In the article “How Grenoble has mastered industry–academia science collaborations“, published in Nature, a deep analysis together with interesting numbers can be found, which give to the readers a clear overview about the city and its potential.

Here below, a few highlights from the article (complete version here):

“In Grenoble, there is a culture of innovation here that goes back more than a century, linked both to local environmental conditions and certain individuals who took risks,” says Hughes Metras, director of IRT Nanoelec, a Grenoble-based technology research institute that supports public–private electronics R&D.

In 2018, Grenoble was named as one of four cities to host new government-funded artificial intelligence (AI) research institutes. The city is home to a spin-out company, Siquance, which is leading national efforts to build the world’s first silicon-based universal quantum computer — one that can be used for a broad set of problems, much like a conventional computer: an important step in bringing quantum computing into mainstream use.

But it is not just in the areas of electronics and digital technologies that Grenoble outperforms larger French cities: Grenoble Alpes University (UGA) comes fifth when French universities are ranked by the number of articles that list their researchers as authors in 82 leading natural-science journals in the year from October 2021 to September 2022 by Nature Index. Almost one in 13 jobs in the region are in research and development (R&D) — the highest proportion of all French metropolitan areas.