In Toulouse, south western France, Airbus has just opened its BizLab. A 700 m2 ( >7,500 sqare feet) building, a kind of aerospace industry projects suggestion box. Here, under one roof, Airbus intends putting to work some of its 12,000 engineers and start-ups, with the aim of exploring new horizons and introducing aerospace industry innovations more quickly to the market.
Bruno Gutierres, Director - BizLab Toulouse:
"What we will be looking for are start-ups who work on, or, who have developed in other sectors or industries innovative concepts, or services, and not only innovative technologies. We will open up the aerospace industry to them, and help them to develop their concepts."
Yann Barbaux, Director of Innovation - Airbus:
"The idea is that it would act as an external accelerator; that there will be a number of projects under consideration, or development, on a permanent basis, and that the people here will have the possiblity of exchanging best practices and ideas, since innovation is always sparked off from meetings between people."
Fifteen projects have already been selected. In their initial phase, lasting six months, Airbus intends to support these start-ups by providing experts in the fields of technology, law, finance and marketing. To facilitate the arrival of these innovations onto the market, BizLab has created partnerships with major companies such as Google and Microsoft. After Toulouse, other BizLabs should emerge in the coming months, in Hamburg, Germany and Bangalore, India.