I started as a freelance digital project manager in 1992 — the web was barely a thing. I produced for Le Public Système, scaled a digital agency at Mappemonde, ran my own company AVANE for seven years, took industrial product roles at KDS (corporate travel) and XWiki (collaborative software), then closed the chapter as Managing Director of Digiteam at Team Créatif. By 2014 I had run digital across e-commerce, B2B SaaS, agency work and open-source publishing. The pattern that would later inform my research was already there: it's never the technology — it's the ecosystem around it.

In 2014 I left Paris for Casablanca and founded ADALIA Institute — a private school of business and management. I was its first CEO, its first dean, its first teacher and, for the first two years, its first accreditation officer. We grew from one bachelor programme to an Executive DBA, accredited five masters in Finance, Marketing, Digital, HR and General Management, and built partnerships with Université de Strasbourg, NEOMA and CNMA. ADALIA was ranked in the top-5 North African business schools by Jeune Afrique three years running. I still serve as Dean and Founder.

Eleven years after my Executive MBA at HEC, I went back to school — to do the work I had always wanted to do: research. I enrolled at IAE de Lyon 3 for a Master 2 in Research, then started a PhD at Sorbonne Business School (Paris 1) with Didier Chabaud and Marie-Christine Chalus Sauvannet. I defended in 2022 on the structure of entrepreneurial ecosystems in African low-income countries, with a thesis committee that included David Audretsch, Karim Messeghem, Martin Cloutier and Christina Theodoraki. The thesis won three awards. By then I had two Best Paper Awards at ACIEK and a publication track-record with Academy of Management Proceedings, TFSC, Small Business Economics and HBR France.

Since the PhD I have been building one thing in three pieces — the Galaxie OSE. First the Observatory of Support for Entrepreneurship in Africa (OSE) : a peer-reviewed scientific framework on five layers, 58 619 actors qualified across 150 countries, a Scientific Council that includes David Audretsch, Saras Sarasvathy, Erik Stam and Karim Messeghem. Then the academy : ADALIA Institute refounded in 2025 as the academy of the Observatory — 100% online, four programme levels, training the builders of entrepreneurial ecosystems across Africa. Then the research school : EERS, co-founded in Utrecht with Stam, Bosma, Chabaud and Theodoraki, now in its seventh edition at LIUC Milano. In parallel I keep producing peer-reviewed research (AOM, SBE, TFSC, JBV Insights), supervising four DBA candidates and one PhD candidate. The chapter is not closed.