Source: French to English Tester Published on: 2026-05-18
Source: The Conversation – France (in French)– By Marion Trommenschlager, Researcher in Information and Communication Sciences, PREFics laboratory, University of Rennes 2
Digital technology has promoted a wave of entrepreneurial figures, from Mark Zuckerberg to Jeff Bezos, soon to be joined by those of AI, like Sam Altman. But while narratives, especially in the media, love this representation, the reality is much more nuanced. Beyond these more or less heroized individuals, the contribution of ecosystems to the success of each must be recalled.
The media and political coverage of the recent waves of AI highlights certain faces (Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel…), and tends to personify the technological dynamic. Thesuccess storybecomes the story of a heroic founder; we will also note the absence of a female founder. This simplistic reading, however, conceals the reality of innovation processes, which are collective and territorial products, built through alliances between universities, funders, public markets, incubators, and local networks. Deconstructing these individual narratives to reveal the concrete mechanisms around innovation appears more necessary than ever. Recently, moreover, we have witnessed a range of alarmist discourses about the risks of AI from the leaders themselves (Sam Altman at Open AI,Dario Almodeiat Anthropic) of the AI industry.
Are these sincere warnings or a strategy to strengthen their influence in order to push for regulation that would affect smaller startups and open source more, rather than the big established players? Statements made by the Frenchman Arthur Mensch (Mistral AI),interrogated by Le Monde, described as a “distraction” that obscures the real current issue in the sector, that of an oligarchic information system, “the real risk of the coming artificial intelligence is that of massive influence on the way people think and the way they vote.”
Political identification
The storytelling of the founders is not just a journalistic bias: it is a performative strength (that is, the capacity of a narrative to produce the reality it describes) that guides collective action. By elevating a single face as a spokesperson, the narrative facilitates the political and media identification of a protagonist, channels public attention, and legitimizes particular organizational models:scalability, thedisruption, the dominance of global markets.
Anthony Galluzo, researcher in management sciences, has shown how the myth offounding hero (orfounder as herostructures contemporary entrepreneurial imaginaries. However, this visibility masks the resources and relationships that make these technological trajectories possible.
Also read:
After the summit on AI, can Emmanuel Macron bring forth a third European way?
A winning triptych
Innovation ecosystems gradually formed after the war, and especially from the 1950s onwards, around a triptych: academic, industrial, and public actors. In the United States, the industrialization of campuses (such as Stanford), technology transfers originating from university research, government contracts (defense, space), later joined by venture capital, shaped networks of interconnected actors.
As early as the 1990s, the concept of“triple helix”, by renewing the collaboration between the university, industry, and the State, reflects these interconnections. It shows how innovation is born from alliances and is strengthened by institutions, funding, and shared infrastructures.
The French way
The Californian and French models differ greatly, one centered around venture capital and university transfers, the other structured for about ten years by state orchestration (structuring of theFrench Tech, intervention byBpifrance, territorial policies). It remains that these two models obey a common deep dynamic: innovation does not emerge from a solitary act but from a web of alliances between public, private, and academic actors.
Although the Californian and French trajectories differ in their histories, resources, and institutional cultures, the difference lies less in the collective principle than in the way this collective is financed, organized, and narrated. Despite marked differences in the way innovation is produced, California is not the anti-model of “collective” innovation; on the contrary, it is one of the historical origins and one of the most advanced laboratories. In other words, one does not undertake alone; the successes attributed to the “founders” are actually the product of collective assemblages, shared resources, and convergent political and financial choices.
Mechanics of innovation
Technological trajectories are built daily through concrete mechanisms that vary according to the actors. On one hand, venture capital funds legitimize projects through their investment choices. By selecting certain models and signaling their attractiveness, those also called VCs forVenture Capital, determine which types of innovations gain access to resources and have the necessary visibility to develop.
Public and university laboratories, for their part, direct research agendas based on local expertise, available funding, and territorial needs (health, mobility, cybersecurity, etc.). These knowledge and training resources shape the capacity for the emergence of sectors.
A strategic buyer
The State, for its part, operates through institutionalization: calls for projects, eligibility criteria, structure the desirable major orientations. But the State can also act asstrategic buyer(public contracts, orders), particularly in the United States, which directly influences markets and technological priorities independently of pure market logic.
For entrepreneurs, these three parties (private financiers, research centers, and public action) produce “constrained paths” through which certain innovations emerge while others remain marginal.
The AI revealing dominant narratives
The rise of generative AI reveals in broad daylight the hierarchies of power among actors, what researcher Kate Crawford describes as thepolitical materiality of AI, both an infrastructure, an industry and aextraction regime. This political materiality here combines with storytelling to consolidate dominant positions. The geopolitical rivalry around AI is often described as a “war.” In this drama, each space builds its own heroes to justify a claim toglobal leadership. Discipline reveals, as much as it reinforces, preexisting organizational orders.
The case of the Chinese AI that everyone was talking about 18 months ago seemed to be based on a different model. In China, AI is driven by a strategy of technological autonomy (“Made in China 2025”), with massive investments in chips and open-source, and players likeDeepSeek that disrupt global balances.
The personalization of the narrative and the centrality of market logics contribute to marginalizing other innovation trajectories that struggle to fit into dominant legitimization frameworks. Counter-models are emerging (for example with thecivic techmore broadly developed in Los Angeles, or also inTaiwan) but remain fragmented in the face of capital flows and globalizing narratives.
(Re)invest in the debate on innovation
Understanding the concrete mechanics (selection criteria, financing, public procurement methods) makes it possible to identify political levers to guide the allocation of resources. Moreover, establishing deliberation mechanisms (citizen advice, co-design procedures for technological priorities) seems necessary to embed innovation within a democratic framework. To put it more directly, it is not just about helping start-ups, but about collectively determining who decides the purposes of innovation, according to which criteria, and to the benefit of which uses.
While current media debates often emphasize the geopolitical angle in the quest for technological mastery, this perspective, as crucial as it is, must not obscure the fact that technological trajectories are shaped daily by national and local choices.
In view of the 2027 elections, it is important to recall that innovation is also a matter of proximity, local purchasing decisions, policies for welcoming stakeholders, and public service priorities, which means placing tech back at the heart of the democratic debate. Regaining control over innovation primarily means making these mechanisms understandable and jointly decidable.
Marion Trommenschlager does not work for, advise, hold shares in, receive funds from any organization that could benefit from this article, and has declared no other affiliation than her research institution.
–ref. The founder myth: when Silicon Valley exports its narratives to the point of obscuring the fact that innovation is above all collective –https://theconversation.com/the-founder-myth-when-silicon-valley-exports-its-narratives-to-the-point-of-obscuring-the-fact-that-innovation-is-first-and-foremost-collective-278456