Brussels Metropolitan Area
I started the Belgian company IRIS in 1987, after I received my Ph.D. in Applied Sciences from the Université Catholique de Louvain, and with the financial support of the Belgian holding company Ackermans & van Haaren. The first product of the company Texiris 1.0 was a commercial version of the innovative Optical Character Recognition technology developed during my Ph.D. Since then, I have been leading IRIS through all its development steps from University Spin-off to the status of listed company (Nyse-Euronext). More recently, in 2012 and 2013, I negotiated successfully the takeover of IRIS by Canon Group, which also resulted in the delisting of IRIS from the Nyse-Euronext Stock Exchange. The objective of the takeover was to allow IRIS, as member of the Canon Group, to move to the next step of its international development in the field of Intelligent Document Recognition, Business Process Optimization, Information Management, Cloud solutions and complex IT solutions. To reach this objective, it was important to accelerate the R&D efforts of IRIS to develop world-class technologies and IDR solutions for all the main geographic zones including EMEA, USA, Latin-America and Asia. During the period 2012-2015, I have dedicated much of my time to develop new business co-operations between IRIS and Canon on a more world-wide basis and to start new R&D co-operation programmes, for instance with Canon Japan R&D. The business development of IRIS with Canon during that period has been very positive with much potential for the years to come. On September 1, 2015, convinced that this project with Canon was well on-track, after 33 years on that project, I decided to retire from my position of President & CEO of IRIS Group, in order to get more time for my family and for new activities in the field of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Education. I then joined the Yncubator at the UCL, the QBIC Venture fund and I have written the IRIS Book to share my IRIS experience.
Very happy to join the Insens Board. I’m convinced that this new board will be able to help this great company in its next growth step! Amongst other goals, we want to contribute to the strategic vision, strengthen the organization and establish outstanding communication with shareholders.
Very happy to join the Intopix Board! With my colleagues of the Board, I will do my best to help this great company to unlock new opportunities for their outstanding imaging technologies.
Together with Hugues Borremans (psychiatrist), we have created the "Fonds des amis de l'Espace du Lien" at the Fondation Roi Baudouin, in order to help to finance specific projects at l'Espace du Lien, a Non Profit Organization which helps people with a psychiatric journey, are suffering from psychological problems or lack social links. A coordinator, who is psychologist and a team of 14 volunteers organize discussion groups and 11 other workshops. l'Espace du Lien is located in front of the railway station of Genval and is mainly welcoming people from Brussels and the Province of Brabant. For donations, a dedicated page is available on the Website of the Fondation Roi Baudouin. This page can be accessed from the front page of the website of the Espace du Lien: www.espacedulien.be
In March 2021, I have accepted to become Independent Board member on the board of Tessares, an innovative spin-off of UCLouvain, leader in the development of Hybrid Access Software. I will be pleased to help this great team to capture current and future opportunities, sharing my Telco and management experience.
I have been contacted by the professor Philippe Baret, the dean of the bio-engineering faculty of UCLouvain to take over the LBIR1360 course (Operations and Management of Enterprises). This was an exciting challenge for me and the opportunity to create a unique material, very complementary to "The IRIS Book" (www.iris-book.com ), to give a 360° overview of enterprise management and share real-life experience of startups and grown up companies with the BAC 3 students. Some work to do, but a lot of fun.