At the heart of the French economic fabric, Intermediate-sized Enterprises (ETIs) have been included in public statistics since 2008, thanks to the Mouvement des entreprises de taille intermédiaire (METI). Despite this institutional recognition, they are too often a missing link in industrial policy, and France is lagging considerably behind in this respect. The etilab chair was born out of a meeting in the field between economists and students from Mines Paris and the Île-de-France club.