Entrepreneurship, High-Technology, and Policy Reforms in France

This review piece deals with the impact of public policy reforms in the field of high-technology in France since the late 1990s. I investigate whether the series of reforms adopted by policymakers provide the conditions to support the development of entrepreneurship and of high-tech companies. The story of policymaking in high-technology in France is characterized by both successes and shortcomings. I survey evidence to support the argument that French policymakers pursued piecemeal institutional reforms that sought to combine risk-taking without affecting social equality. I argue that the failures in high-tech policies should not be attributed to the piecemeal nature of the reforms – as opposed to those that would have focused on capturing complementarities. A focus on institutional complementarity obscures a fundamental feature of geographical clusters of high-technology firms, namely that institutions are enabling as well as constraining.