Interview with General Éric Autellet

When Geopolitics Enters Business Strategy

You are a board member of the EDHEC Chair in Geopolitics and Business Strategy. Why did you accept this role, and why do you think developing this kind of structure within a business school is relevant?

We are living through a major strategic rupture. The contemporary world is characterised by the intertwining of three logics — economic, political, and geopolitical — that for a long time evolved in silos. For several decades, economics dominated, relegating geopolitics and politics to the background. These spheres only occasionally intersected, at Davos or in international forums, without any truly structured dialogue. Yet since 2022 and the brutal return of conflict to the European continent, it has become imperative to bring these worlds closer together. Companies in particular can no longer ignore the dynamics of power, technological dependencies, or the systemic risks affecting their value chains. That is the whole purpose of a chair like EDHEC's: to create a space for reflection where business strategy is thought through within its global geopolitical environment.

How would you define your role today?

After leaving the military institution, I chose to become a trusted intermediary between the three worlds mentioned: the state, businesses, and actors in strategic thinking. I represent none of these spheres, but I facilitate their dialogue. My work involves connecting investment funds, companies, public actors, and think tanks in order to foster mutual understanding and the coordination of interests. Intellectual compartmentalisation — particularly in France — holds back strategic innovation. We need to rethink the training, governance, and culture of our elites so that they learn to reason in an interdisciplinary way, at the crossroads of management, technology, and geopolitics.

Did your military career give you a particular approach to geopolitics?

A military career offers a dual richness: international experience and a systemic approach to the world. Officers begin very young with significant human and operational responsibilities, before moving on to roles of strategic expertise. This training produces a culture of fieldwork and a nuanced understanding of power dynamics. It also allows one to approach geopolitics not as an abstraction, but as a set of concrete constraints that structure collective decisions — whether military, political, or economic.

Do the start-ups you support take the geopolitical dimension into account?

Very rarely. Most young companies are born from technological innovation without any in-depth analysis of the strategic context. In the defence sector, this gap is all the more problematic because the demands placed on them are often contradictory. They are asked to be dual-use, yet also to preserve their capital sovereignty; to innovate quickly, but within a strict regulatory framework. The result: certain technologies end up leaving the country, for lack of a coherent environment. This is why it is necessary to develop a specific growth engineering approach for defence start-ups, one that articulates sovereignty, innovation, and competitiveness.

Are French companies aware of the need for economic resilience?

Resilience remains a concept that is difficult to integrate in an environment where immediate profitability takes precedence. Like insurance, there is reluctance to pay for a hypothetical risk. Yet recent crises — health, energy, security — show that business continuity and industrial sovereignty are conditions for survival as much as competitive assets. Today, some investors are interested in defence for reasons of return, not out of strategic awareness. The real war effort to be waged is therefore one of mindsets: rebuilding a culture of the long term, of calculated risk, and of national cohesion.

How can technological sovereignty be guaranteed in a context of international competition?

A distinction must be drawn between technological discovery and innovation. In France, we excel at research, but we rarely transform these discoveries into concrete innovations. Foreign ecosystems — particularly American ones — value risk-taking and speed of execution. In our country, the cost of failure is too high, both legally and socially. The result: our technologies go elsewhere, become strategic products abroad, and then return once de-risked. Fostering European technological sovereignty therefore requires a profound reform of our relationship to risk and entrepreneurship.

What role for the European Union in this geopolitical recomposition?

The European Union is moving forward, but out of step. Its institutional structure — slow and segmented — limits its capacity to react in the face of agile powers like the United States or China. Yet the Commission has identified economic security as a strategic priority for 2024–2029, which marks a welcome awakening. The challenge now is to align European political, economic, and industrial interests in order to give rise to a genuine continental power. European peace can only be maintained if it rests on instruments of power — industrial, technological, financial — and no longer merely on a promise of integration.

Do you think it is relevant to create a dedicated position within companies for these issues — a Chief Geopolitical Officer?

Like any transformation, the integration of geopolitical risk into corporate governance must be supported. Creating a Chief Geopolitical Officer position can be useful during this transitional phase, especially for large organisations exposed to sensitive markets. But in the long run, maturity will be reached when this geopolitical culture is embedded at every level of decision-making: leadership, finance, innovation, supply chain. Geopolitics must not be an isolated function, but an intrinsic dimension of strategic reasoning.

Towards what kind of 21st-century geopolitics are we heading?

The 19th century was that of nations, the 20th that of globalisation; the 21st will be that of continents. The geopolitics of tomorrow will rest on structured regional blocs — Europe, the Americas, Asia — capable of operating autonomously. Major companies have already understood this: they are adopting continental organisations, inspired by regional military commands, to preserve their agility in times of crisis. It is in this hybridisation between economic logic and strategic logic that power is now being played out.

What reading would you recommend to those wishing to better understand these dynamics?

Resources such as the programme "Le Dessous des Cartes" or the analyses published on Diploweb are excellent entry points. But beyond reading, I would recommend adopting an intellectual posture: crossing disciplines, confronting different viewpoints, and treating geopolitics as a grammar of reality — indispensable to any business strategy.