On 18 December 2013, the very French venue of Conseil Economique, Social et Environnemental  (CESE) at the Palais d’Iéna, hosted the eighth edition of ‘Les Etats de la France’, where the who’s who of foreign companies active in France gathered for a full day of discussions and recommendations of how to restore France’s attractiveness.

INSEAD’s study entitles ‘France: why the battle for attractiveness is far from lost’ offered a basis for discussions in the four roundtables (economic, social, fiscal and on innovation). One of the topics addressed was that France has to handle a delicate (and potentially schizophrenic) situation, in which, on one hand, it needs to refer to its European self as a way to lure investors who would not be attracted by its national market alone (seen as too small, or not growing fast enough, or both), while on the other hand it has to fight against its European neighbours to attract investors from other parts of the world.

In such a context, properly branding your country as an investors’ destination can be seen as both critically important and tantalizingly difficult. Countries like Switzerland, Singapore, or even India have been remarkably successful in this area. Can France do it, and how?

The INSEAD community might see this as a challenge, or an intriguing topic for some ‘travaux pratiques’. Let us see how whether this blog post tickles any one.

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