Entrepreneurship to serve without enslaving in the age of AI and climate change
About
Through advisory, entrepreneurship, research and intellectual life, I explore how to venture purpose and impact in an uncertain world. My journey from France to the Five Continents shaped my understanding of the quest for integral development, leading to a career dedicated to helping developing impact through careful discernment and proactive entrepreneurial spirit. Accross science, sustainability, AI, jazz or sailing.
the origin
I grew up between the South of France and New-Jersey (USA) following a father dedicated to aircraft industry and a mother writer, opera singer and chair of international literature thinktanks. I enjoyed the wide openness linking century-grounded French families to proactive international exploration as well as practical engineering issues to learned intellectual life. Those years grew my desire to embrace a 360° experience of the world that would never oppose highest ideas to the grounded wisdom of practical engine repair. Never oppose science & tech to music, nor to literature, philosophy or even faith; nor love for one's multi-century local tradition to multi-lingual practical curiosity.
Throughout my education, I had a hard time choosing whether to deepen science, music, engineering, literature, economics or foreign languages. I experienced all of that as I graduated from Ecole Polytechnique of Paris, ENSTA as well as the Imperial College of London associating majors in physics, economics, applied maths and environmental management as well as practical experience in diplomacy with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as applied research in chuch organ acoustics.
Throughout my education, I had a hard time choosing whether to deepen science, music, engineering, literature, economics or foreign languages. I experienced all of that as I graduated from Ecole Polytechnique of Paris, ENSTA as well as the Imperial College of London associating majors in physics, economics, applied maths and environmental management as well as practical experience in diplomacy with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as applied research in chuch organ acoustics.
In quest for purpose in science, entrepreneurship, sustainable development and AI
My professional journey brought me accross the world in the nineties in World Bank-related environmental consulting with a French-based engineering company specialised in water and environmental management. We ventured early modeling efforts in what would become later called as IT / AI for green, or sustainable development.
In the 2000s I directed the R&D of ETIs & large groups in the fields of energy and sustainable development in Europe & Asia with the largest institutions (World Bank, European Commission, Chinese universities, etc.). As a mathematician, I became Full Professor in applied maths to decision-making under uncertainty and trained the first French data scientists/AI tech generations over around fifteen years. Appointed Vice-Dean of Research at the Ecole Centrale Paris in 2009, I co-directed the creation of the major Paris-Saclay research institutes. Becoming an entrepreneur in 2012, I first founded OpérationData, a co-development and advisory holding company for around twenty companies in energy, construction, fintech, etc. At the end of 2015, I co-created with Bpifrance the “Data-IA” program for the algorithmic transformation of SMEs and ETIs, which I run by supporting more than 100 companies with turnover of 1 to 100MEUR on tailor-made transformation trajectories. Faced with the rise in ethical questions about AI, at the end of 2017 I founded the Paris-based think tank Hope & Algorithms. It is a non-profit association bringing together entrepreneurs, investors, scientists, philsophers & spiritual referents to train callings in the service of the common good, partnering with the Collège des Bernardins, the Loyola Paris, the Belgian University of Namur. Faced with disruptions in tech (climate, AI-Act, funding crisis), I launched in 2022 the Blaise Pascal Advisors network of entrepreneur-advisors dedicated to putting tech at the service of sensible algorithmic leadership. I try to draw on my 360-degree experience to discern in a intuitu personae approach with the entrepreneur: align with lucidity, audacity and pragmatism business strategy, ethics, the quest for meaning and parsimonious use of tech, truly putting tech at the service of the genuine value proposition and not the other way around.
