Understanding business differently through CREDA expertise

Emile Granveau: "CREDA enabled me to develop my skills while saving time."

Emile Granveau (Bo220) showed entrepreneurial spirit from an early age. After his sophomore year, he took a gap year in Jacksonville, near Chicago. Upon his return, after obtaining his high school diploma with a specialization in engineering sciences, he enrolled in a preparatory science class at the Grandes Ecoles in Bordeaux. On the suggestion of his childhood best friend and his friend's older brother, both of whom had attended business school and would become his business partners, he created a company in Bordeaux called Plug'heur during his two years of preparatory classes. The idea was to launch a mobile phone battery charging solution in Europe that already existed in Asia.
Admitted to the Grande Ecole Program at the Arts et Métiers campus Arts et Métiers Bordeaux, he continued to launch his business alongside his engineering studies and also became involved in the Union des Elèves student association (he was part of the team organizing the May 2022 Gala in Bordeaux).
During his third year, CREDA allowed him to work on different subjects that were useful for his chosen career: "It was a great experience, the speakers were really interesting and my classmates were on the same wavelength as me. I familiarized myself with the legal sector, marketing, and finance. I was able to apply my knowledge to what I do every day in my company, which is really great."
Today, the company co-founded by Emile is four years old and nine people have been hired by the three founding partners. Plug'heur is the second largest player in terms of turnover on the French market.
Emile works on the technical, financial, legal, human resources, and operational aspects, while his partners work on the commercial and marketing aspects: "From the outset, we have been careful not to mix professional and personal matters, and it's working out very well." 
For 2023, the goal is to triple revenue in the French market and begin expanding at the European level: "We work with high-traffic locations. Historically, our first customers were shopping malls, and for the past year, we have also been equipping events."
Emile's advice for starting a business? "Don't wait to test your idea; create an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) to see if there's a need for it."
What are the plans for this 23-year-old entrepreneur? "I want to do lots of things, travel, set up other businesses... But for now, I'm focusing on continuing to develop Plug'heur."

Jean-Robert Agher: "Writing a thesis using CREDA's tools gave me a different approach to business creation."

During his studies at Arts et Métiers, Jean-Robert Agher (Ai.209) spent time in Australia atthe University of Melbourne, where he took the Entrepreneurship program.
After working for two years in Switzerland at Richemont in the production of luxury watches, he took over the management of a small company with about ten employees, Romans Industrie. His goal was to restructure the company and give it a new dynamic. It was at this point that he decided to rethink Romans Industrie's business model from a research perspective.
He discussed his project with a colleague, Baptiste Piclet, CEO of Euros, a company that manufactures medical prostheses and whose shareholders are the same as those of Romans Industrie. Baptiste Piclet, an Arts et Métiers engineer, had carried out the CREDA assessment and had written a thesis with Patrice Dubois and Améziane Aoussat, director of the Product Design and Innovation Laboratory, a few years earlier. This is how his thesis topic, "Proposing a coherent business model design approach," took shape, which will be carried out as part of a CIFRE agreement with Euros. His research work was applied to a start-up called Protectus, which specializes in medical textiles. Améziane Aoussat supervised his thesis, providing the necessary guidance for the development of his work, which was monitored by Patrice Dubois.
Following his thesis, the company Proctectus hired him to continue working on innovation, particularly on the product, service, and business model as a whole.

What did Jean-Robert Agher gain from writing a thesis based on the concepts covered in the CREDA expertise? "Although writing a thesis is a difficult task, it offers significant personal enrichment and also brings about a major change in one's relationship with knowledge. This is because knowledge is no longer top-down, as it was during my engineering studies, but is shaped by the pace of research findings. The CREDA expertise is aimed at students and provides them with a structured methodology for thinking about business creation. I have only added a small brick to its construction, but it is a very valuable approach and I find it interesting to have this differentiated teaching method."