IEA) in Nantes offers scientific residence facilities to high-level researchers, thereby providing them with an opportunity to complete a project specific to their work within a material and intellectual background that encourages new encounters and innovative thought. The objective is to give them the opportunity to explore new ideas. Providing researchers from every scientific discipline and geographical origin with an opportunity to cooperate in the same living and work area for one year, helps create an intellectual community that is both enriching and innovative – an initiative which is not only highly inventive but also unique in its kind. On the one hand, the Nantes IEA is widely accessible to researchers from the countries in the Southern hemisphere, and therefore encourages them to think about globalisation other than from the Western point of view. On the other, it focuses study on the very foundations of our societies, from languages to institutions, from law to religion and aesthetics.

As a state-approved foundation, the Nantes IEA can continue its public interest mission, and set up innovative partnerships with a number of companies. The resulting work is liable to interest companies which have a worldview and wish to invest in foreign markets, but are confronted with different ways of thinking and cultures, as is the case of SUEZ ENVIRONNEMENT, which is actively involved in a number of countries. 

We have therefore set up a SUEZ ENVIRONNEMENT chair for three years, to address the issue of urbanisation and regional planning.

 

For more information
Visit the website of the Institute for Advanced Studies (IEA) in Nantes