LTU Technologies : converting technology into a business product

LTU Technologies is an editor of image recognition and visual content management software. It originated as a start-up from INRIA (Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique: French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control) in 1999 and has been part of the Japanese group Jastec since 2005. It started out in as a research project during a prosperous economic period, and became an industrial product after a number of difficult years. Its story illustrates the challenges which face the researcher who attempts to create an innovative company on the basis of his research work. These include taking the plunge despite the disapproval of some colleagues, finding one's first clients who are not what one originally envisaged, raising the necessary funds, knowing how to adapt to certain situations, dealing with the consequences if planned redundancy is judged to be necessary, deciding between concentrating on an element which appears to be essential and looking for new applications, and holding one's course despite outside interference. The success of LTU Technologies was made possible by a buy-out which took place under favourable conditions and which allowed the team to continue its development with new resources.