Conference participant: I was curious. In the companies that you sign up with, have you ever profiled the characteristics or industry or culture or style or whatever of companies that are more likely to want to enter into such an engagement than those that don’t?

Marc Bonnet: Only one criterion, open-mindness about SEAM. Sometimes an introducer helps us convince the CEO but the key aspect is convincing the CEO and then step by step convincing or involving all the actors. But CEO’s first as buy-in.

Conference participant: No drivers such as, you know, extreme profitability or extreme... ?

Marc Bonnet: No. In the database you have a variety ranging from large to very small profit or people who are in a very different position in developing country or developed country, etc. And we have worked with 64 kinds of industries up to now so far. So scientific independence. Well, one of the reasons why this kind of research has not been so much developed so far was common wisdom. In the academy or the field of business or management schools, common wisdom would assume that scientific independence requires only public funding. That is to say, the research is sponsored by the university, or you might have money, but there are conditions to go through the university system. And ISEOR has questioned this belief. The public sector decision makers are not neutral. In any kind of country, any kind of influence by their own indulges, their underlying specific values and goals. And second, we need scientific, in order to keep our own scientific independence, longitudinal research, that is to say the Dean might change, the president of the university might change, the provost might change and so on, but we have to stay our time for a long period of time in order to better observe and for long term observation.