develop personally, exercising management and discovering all the mysteries of public institutions, public/private relations in France and the successive frameworks in which action can be taken. “The laws of gravity are stronger than any effort I could make”: understanding the frameworks for Christophe was particularly structuring. What he had to do, he had to do in the sense of gravity. This too was a more than essential lesson for anyone who wants to create in this world.
It’s by recounting this experience to me that you finally realize that from diverse and varied experiences, there are few technical things to learn. “What we are learning is more about being able to be something, to actually refine our behavior”.
5.2.3. Pure entrepreneurship
He set up an advertising agency based on comic books when he realized that a majority of CAC 40 bosses collected comic books like him. “If they live up to their passion, they’ll accept my value proposition”. This first experience worked perfectly and Christophe even became an editor. After five years, he sold the company. It was always simple…. How could things be otherwise with the network that had been built up since then.
“Everything has always been like that … until the day it didn’t happen, but it happened late, I was 38 years old”. I will refrain from describing the context, and the reasons that made Christophe realize that things that fall from the sky sometimes require more than investment, as well as knowledge of what our own limits are. It was a difficult time when he realized that he couldn’t do just anything with just anyone. In any case, he was a new man emerging from a tricky experience that put his integrity at stake. We find the new man 18 months later….
He calmed everything down and took action by consulting a company. His first action was an analysis that led him to draw up a very alarming assessment. At the end of this assessment, he took back the company, rectified it and resold it. In the wake of this, he launched Bubbles, a convergence solution to provide a service to customers wishing to solve a basic need: mobile recharging! That’s when we ran into Christophe. He made it a great success and he is without a doubt one of the greatest success stories I have had the pleasure of contributing to.
All the best!
Question 5: what do you think about Mr. Christophe Vattier’s journey?
Figure 5.1. Mr. Christophe Vattier. For a color version of the figure, see www.iste.co.uk/latouche/innovation.zip
1 1 A French public sector financial institution.
6
Mrs. Lise Bellavoine, When Entrepreneurship Becomes an Art!
Before this interview I didn’t know Lise at all. It wasn’t even my LinkedIn post inviting entrepreneurs to contact me that allowed me to get in touch with her. In fact, I was approached by someone who wanted to discuss a service to be provided to me for the corporate accelerator. We were supposed to meet with this someone. As much as possible, when I am asked, I try to take the time to question myself on the usefulness of the services offered. Things are moving fast in digital and start-up support. Meeting people is essential. It turns out that in this case, I had to cancel the appointment unfortunately for scheduling reasons. As part of the exchanges for this cancellation, this person told me about an artist she was following closely and who would soon be having an exhibition. Very interested in the style of pastel creations, I told myself that I would probably go to the exhibition. Still with scheduling problems, I couldn’t go in the end and apologized to the artist.
How can I tell you, … there are sometimes images, sensations that never leave you…. I love her style of artistic expression and her subjects, animals, characters with piercing eyes, that touch the heart and soul.
So I asked about the artist herself. Surprise … This artist had once worked in a very large international group, and had recently founded an innovation consulting agency, Lise Bellavoine Conseil, while painting and exhibiting. So I contacted her and explained to her my project and my wish to interview her to possibly integrate it in my forthcoming book.
Lise is her first name, as far as I can remember she didn’t define herself at first as an entrepreneur compared to what she imagined my profile search to be. After some clarifications, and some exchanges of emails, we were however at the interview stage.
If this introduction was so long, it is because the probability that I would meet Lise, without having at any time sought by any action to identify such a profile, was almost non-existent!
It was a very rewarding meeting and her journey, with her permission, I will share it with you. Her profile, very touching, is one of those wonderful examples that should make us understand collectively that entrepreneurship does not mean “digital”, and that being an entrepreneur is first of all a state of mind … that reveals itself in diverse and varied circumstances.
6.1. Context
Lise comes from a Norman family, born in Normandy, France. She’s an only child. Her grandparents were self-employed decorating craftsmen. “I come from a family where I spent a lot of time out in the wilderness and they knew how to do everything with their hands”. It was in her grandparents’ workshop, surrounded by machines and fabrics, that Lise got the taste for creating.
6.1.1. Nothing but nature
“I grew up in a very simple way, surrounded by a lot of love”. From a father in charge of a technical service and a mother who put her professional career on hold to raise her daughter, and then moved on to bioenergy, caring for others. She wanted for nothing, without “going to the end of the world all the time”. Until the day when a trip to Thailand at the age of 14 triggered a deep desire to discover the world.
Lise was a busy child. Between judo and painting, which already inspired her, she was not short of activities. “I grew up with this need to channel my creative energy and spend it”. She loves nature and wants to find beauty whenever she can. For Lise, “This sacred space that is nature” is a true source of healing.
This Norman context was for Lise, not only a haven of peace but also the main element of her inspirations during her childhood.
6.1.2. A poet
Lise willingly defines herself as having this “poetic spirit” without this being a choice forged by her parents, her education or her background. She has always had this particular attraction for a certain non-conformism. “I’ve always been interested in people who are different and unique”. There is in her, this extra soul that always leads her to support someone in need, with this smile that I know now.
“I can’t explain why I’m fascinated by the cycle of the seasons, or even why I’m amazed to see a seed germinate, it’s just the way it is”. It’s always hard to explain why: we are
