Training: Valo’poursuite: raising awareness of the socio-economic value of your research

New for 2027: The VAAME Doctoral School is offering a training session for PhD candidates to raise awareness of the socio-economic valorisation of research results through a serious game

What if your PhD research had an impact beyond publications? Patents, licences, start-up creation, industrial partnerships, research contracts… Public research results have a life beyond the laboratory, but you need to know how to protect them, valorise them and convince the right partners.

This training session offers you the opportunity to explore these issues not through a traditional lecture, but through play. Valo'Poursuite is an immersive serious game: working in teams, you follow the real-life journey of a research project, from the dissemination of a research result to its socio-economic valorisation. You will experience the decisions, obstacles and opportunities that researchers encounter along the way: when should you file a patent application? How do you approach a company? What funding opportunities are available?

By the end of the session, you will have gained a practical and operational understanding of research valorisation mechanisms, built connections with people on your campus who share an interest in these issues, and acquired useful insights for your current PhD research project or your future career.
 

·       Date and venue: 20 January 2027, 2:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. at Weforge (25 rue Lenepveu, Angers)

·       Duration: 2 hours 30 minutes, in person
 

Programme:
 

1. Welcome and introduction (20 min)

Introduction to the training session and trainers; round-table introductions. Icebreaker activity to form teams and introduce the topic.
 

2. Valo'Poursuite, the serious game (1 hour 30 min)

Working in teams, you will play through the research valorisation process: identifying research results with potential for valorisation, addressing intellectual property issues, choosing a strategy (patent, licence, partnership, business creation) and seeking funding. Each team moves its game pieces, makes decisions, experiences the consequences of its choices and discovers, in an enjoyable way, how public research knowledge transfer actually works.
 

3. Debriefing and further exploration (20 min)

Group discussion reflecting on the game sessions and how they illustrate real-life situations. Further exploration of key concepts (intellectual property, types of research valorisation, funding opportunities and stakeholders in the innovation ecosystem), illustrated through a concrete project example.
 

4. Questions and discussion (20 min)

Open discussion with the trainers: your questions, your projects and initial ideas for applying these concepts to your own PhD research topic.

Registration link: https://amethis.doctorat.org/amethis-client/formation/gestion/formation/3717