“It’s a heresy to force people to retire at 62”
Christine Damiguet is not ashamed of her age. She is gradually closing in on 70, and it seems she has never been as active as she has in the last few years.
And indeed why should she be ashamed of her age?
Yet older people very often suffer from an unemployability issue. It is hard for them to keep their job, and launching a new company is a particularly arduous task, as banks and investors hesitate to loan or invest when the person involved is over a certain age.
The way things work at the moment is an aberration, in Christine’s view: “It’s a heresy to force people to retire at 62 when may have another 30 years ahead of them”, she insists.
She then describes the vertigo a senior citizen can have when they are forcibly removed from their job: stopping working often leads to social exclusion. To a certain extent, it will prevent them from contributing to society… and they can become a burden, a cost that is difficult to finance.
“Economically, it’s not viable”, she asserts.
Christine Damiguet had observed all this when she was notably at the inter-ministerial delegation for the social economy and social innovation. She also discovered the benefits of intergenerational programmes, in particular through a cohabitation project enabling students to live with old people. This provided a solution regarding both the financial difficulties the former have finding accommodation and the isolation the latter suffer from, so a win-win solution that inspired Christine.
Thus, when she officially retired, it wasn’t to sit back and relax. It was so she could launch a project promoting intergenerational entrepreneurship. This project is called TIGcRE, which stands for Tandem InterGénérationnel pour la création et la Reprise d’Entreprise (intergenerational duo for creating or taking over a business).
Christine thus sees herself as a kind of dating agency that helps two potential partners meet, always with at least a generation between the two, as well as a good blend of personality, age and expertise.
She continues the metaphor, presenting the training she provides as a kind of marriage preparation and her coaching sessions as marriage counselling.
During our interview, Christine was accompanied by Astrid Greuzat, a social entrepreneur who is a member of the association. After studying at the EBS (European Business School), Astrid took an initial internship in procurement followed by a first job in procurement, then a second… until she realised that she was no longer in sync with what she was doing. So she signed a voluntary termination agreement in order to look for a project more in tune with who she is. It was through APEC (an association for executive employment) that she discovered TIGcRE. A few months later, she feels that she has learnt to better know herself and has acquired the certainty that she is ready to launch her own company. With an intergenerational partner? Only the future will tell…
#LePlateau is a third place dedicated to Open Innovation within Societe Generale. It’s a 1,000m² space that hosts, under one roof and for periods of up to 6 months, Societe Generale teams and ecosystem start-ups. Each resident works on their own disruptive or innovative project in large open spaces where teams commingle. #LePlateau provides an environment enabling this work to be undertaken in a single place, but also and more importantly methodological support to accelerate projects, the organising of the residents and premises to enable them to exchange and share their expertise and experience.
