“It's not for me to confirm or announce anything!” said during the Luxembourg Investment Forum organised by Indosuez at the Chamber of Commerce on Thursday and Friday. Unwittingly, the CEO of Luxinnovation confirmed a rumour reported by Reporter that she would become Luxembourg’s new lord chamberlain on 1 January 2025. But given the nature of the position, of course, this news can only be officially announced by the royal court itself.
Timing may well have played a part in her transfer: Luxinnovation's performance plan with the government was due to expire at the end of 2025. Baillie arrived at the economic development agency after a notable stint at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under Jean Asselborn (LSAP), followed by an initial transfer to the Ministry of the Economy under (LSAP), as deputy chief of staff. The new coalition government may well have wanted a change of head, an exercise not necessarily unusual in the ranks of the senior civil service.
We're doing a lot, and I'm proud of that, but we can do more!
In a way, that would have been unfair, given that Baillie--who took fifth place in Paperjam’s latest Top 100 of the most influential figures for the country's economy--had put so much energy into becoming an unrivalled ambassador for the country, its economy and its support for the startup and innovation ecosystem in a humble and empathetic way, free from political clans or vested interests. On Friday morning, when she spoke at the Luxembourg Investment Forum about the innovation ecosystem in Luxembourg--alongside Amélie Madinier, who runs the Village by CA, and Thierry Draus, who leads the development of innovative products for SES--the former diplomat was maintained this stance.
"We're doing a lot, and I'm proud of it, but we can do more! In relation to our GDP, we don't spend enough on research, development and innovation", she replied to a question from the moderator, Charlotte Kan. But we should be wary of statistics that say Luxembourg is lagging behind, "because a large part of our GDP comes from the financial sector, which is not very active in RDI [research, development and innovation]. It's a problem of statistics," she said. “It's a problem of statistics, which use NACE codes to try to describe a reality."
"Something has happened over the last 20 years, there has been massive investment in research infrastructure, in the university and in research institutes, and in collaboration with the private sector," she explained to an audience of hand-picked, discreet investors. "Luxembourg is an ecosystem [where people] know each other well, on a human scale, in which people have relationships of trust, where people can develop solutions based on concrete problems, and where the interdisciplinary nature of the University of Luxembourg is a great strength.”
Baillie took the same line of argument heard on every stage in the world, during official trips or diplomatic missions, at conferences or cocktail parties. "All the nationalities present in Luxembourg are not only an asset in terms of multilingualism, but also for thinking and reflecting. Interacting to solve a problem opens up your mind to a whole new level." She's mastered the art of the pitch better than 90% of our startups... It's all there. Incubators, government support, the 50% of doctoral students who stay for their first job in Luxembourg, the Luxinnovation acceleration programme, which has to sort through 500 applications to select just 30 firms twice a year, the Luxembourg Venture Days (on 17 October) - to try to solve the problem of financing scale-ups - the encouragement of the green transition for SMEs and the necessary catalogue of pragmatic solutions to provide them with, the product circularity sheet - the starting point for an active approach to circularity.
"I had the opportunity to present our ecosystem to the European commissioner recently, and she told me that she was looking to Luxembourg as an example of development," she said. And it's not that Baillie is kidding herself: the CEO of Luxinnovation prefers to see the ecosystem under construction, the one that is moving forward, perhaps not fast enough, perhaps not strong enough, but within the country's borders.
But not everything is rosy. In addition to insufficient spending on R&D and innovation, Singapore, for example, is ten years ahead in artificial intelligence; the Automotive Campus was at a standstill until after project had stalled. Under the leadership of (DP), the Ministry of Economic Affairs had to launch a battle plan to find the funding to 'scale up', to grow fast and on a European scale for certain startups. The Genome report, commissioned and barely commented on by his predecessor, (LSAP), highlighted a number of structural problems. Other ecosystems are moving forward faster and better than in Luxembourg, thanks to a real commitment to technology, while we are wondering what to do about the dual strategy on AI, where the prime minister, (CSV), has promised investment in a quantum supercomputer, where innovative entrepreneurs are finding it hard to open a simple bank account and are drowning in administrative red tape, against which sandboxing is slow to emerge clearly.
Luxinnovation is at a crossroads just as much as the country, and the agency needs to be given additional resources to enable it to carry out a wide range of tasks, from Luxembourg diplomacy to advanced technological monitoring of weak signals and regulations. Luxembourg has built its economic successes on a rapid and agile understanding of potentially interesting niches, as Marie-Jeanne Chèvremont in an interview with Paperjam earlier this year.
A shortlist
To lead it, you need a CEO with more resources and ambitions. But who would it be? None of the people we've contacted want to be too specific... since the information has not been made official, which is understandable. Others have built up an image over the course of their careers that matches the challenges very well.
The CEO has not always been a civil servant and ), and two prominent figures from civil society (Jean-Paul Schuler and ) have also served on the board, their terms of office ending on each occasion against a backdrop of disputes with the former economy minister Étienne Schneider. "That's where you have to look", say two sources, in unison but from a distance. "Among the young wolves of the Ministry of the Economy", where Bob Feidt or Michele Gallo come to mind.
? From his time in two Juncker governments, the lawyer has built up an aura about the dynamics of technology, which he continues to nurture today, even though he invariably replies that he has turned his back on politics. Already at the head of an administration, this specialist in finance and the finance of the future also has views on artificial intelligence, as he .
? Top advisor to the prime minister and the minister for communications, she was the subject of a rumour at the time of the first Bettel-Schneider government, which saw her as the government's ‘minister for tech’. She has always distanced herself from the prospect of greater exposure, but she ticks all the boxes for this role. Ries is well connected, since she has been responsible for coordinating digital issues between all the public and private bodies, and holds a number of posts, including that of director of SES. But she is not affiliated to the Ministry of the Economy, or even to a member of the economic interest group.
Philippe Mayer? The very discreet deputy CEO of Luxinnovation since the beginning of the year, who is originally from Metz, is not from Luxembourg. A graduate of Arts et Métiers Paris, he has risen through the ranks since joining the public innovation agency in 2018. The 'Luxembourg mindset' is so well understood that it is hard to believe that a non-Luxembourger could be appointed to this position.
Philippe Linster? The CEO of the House of startups also ticks all the boxes. The youngest profile is already a member of the management board of Luxinnovation, where he represents the Chamber of Commerce. He too spends his time building bridges. An advisor to Banque de Luxembourg in the department dedicated to businesses and entrepreneurs, he was responsible, at the Chamber of Commerce, for the Investor Care platform dedicated to advising foreign investors interested in Luxembourg and for the entrepreneurial education programme and school-business relations. All very interesting themes in the context of Luxinnovation.
Michele Gallo? Always as smiling as he is discreet, Gallo heads up the 'startup' branch of the Directorate-General for Industry, New Technologies and Research at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and has a fine pedigree to boast about. After a spell in an investment bank in London, where he was involved in mergers and acquisitions, he returned to his native Luxembourg, where he found himself analysing projects eligible for support under the scheme for young innovative companies, monitoring projects such as the Plug & Play Tech Center that he helped to set up in 2011 with the Luxembourg Trade Investment Office in San Francisco, and everything to do with incubation infrastructure projects such as Technoport. More recently, he was partly responsible for the new roadmap for scale-ups and the Digital Tech Fund.
Read the French-language version of this report