autonomy and national sovereignty. However, success in the international marketplace is the ultimate goal. These innovations are not only scientific or technical in nature. Nuclear power, space industry and speed trains amongst others prove that innovation is important in bringing together different actors from different fields and making them accountable for the success of a venture. National technologies were abandoned in order to guarantee the collective aim and success of the plan as a whole. In addition, a grand project is only possible within a flexible state. The hybrid of administration-enterprise embodies two ideas: regalian authority and the logic of an enterprise. This "Grand Project" can only emerge when the objectives of industry participants converge with those of the overall policy. Leaving aside the convenient abstraction of the state, the "Grand Project" takes off only when a homogeneous elite is capable of mobilizing a workforce committed to the purposes of the state-entrepreneur and of national independence. "The 'Grand Project' follows a semence of logics: the 'arsenal' Levic, the logic of public procurement and the logic of the market, which when completed, enriches the national productive systém with new, powerful actors who are sometimes rivals." Its success depends on a transfer of results and close cooperation with industry. This can only be fruitful when the State promotes aggressive protectionism, finances the early stages of industrial development, transfers the results of public research, allows the depreciation of investment over a long period, provides certain markets through public procurement and encourages development by putting the State’s powers at the service of the national champion. The five pillars, which the success of the grand plan can be obtained are: technical innovation, emergence of new patterns of consumption, dynamic protectionism, the risk of a new industrial participant and socio-political engineering. One of the last identifiable grand plans was that of, which dates back its catchup plan to 1974. Since then, the plans for Minitel satellites, and cable television have appeared, but haven’t given birth to a powerful industry. References Economic history of France Eponymous economic ideologies Eponymous political ideologies Mercantilism 17th century in France 17th century in politics 17th-century economic history