Olivier Ezratty, Innovation Strategies Consulting
olivier(at)oezratty.net, http://www.oezratty.net, @olivez
What I am doing
I am a freelance consultant focusing on digital media technologies and services with a broad range of interventions at the crossroads of technology and marketing:
- With digital media companies, I help them build product management discipline, build platforms and ecosystems, do techno-screening and R&D audits. My customers include : Bouygues Télécom and SFR (telecom), SES Astra (first worldwide satellite operator), LG Electronics, Netgem (set-top-box vendor), groupe Pages Jaunes (yellow pages in France) and Skyrock (Skyblogs).
- In the startups ecosystem, I undertake technology and business due-diligence missions for various investment funds such as Axa Private Equity and I-Source Gestion. I am an expert, member and president of the selection board from Scientipôle Initiative and the Finaréa early stage investment fund. I help startups build and grow their business and product strategies, as a business angel and board member (for ulike.net and Outwit Technologies), as board member and outside consultant (for Darqroom), as an independant advisor (for Voluntis) or as a consultant (for Miyowa). I also contribute in a more scaleable fashion to enrich the French-speaking startups ecosystem with the “Opinions Libres” blog and reference documents such as a comprehensive Startups Guide updated twice a year since 2006. I’m also influencing innovation related public policies through my blog and my personal involvement with various public authorities.
- I’m also a university guest speaker, covering innovation strategies and entrepreneurship at Ecole Centrale Paris, HEC and Mines de Paris.
My blog “Opinions Libres” was crated in 2006 and is read mainly by corporate marketing, strategy and economic intelligence executives, students, researchers, investors, entrepreneurs and journalists. Each January, I publish a comprensive Consumer Electronics Show reports of 200+ pages.
My background
I have 26 years of experience in software research and development, marketing and business development. I started in 1985 at Sogitec, a wholly owned subsidiary of Dassault Aviation, as a software design engineer, then project manager and group manager of the development team working on custom electronic publishing projects. I then became an early adopter of the Windows platform, starting projects on its initial 1.0 release.
Starting in 1990, I then acquired at Microsoft France a broad experience in all dimensions of marketing: products, channels, customer, communication and public relations. I launched the first version of Visual Basic in 1991 as well as Windows NT in 1993, and a bunch of partner programs. All these are now IT industry standards. I became Chief Marketing Officer of Microsoft France in July 1998 where I reengineered internal and external communication tools, charter, processes and vendors, reshaped its public relations including starting dealing with government institutions, managed customer’s and partner’s transition to Year 2000 and Euro, consolidated its call centre and telesales operations and also launched Windows 2000 and Office 2000.
In May 2001, I became Director of the Developer and Platform Evangelism Division which I created and staffed for the France region. This organization of 50+ is chartered with driving the adoption of the Microsoft enterprise platform by software developers, IT professionals, software vendors, as well as with the computer science academia and research. I launched the « .NET » platform, new partnerships with the best universities, research organizations and local software vendors, as well as initiated the first strategic .NET projects with large accounts across many industries. I left Microsoft in 2005 to become a freelance contributor to the innovation ecosystem in France.
I graduated in 1985 from Ecole Centrale Paris with a Computer Science Msc equivalent.
Pictures of me can be found here.