In the 2000s I directed the R&D of ETIs & large groups in the fields of energy and sustainable development in Europe & Asia with the largest institutions (World Bank, European Commission, Chinese universities, etc.). As a mathematician, I became Full Professor in applied maths to decision-making under uncertainty and trained the first French data scientists/AI tech generations over around fifteen years. Appointed Vice-Dean of Research at the Ecole Centrale Paris in 2009, I co-directed the creation of the major Paris-Saclay research institutes. Becoming an entrepreneur in 2012, I first founded OpérationData, a co-development and advisory holding company for around twenty companies in energy, construction, fintech, etc. At the end of 2015, I co-created with Bpifrance the “Data-IA” program for the algorithmic transformation of SMEs and ETIs, which I run by supporting more than 100 companies with turnover of 1 to 100MEUR on tailor-made transformation trajectories. Faced with the rise in ethical questions about AI, at the end of 2017 I founded the Paris-based think tank Hope & Algorithms. It is a non-profit association bringing together entrepreneurs, investors, scientists, philsophers & spiritual referents to train callings in the service of the common good, partnering with the Collège des Bernardins, the Loyola Paris, the Belgian University of Namur. Faced with disruptions in tech (climate, AI-Act, funding crisis), I launched in 2022 the Blaise Pascal Advisors network of entrepreneur-advisors dedicated to putting tech at the service of sensible algorithmic leadership. I try to draw on my 360-degree experience to discern in a intuitu personae approach with the entrepreneur: align with lucidity, audacity and pragmatism business strategy, ethics, the quest for meaning and parsimonious use of tech, truly putting tech at the service of the genuine value proposition and not the other way around.
Jazz & MULTILINGUALISM, EXPLORING creative meaning in human interaction
I became semi-professional jazz musician, as well as a passionate practitioner of 7 foreign languages accross my professional experience, two facets quite closely related. Learning a language (eg. Brasilian protuguese) is a bit like practicing a new style of music (eg. Bossa Nova), whereby the swing of the voice carries so much meaning and emotionally-grounded understanding of the syntax.
Jazz is also a great metaphor for a collective quest for meaning in the context of uncertainty, requiring structure & practice of genuine listening of each other in order to take a meaningful heading in the unexpected. It also offers a benchmark for the limitations of LLM conversations: jazzmen hate pure chat, signaling one is not really present to what should be happening in a great jam. Genuine human presence required to experience exceptional creative instants.
I dedicated a few years to a charitable association experimenting integration of homeless people through music in "La Vie en Musique" venture. An incredible journey through winter evening jams in desperate surroundings of Paris railway stations where music proves a fascinating way to join people that could not even talk to each other because of linguistic barriers as well as sullen social walls between rich and poor.
Jazz is also a great metaphor for a collective quest for meaning in the context of uncertainty, requiring structure & practice of genuine listening of each other in order to take a meaningful heading in the unexpected. It also offers a benchmark for the limitations of LLM conversations: jazzmen hate pure chat, signaling one is not really present to what should be happening in a great jam. Genuine human presence required to experience exceptional creative instants.
I dedicated a few years to a charitable association experimenting integration of homeless people through music in "La Vie en Musique" venture. An incredible journey through winter evening jams in desperate surroundings of Paris railway stations where music proves a fascinating way to join people that could not even talk to each other because of linguistic barriers as well as sullen social walls between rich and poor.
Skippering yachts: setting a collective course in uncertain times
After serving as officer of the watch in French Navy right before the Gulf War II in 1990, I started skippering yachts across sees.
I love high latitude skippering, a passionate discipline about human exploration of new territories. It is also a practical metaphor for agile management, as I said in one of my books (see The Purpose of Tech): reaching Greenland in Viking times was a bit like venturing on a modern tech unicorn, full of pivots but never devoid of energy, without which you easily sink or break.
I also experienced the integration of homeless people through sailing. Homelessness is reckoned as a form of slow suicide: loss of hope and purpose, a true spirutal crises. As a pioneering venture in the early 2010s with a charitable association, we embarked into a yacht cruise with persons coached into the process of moving out of homelessness. Debriefing showed that their favourite part was the day with the heaviest wind: following a course braving high waves and the uncertainty of the journey was a collective effort giving a strong sense of purpose even for those who lack somehow the meaning of life.
I love high latitude skippering, a passionate discipline about human exploration of new territories. It is also a practical metaphor for agile management, as I said in one of my books (see The Purpose of Tech): reaching Greenland in Viking times was a bit like venturing on a modern tech unicorn, full of pivots but never devoid of energy, without which you easily sink or break.
I also experienced the integration of homeless people through sailing. Homelessness is reckoned as a form of slow suicide: loss of hope and purpose, a true spirutal crises. As a pioneering venture in the early 2010s with a charitable association, we embarked into a yacht cruise with persons coached into the process of moving out of homelessness. Debriefing showed that their favourite part was the day with the heaviest wind: following a course braving high waves and the uncertainty of the journey was a collective effort giving a strong sense of purpose even for those who lack somehow the meaning of life.