When researchers and business students come together to build the innovations of tomorrow
How can a scientific discovery be transformed into an innovation that addresses a real societal need?
That is the ambition behind PhDiscovery, a programme led by CNRS Innovation that brings together PhD students and business school students for five days to work on technologies stemming from research. Together, they explore their potential for commercialisation, develop a strategy and present their project to a panel of experts.
This year, four EDHEC students took part in this immersive experience alongside around twenty CNRS PhD students. A look back at a week where bringing together two different cultures opened up new ways of thinking about innovation.
A programme designed to bridge research and entrepreneurship
Through PhDiscovery, the CNRS aims to introduce PhD students to the challenges of research commercialisation and build bridges between the scientific and entrepreneurial worlds.
Working in multidisciplinary teams, participants spend a week on a patent from the CNRS portfolio. Supported by innovation experts, they explore its market potential, define a business model, develop a funding strategy and prepare a pitch to present to a jury.
This year, the four selected EDHEC students came from different programmes across the School: Brice Moscatello, a BBA student; Love Bianca, a student in the MSc in Entrepreneurship & Innovation; Angela Pagnon, a Master’s student; and Nael Kamleh, a student in the Executive Master Business & Management. This diversity of backgrounds was designed to enrich discussions with the PhD students and bring complementary perspectives to the technologies being explored.
“We had very different definitions for the same words.”
For Brice, the week was above all an opportunity to discover a new way of thinking.
What stood out to you most during the week?
“What’s interesting is that we’re put into teams from day one. Very quickly, you realise that researchers and business school students don’t approach things in the same way at all. We sometimes have very different definitions for the same words, but that’s precisely what makes these conversations so valuable.”
“At business school, we often think of entrepreneurship as starting with an idea that immediately addresses a market need. Researchers, on the other hand, are primarily focused on advancing knowledge. I realised that everyone is contributing their own piece to the puzzle.”
“Explain it to me as if you were explaining it to your grandmother.”
Each team worked on a real technology stemming from research. The projects covered a wide range of fields: a headset designed to improve sleep and memory, a polymer developed to facilitate the extraction of rare earth elements, a method for generating a biometric identifier from DNA, and nanoparticles aimed at developing less addictive opioid-based painkillers.
Brice spent the week working on the latter technology.
What was it like working with the PhD students?
“When I first opened the patent, I could barely understand any of it. It was complete jargon to me.”
“I kept telling them: ‘Explain it to me as if you were explaining it to your grandmother.’ Little by little, they managed to make their research understandable. By the end of the week, I was able to explain their technology in simple terms myself.”
Beyond gaining a better understanding of the science, the exercise helped the PhD students recognise the importance of adapting their message to their audience, an essential skill when it comes to bringing an innovation beyond the laboratory.
Challenging stereotypes… on both sides
The experience also challenged some of the preconceptions each group may have had about the other. More importantly, it highlighted a key challenge in research commercialisation: making complex technology understandable without oversimplifying it.
With this in mind, the team from TechForward, EDHEC Entrepreneurs’ deeptech incubator, led a workshop dedicated to entrepreneurial pitching. Participants learned how to structure their pitch, adapt their message to their audience and communicate the value of their innovation.
Brice quickly saw the importance of this.
Has this experience changed the way you see researchers?
“Completely. I had this stereotype of researchers as people who weren’t particularly comfortable speaking in public. In reality, some of them were better speakers than business school students. This week challenged a lot of those preconceptions.”
For Brice, the learning went both ways: the business students learned to navigate the complexity of deeptech projects, while the PhD students experienced first-hand the importance of making their innovations understandable and accessible to non-scientific audiences.
An experience that opens up new possibilities
Beyond the projects developed during the week, the experience also sparked new opportunities for collaboration.
“Several PhD students suggested that we stay in touch so I could help them explore the business side of their projects.”
Brice can even imagine taking this dynamic further at EDHEC:
“It would be interesting to invite PhD students to spend half a day at EDHEC, so we could continue these conversations and give students the opportunity to discover their research.”
This suggestion ultimately captures the spirit of PhDiscovery: building lasting bridges between research and entrepreneurship, so that different areas of expertise can meet, understand one another and work together to shape the innovations of tomorrow.
This ambition to bring research, innovation and entrepreneurship closer together is part of EDHEC Entrepreneurs’ broader commitment to deeptech. To learn more, read our behind-the-scenes look at the 2025 EDHEC x EURECOM Entrepreneurship Festival
