VIDEO // Open Mind Neurotechnologies intends to revolutionize executive coaching by using behavior analysis and data via virtual reality and serious games. Clarisse Pamies, its general manager, provides an update on this new approach to stress in the workplace.
Shaken by the Covid-19 pandemic, the mental health of employees has become a major concern in companies. Among executives, who often face greater pressures because of the responsibilities that rest on their shoulders, the impact has been severe with levels of well-being plummeting while those of stress soar. This is the observation made by Open Mind Neurotechnologies, a start-up that has been analyzing the brain activity of executives for five years to help them better manage their stress and their emotions, and thus avoid burnout.
Led by Clarisse Pamies since November 2020, the company has also identified a significant impact of the health crisis on “skills that are not associated with mental health”, such as creativity, flexibility, collaboration between collaborators or the ability to engage your team. And for good reason, with the implementation of full-time remote work, sometimes overnight, many executives have found themselves helpless in the face of an anxiety-provoking and particularly uncertain context.
To help them find peace in their work, Open Mind Neurotechnologies relies on neurosciences, games and data in order to create tools “to put in the hands of business coaches and psychologists to optimize their profession”, explains Clarisse Pamies who previously worked in the pharmaceutical laboratory Johnson & Johnson. To understand executives’ reactions to different situations, the French start-up relies in particular on games that “make it possible to map a whole host of skills, in particular the emotional ones which are a key in the prevention of mental health”, says the general manager.
One “virtual reality trip” for “create a much bigger electroshock”
The company even goes so far as to immerse executives in virtual reality to analyze their behavior in the face of different doses of stress. “Taking them on a journey in virtual reality allows them to understand how their body reacts and creates a much greater electroshock. It allows you to go beyond denial”, believes Clarisse Pamies. With its immersive approach and the data collected, could the company go so far as to create a digital twin of the people analysed? “Having a digital twin is something that can be scary. We do not want to have something that reminds us that we are sick”, slice the leader of the start-up who made the trip to Las Vegas at the beginning of the year for the CES.
Admittedly, the context was particular in Nevada because of the Omicron variant which frightened many technological giants and media. Nevertheless, Open Mind Neurotechnologies saw it as an opportunity to expand its network and thus distribute its cognitive therapy tools more widely, which have already been used by company employees, particularly in consulting and technology, such as Salesforce. .
“On the commercial side, CES brought us to the level of distribution partnerships in the United States. We have also met many Asian companies who want to distribute us in Japan. These are interesting things to accelerate internationalization”, says Clarisse Pamies, while the company is now present in France and in some European countries. As part of its development, Open Mind Neurotechnologies, currently hosted by the Village by CA, is also considering raising funds in pre-series A.