Technology and Innovation

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The paper presents a comparative analysis between the EU and the UK digital and operational resilience requirements for financial services. Focusing on the insurance industry, considering its role in providing cover for operational risks, and cyber-related ones in particular, it captures developments in relation to risk management practices. Specifically, commenting on the prudential provisions underpinning risk management systems, frameworks, and assessments, in line with Solvency II. The link between operational risk activities is also discussed as an extension of this comparison. Effectively capturing how disaster recovery (DR), business continuity planning (BCP), third-party risk management (TPRM) and outsourcing are reflected in digital and operational resilience approaches. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the similarities and differences between the EU and the UK regulatory regime in relation to digital and operational resilience requirements for re-insurance undertakings. Practical recommendations to support adherence to both underlying requirements are presented, assisting re-insurers operating in those jurisdictions.

We propose in this article the presentation of the solutions of the Deep tech Xvaluator in France for the co-construction of new, highly collaborative tool and processes of democratic “open qualification” [PAU 09, 12, 20]. By considering the diversity of stakeholders and their specific contexts, opinion and impact data in highly collaboration open qualification processus and the capabilities enhanced by AI, Xvaluator innovation is able to integrate ex ante the evolving determinants of opinion on perceived impacts data on all subjects of common interest. This leads our research toward the discovery and conceptualization [PAU 23] in economics, social and cognitive science of a third typology of AI (in addition to symbolic and connectionist-connective types): the Qualitative AI (QuAI) [PAU 23]. This allows to integrate as consubstantial to the pertinence of the qualification and decision-making process the human critical thinking in all its diversity as condition to co-create and access pertinent reliable data as results. These new trusted spaces and process - QuAI tool Xvaluator - could thus lead to optimal choices, and better decision making with consensus. Highly collaborative process of creation of relevance and trust, particularly through the new dynamic capabilities empowered by the Xvaluator Qualificative AI are potential creators of disruptive innovations by embarking the digital users’ contributions during all AI usages towards new digital business models reducing the fake and biased data flux and thus reducing the ecological footprint of all AI usages. Several usage functionalities are identify d as critical contributions of Xvaluator to evolutions towards a functional economy [VAI 20] and the democratization of access to reliable impact data aimed at more efficient, more ethical, innovative, disruptive tools for resilience [SCH 22] facing the current multifaceted crises: economic, climate-related, and trust-related [PAU 09, 12, 18], [ADA 18].

Depending on business activities, women owners can showcase various identities from manual know-how preservation to innovation. Analyzing interactions of 26 entreprises being supported for their creation and digitalization by the Chamber of Craft and Trades Centre-Val de Loire, we propose to explore common imaginaries and preferences of craftwomen, startup owners and industrial entreprises highlighting women craft. What type of women entrepreneur are we when we don’t “check the bank boxes”, favoring richness of encounters or polyvalence and life comfort? Our response is based on evaluating transactional distances between women craft owners and businesses, startups or manufacturers, ran by or showcasing women. Mobilizing territorialization of cooperative transactions, we analyze the impacts for business support activities, the place of digital and the negociated construction of a common imaginary of women entrepreneurship.

This article offers an in-depth analysis of the interactions between economic intelligence (EI), artificial intelligence (AI), and territorial dynamics in the era of digital transformation. AI technologies—particularly generative AI—are profoundly reshaping the production, circulation, and valorization of strategic information, both within organizations and across territories. Building on academic work related to knowledge management and information governance, the study shows how territories can become experimental spaces for augmented collective intelligence, where AI contributes to strengthening competitiveness, innovation, and resilience. The article adopts an analytical and critical approach, examining the complementarity between algorithmic power and human judgment, as well as the conditions required for ethical and shared data governance.

Biological inputs constitute one of the main agricultural innovations in response to the crisis associated with the use of chemical products. Microorganisms applied to plant nutrition and pest control thus emerge as key technologies in the transition toward sustainable agriculture. However, their development depends not only on technical aspects but also on the regulatory system that institutionalizes them. This article presents findings from an exploratory study on the production of biological inputs in Argentina and their forms of institutionalization. It analyses the context in which these innovations have emerged, the actors involved, and the system of regulations and public policies that regulate, promote, or constrain their development. Methodologically, the study combines documentary analysis with secondary and quantitative industry data from official sources, along with in-depth interviews and participant observation. The results show that, although biological inputs constitute an established technology in the country, supported by an industrial structure that reveals the presence of local firms, their institutionalization is contradictory, marked by advances and setbacks that condition their consolidation.

