François Grosse Email & Phone Number

I am a manager & an entrepreneur with a strong experience both in utilities & digital startup. I am also engaged in academic work on economic growth and circular economy. My recent book "Croissance soutenable ? La société au défi de l'économie circulaire" (PUG, 2023) proves that there is no sustainable society above 1% annual material growth and that we have only a couple of decades left to implement at full scale the unique solution to get there, before we meet serious problems. My book is introduced by Dominique Bourg and by Cédric Villani.Now CEO at Symbiose, a next generation, circular and low-carbon waste-to-energy project in Monaco, subsidiary of SMEG (Société Monégasque de l'Electricité et du Gaz). Symbiose should be precursor of a new approach in waste-to-energy, based on fossil decarbonation and high energy efficiency comparable to biomass energy plants. We designed the project since January 2021, my colleague Frank Tabariès and myself, supported by SMEG and our growing team, in order to solve the critical disadvantages of traditional waste-to-energy plants, so as to make waste both a circular and a "normal" resource, even for energy production.Before joining SMEG, I was the Chief Executive Officer of ForCity, a startup company I founded with my partner Thomas Lagier in January, 2014. ForCity sold a SaaS, subscription based simulation software to governments and private sector to help them with planning and optimizing their future in urban areas. Prior to founding ForCity, I was educated as an engineer and started my career at Gaz de France (now Engie), first in the R&D department, and then at GDF headquarters as nationwide NGV project manager (natural gas vehicles). Then I joined Veolia in 1993 and held managerial positions as CEO and COO of subsidiaries in France (Nantes, Lyon) and Germany (Hamburg), employing 600 to 3,000 people. Finally, I joined in Paris the Group headquarters as a Senior Vice-President, Digital Services. I left Veolia in 2013 to found ForCity. My skills and interest are particularly focused on executive management and transformation, at the crossing between “material world” and new technologies and business models. Along my career, I built special performance by continuously mixing pragmatic decision-making with boldness and with medium to long term vision and engagement. There, sustainability is key, both from a medium-term point-of-view of business efficiency, and at a global and long-term scale of our whole human society.

Listed skills include Business Strategy, Management, Change Management, Gestion De Projet, and 1 others.