GAC Group is an international innovation consultancy firm specialised in innovation performance support (18M+ sales revenue in 2019). It was established in 2002 and employs 200+ specialists, mostly with PhD or MSc, spread across Europe, South America, Canada and Southeast Asia. The headquarters of the company are based near Paris, in Issy les Moulineaux, France; with offices in several cities of France (Nantes, Lyon, Lille, Sophia Antipolis…), as well as in Romania, Singapore, Canada, Brazil & recently in Germany. The company has 6 departments: innovation, internationalisation, networks and platforms, economic studies (including innovation strategies, territorial innovation development, evaluation and impact assessment etc), financial performance, & human resource performance. Thus, GAC specialists provides 360° support to innovation and cover the whole expansion value chain, from ideation to industrialization, from IP advice to project management, R&D public funding and new market access, from internationalisation strategy to its operationalization, legal document drafting to operational support. Our technical experts are consultants specialized per industry and knowledgeable in sectorial trends, issues and skilled on innovation projects to face industry and societal challenges.
In 2018, GAP launched GAC’UP, start up accelerator, to accompany innovation start ups in acceleration phase. The selected companies are spending 12 to 24 months in one of the GAC offices to get individual acceleration support (innovation marketing, IP support, international development…), benefit from GAC coworking space, host meetings etc.
GAC recently integrated the team and projects of inno TSD (now GAC), specialists in supporting inter-regional and international collaboration for innovation (500+ projects implemented since 1986): cluster and SMEs internationalisation support, university‐industry cooperation, business incubator management, supporting start-ups and other innovative companies, impact maximisation, stakeholder engagement, as well as inter-regional connections and mutual learning activities.
GAC has a strong list of relevant references with over 2000 private clients across the world, including deep tech start ups and renowned multi-national companies such as Saint Gobain, Safran, Air Liquide, SNCF, Johnson & Johnson or Pierre Fabre, and thanks to the integration of inno TSD a long list of public clients: European Commission, UNIDO, French Government Ministries, ANR – Agence National de la Recherche, clusters across Europe and beyond, local and regional authorities…. Our partners in Horizon 2020 projects include dozens of leading European and International universities and national research organisations as well as clusters, innovative SMEs and multi-national firms: ABB, Suez-Cetaqua, P&G, BASF, Repsol, Arkema, INEOS, Honeywell …
At European level, GAC (via integration of inno TSD business and expertise) is involved in a number of innovation-related projects supporting inter-regional cooperation: for example, Regional Innovation Monitoring Plus (RIM+) platform as part of the ReConfirm project, where the GAC team is coordinator of 5 innovative Partnerships in this programme (including smart water), supporting the implementation of smart specialization strategies and interregional collaboration.
Core Competence: impact maximisation – communication, dissemination, awareness raising, exploitation, policy recommendations, stakeholders’ engagement, community building, international collaboration related to research and innovation, ICT for development, community building, impact assessment. Strong Indian-based network of research and innovation partners.
Link to the website: https://www.group-gac.com
Name of the main contact: Svetlana Klessova
Position of the main contact: Senior consultant and director
Contact [mail]: s.klessova(at)group-gac.com