At the start of the 21st century, global warming is a topic of paramount importance in economic, social, political, and, inevitably, ecological terms. Reducing CO2 emissions, or decarbonization, is the goal for the next 20 to 30 years, via carbon neutrality. There are two main options for achieving this goal. The first involves a technical escape, focusing on technical innovation. The second, on the contrary, emphasizes exclusively energy efficiency and the redefinition of social needs by supporting a new socioeconomic model.

This article presents, with an explicit angle on decarbonization, the research that we carried out in the book: Ecological Transition and Technological Change, ISTE Volume 42, London 2024.The article highlights and describes three main decarbonization paths, corresponding to three ecological transition issues: decarbonization as mitigation through capture and storage of emitted C02 with an unchanged technical and economic system; decarbonization as a solution to the ecological transition matter, centered on technological mutation, introducing decarbonized technologies as a replacement of fossil-fuel-based technologies, mainly combustion technologies. Finally, in view of the difficulty of achieving a satisfactory level of decarbonization, a third ecological transition issue is taking shape, namely the reorganization of our production, consumption and transport patterns, based essentially on sobriety and a reduction in the level of activity. The importance of the challenge means that these three decarbonization systems will continue to work in synergy.

Deux spécialistes de la décarbonation ont été interrogés en février 2024 afin de connaitre leur analyse des transformations techniques et industrielles actuelles et à venir de la décarbonation. Quelle est la stratégie des grands groupes industriels français en la matière ? Les technologies développées à l’heure actuelle sont-elles fiables ? La décarbonation suppose l’électrification des procédés industriels. Mais, comment produire de l’électricité « verte », puisque pour produire de l’énergie, il faut de l’énergie. Quelles sont les technologies utilisées actuellement et en devenir ? Peut-on décarboner l’industrie, sans remettre en question le modèle industriel qui s’est progressivement construit depuis la révolution industrielle ?

Long considered as “playing the Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, geoengineering, which refers to a wide range of large-scale technical interventions on the climate system, has gradually gained credibility over the past few years and is now being seriously considered in international climate debates. In this paper, we aim to analyze this process of normalizing geoengineering within international discussion arenas. This process stems from the integration of a compensation logic through the classical lens of decarbonization: climate agreements now distinguish between the optional reduction of emissions that can be ’mitigated,’ that is, captured through carbon capture techniques, and the mandatory reduction of emissions that cannot be mitigated. This compensation logic has the dual effect of normalizing CC(U)S and carbon geoengineering, while rendering some decarbonization measures optional. The question we will address in this paper is to what extent all of this points to a new horizon: the normalization of the prospect of overshooting the threshold set by the Paris Agreement, and also the normalization of solar geoengineering, understood as a means of thermally compensating for the failure or, at the very least, the postponement of decarbonization measures. The aim, in essence, will be to study the shift from an economy of promise to one of debt.

For several decades, exponential growth in the use of fossil carbon has created drastic climate disturbances. To mitigate climate change, all uses of virgin fossil carbon must, urgently, be phased out. Many transport sources and industrial processes can easily be electrified and should be where possible. But some sectors like chemical, materials (e.g. lime and steel), aviation and maritime transport will continue to use carbon and the virgin fossil used today will need to be substituted to meet climate neutrality targets. Using CO2 to replace fossil carbon in sectors that will still need hydrocarbons is a key solution to “defossilise” our economy. The concept of Carbon Capture and Utilisation (CCU) is a broad term that covers processes that capture CO2 from flue and process gases or directly from the air and convert it into a variety of products such as fuels, chemicals, and materials. No precise global estimate of the potential mitigation role of CCU technologies exists to date, because of uncertainties in renewable electricity cost scenarios and the low granularity of models that simulate different CCU options. However, CCU technologies have the potential to play a significant role in the mitigation of climate change as described in the latest report from Working Group 3 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).