The Executive Master on the move for high-impact innovation
The commitment of the Executive Master community to the promotion of high-impact technological innovation was illustrated on two occasions in November.
The X-Impact Tech Prize, launched this year by graduates of the second class of the Executive Master of the Ecole Polytechnique, alongside the X incubator, the Ecole Polytechnique Foundation and with the support of the class sponsor Jacques Veyrat (X83), was awarded to four start-ups. The prize rewards technological projects with social and/or environmental impact, carried out by students or young graduates. It is endowed with a total amount of €15,000.
Following the pitch by the 10 finalists, four nominations were awarded. Fanny Deléage and Jim Goudineau, leaders of the La Tannerie Végétale project (1st prize), Cécile Brosset and Rémi Besson, leaders of the Sonio project (2nd prize), Louis Moreau and Eliott Marquet, leaders of the Spirus project (3rd prize) and Lisa Dehove, Mehdi Morel and Xavier Montoy, leaders of the Moskito project (jury's prize) won the X-Impact Tech Prize.
“This X-Impact award is the result of the Class Project of the 2nd class and characterises the integration of the program into the school’s innovation ecosystem,” says Nicolas Mottis, professor at École Polytechnique and director of the Executive Master program.
A future unicorn?
Tehtris, a cyber security solution provider, co-founded by a graduate of the second class of the Executive Master program, announced on November 12 a record first round of funding (Series A) in Europe of €20 million. A European technological leader in cybersecurity, Tehtris has today 3 of its 4 executives coming from the Executive Master program: in addition to Laurent Oudot (E2018) and one of the two co-founders, Marie Le Pargneux (E2018) as Chief Development Officer and Ingrid Söllner (E2018) as Chief Marketing Officer.
In response to new threats that bypass traditional security, products, algorithms, software robots, and artificial intelligence encoded by Tehtris engineers are positioned at the heart of its ‘Tehtris XDR Platform’. With this tool, Tehtris and its international partners monitor millions of IP addresses in more than 60 countries and analyze billions of events every week. Tehtris customers are major players in defence, industry, engineering, services, sometimes using sensitive or critical infrastructures.
Launched in 2016, the Executive Master program at École Polytechnique aims to enable managers to design, develop and manage technology-intensive business models from an international perspective. It draws on research carried out in L’X’s laboratories.
The program is designed for executives and managers from a wide array of public and private organizations and with a wide range of profiles (engineers, finance, senior officers, senior civil servants, doctors or entrepreneurs).
The curriculum is composed of 12 training modules spread over 14 months: 9 modules take place in France, and 1 each in Europe, Asia and the United States. It offers solid fundamentals in management, management of innovation and entrepreneurship as well as professional development, and provides all the tools to adapt a business strategy, environment and organization to these challenges and to identify new areas for development.
The program is based on team work and include a project to launch a new venture, develop an innovation or strategically scale-up an existing company.