Who are the SRCs ?

French RTD performers known as SRCs (Structures de Recherche sous Contrat) are private structures (associations, SMEs, Intermediate-sized enterprises) that generate over half of their turnover from R&D contracts for third parties.

SRC competencies rely on sustaining state-of-the-art technological and scientific expertise on a permanent basis. To do so, SRCs conduct in-house research programs that make up over 10% of their turnover and entail economic and technical risks.

SRCs are private, independent structures.

Their private, independent status calls forperfectly understanding their industrial customers’ constraints and challenges as well as precisely defining their R&D themes, which will be technology for the industrial applications of the future.

SRCs have a dual role.

Permanent dialogue – with researchers from public research organizations as well as SME directors, scientific and technical management boards of major French groups, innovation project teams – is not an aim but a necessity. SRCs are a powerful actor of technology transfer, allowing innovations to make it through the technical and economic “valley of death”.

SRCs have an obligation of best efforts and results.

They share and thus absorb the economic, technological and scientific risk of projects initiated by French industrial companies. Client satisfaction rate is 85%. Those companies confirm that their partnerships with SRCs have enabled better positioning to compete, broader product ranges to face international competition, faster time-to-market as well as the acquisition of industrial knowledge.