Didier Lombard is a French industrialist, former president of Orange, Technicolor and STMicroelectronics. He has been a part of the major technological movements of the last decades: telecommunications satellites, GSM radiotelephony standard, optical fiber. He lives in Paris.

French industry has changed a lot. Apart from some traditionally strong sectors, such as aerospace, deindustrialization is rife. Globalization is of course part of the reason, but short-term strategies that damage the producer — industry — for the benefit of the consumer are also very destructive.
To stop this erosion of our industry, Didier Lombard proposes a three-point remedy:
Adapt our industry to the new economy, which implies an increasing share for the service sector;
Identify key sectors — energy, digital, transport — with high potential for growth;
Finally, in order to restore the broken geo-economic balance with the giant power blocs of Asia and the United States, it is urgent to invest in infrastructure and renovate our industrial fabric.
Above all, in order to face the major industrial challenges of tomorrow, it is important to put an end to the short-sighted strategies of low consumer prices to encourage high-level technological innovation. In short, it is time, in France, to switch from low-cost consumption to high-tech production.