The idea that digital sovereignty could hinder innovation entered the debate not because it was well founded, but because it was phrased ambiguously enough to resonate with everyone.
This criticism gained ground without ever being precisely defined.
Are we talking about product innovation, platform innovation, innovation in usage or organisational innovation? By deliberately leaving this question vague, the argument allowed a wide range of players to project their own fears onto it.
Global suppliers saw a threat to their integrated models, CIOs saw a risk of more complex projects, and department heads worried about losing functionality. This ambiguity turned a technical and economic question into a self-evident claim, a ‘truth’ created from nothing and rarely questioned.
In reality, when we examine how innovation actually works in information systems, this equation does not hold. Closed, highly integrated platforms encourage top-down innovation controlled by the supplier, in which uses evolve according to vendors’ roadmaps. This model greatly facilitates the rapid spread of standardised features, but considerably restricts businesses’ ability to customise, adapt or work around resources to meet their specific requirements. ‘One size fits all’ then becomes a source of inflexibility, particularly in complex and regulated environments.
The pursuit of sovereignty acts as a catalyst for innovation among European suppliers, forcing them to innovate through architecture rather than simply accumulating features. OVHcloud illustrates this trend well. The group has invested more than €1 billion over five years in modernising its cloud infrastructure, aiming to create open, interoperable platforms adaptable to hybrid environments. This has led to stronger managed Kubernetes services, customer-controlled encryption mechanisms and the ability to integrate these capabilities into existing information systems, including regulated environments. Innovation lies not in a catalogue of standardised services, but in offering businesses architectural freedom. That freedom is necessary to adapt uses, guarantee reversibility and encourage business innovation, whereas closed platforms impose a single model.
This trend is also visible in cybersecurity. European vendors have designed solutions focused on traceability, auditing and control over chains of trust to meet the needs of regulated sectors. These innovations are less about adding dazzling features than about embedding security at the heart of business processes and existing architectures. Sovereignty requirements thus become an engineering catalyst, encouraging more flexible and transparent solutions.
The relationship between sovereignty and innovation is equally clear for customer organisations. Those that depend on proprietary systems tightly controlled by third parties often struggle to experiment outside the vendor’s framework. Integrating new components, adapting processes or changing data models becomes expensive and slow. By contrast, flexible and reversible architectures allow IT and business departments to recombine and experiment. Innovation no longer resides in the platform itself, but in how the organisation combines its tools.
This shift in innovation is crucial. It shows that sovereignty redistributes the capacity to innovate rather than limiting it. Innovation moves beyond the dominant supplier’s boundaries, spreading through the ecosystem and then into businesses themselves. Business departments can adapt tools to their operational constraints, test new uses and evolve processes without waiting for a hypothetical standardised update.
The claim that sovereignty holds back innovation therefore appears for what it is: a convenient shortcut, fuelled by deliberate confusion between the speed at which features spread and the ability to invent. Sovereignty introduces additional requirements, but it also opens up a more distributed, context-specific space for innovation, closer to organisations’ practical needs.
In this context, the Salon Souveraineté Numérique serves a specific purpose. It is about showing how sovereignty redefines the conditions for innovation, for suppliers and users alike. By making visible the solutions, architectures and practical experience that challenge the received wisdom, the event helps shift the debate from ideology towards facts and uses. The credibility of digital sovereignty as a catalyst for sustainable innovation is being established through this movement today.
30 June and 1 July: a space for discussion together
‘We need a framework of trust,’ Mr Jeanjean concludes. ‘A space where we can debate without falling into ideology. Digital sovereignty is not a dogma. It is a complex subject that deserves nuance and dialogue.’ The Salon Souveraineté Numérique will provide an opportunity to continue this collective work. To compare viewpoints without confrontation. To explore dependencies without assigning blame. Through a conference programme organised into eight thematic tracks, the event will seek to cover the full range of issues and compare perspectives on topics from geopolitics and public procurement to open source and regulation. Because digital sovereignty is not a slogan. It is a space for reflection. And together, we can turn it into a driver of innovation, trust and resilience. Talking about digital sovereignty means accepting discussion across an ecosystem and asking the right questions for each person, each organisation and each situation.
