Owning reality before it exists

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When Boeing's senior engineers reviewed Alan Mulally's 777 design proposal in 1992, the room erupted in protest. Mulally wanted to design a $5 billion, 350-passenger aircraft entirely inside Dassault Systèmes' CATIA software with zero full-scale physical mock-up.

Thirty-three years later, Dassault Systèmes controls 16.5% of the €31.1 billion product lifecycle management market serving 290,000 customers including Boeing, Airbus, Tesla, and the FDA. The skeptics never understood how owning the digital physics that simulate reality creates monopolies competitors cannot replicate.

Building legacy through simulation monopoly requires validation courage: betting company survival on software accuracy before Boeing proves sub-millimeter precision, then watching skeptics cancel tens of millions in physical prototypes while competitors scramble to license your infrastructure. Francis Bernard endured American aerospace executives questioning communist France and French administrators attacking IBM partnerships to prove that whoever builds reality twice—once in perfect digital form, once in atoms—controls what physical innovations become economically feasible to attempt.

From iterative prototyping to simulation-first validation

1. Making physical prototypes economically obsolete

Boeing built one physical test in 1992: a nose section with attached wing. CATIA's digital model predicted 0.03mm alignment. The physical assembly matched perfectly. Boeing cancelled all future mock-ups on the spot. Larry Olson, Boeing's information systems director: "100% digital design was a real paradigm shift. The 777 was the first Boeing jet that didn't need its kinks worked out on an expensive physical mock-up plane." Floor beams assembled in three weeks versus anticipated nineteen weeks. The economics became brutal. Physical mock-ups cost tens of millions and require months. Digital simulation costs hundreds of thousands and delivers results in weeks. By the 1990s, seven out of ten new aircraft and four out of ten new cars designed in CATIA. Today ninety percent of automotive production runs on Dassault solutions. Once your product history lives inside the digital twin, switching software means abandoning decades of institutional knowledge.

2. Encoding physics as proprietary institutional knowledge

Dassault's moat isn't code. It's four decades of understanding how materials behave under stress, how fluids flow around complex geometries, how electromagnetic fields interact with human tissue. Their SIMULIA Living Heart Model simulates all four cardiac chambers with electrical, structural, and fluid flow physics. The FDA accepts it as regulatory evidence. One hundred twenty-five cardiovascular researchers, medical device manufacturers, and FDA officials collaborated to encode cardiac function into validated simulation. A startup attempting competition must replicate forty years of aerospace engineering knowledge, over ten years of cardiovascular research, and FDA regulatory acceptance simultaneously. Bernard Charlès invested €6.9 billion in R&D between 2006-2020 building "virtual universes" where concepts undergo testing before physical reality imposes constraints. The company's scientific capabilities became the product itself.

3. Establishing simulation infrastructure as industry collaboration standard

Boeing demanded all 777 suppliers deliver parts compatible with CATIA's digital mock-up. Thousands of companies worldwide adopted Dassault systems purely for supply chain access. The genius wasn't making better tools than competitors. It was establishing Dassault as the mandatory language forcing industry-wide adoption for collaborative participation. Airbus learned this the expensive way. In 2006, German and Spanish factories used CATIA V4 while French and British offices deployed V5. Five hundred thirty kilometers of cables and 100,000 wires failed to match between assembly sites. Two billion euros in project delays. The solution wasn't platform abandonment but standardization on unified Dassault versions. Simulation infrastructure itself becomes the protocol defining industrial collaboration.

How Francis Bernard bet twenty-two engineers on simulation before Boeing believed

TThe crisis came in 1980. Eighty-eight-year-old Marcel Dassault demanded demonstration of CATI software his fifteen engineers had built for Mirage fighter jets. After witnessing three-dimensional aircraft design on computer screens, Dassault faced choice: keep the innovation internal or commercialize despite zero precedent for aerospace companies spinning out software subsidiaries.

September 1981: Twenty-two engineers followed Francis Bernard into Dassault Systèmes without return guarantees. Charles Edelstenne became manager, Bernard became CEO. American aerospace executives openly questioned dealing with France under communist-influenced Mitterrand government. French administrators attacked the IBM partnership Bernard negotiated: "Alliance with Americans?"

Bernard bet everything on IBM's global distribution anyway. Fifty-fifty revenue share where CATIA sold as IBM product. No Boeing validation yet. No proof simulation could replace physical prototypes.

The impossible test came eleven years later. Boeing's senior engineers built a physical nose section with attached wing to verify CATIA's digital mock-up in 1992. Jack Wilson, Boeing's chief manufacturing engineer, told colleagues the software would fail by at least five millimeters. "French CAD companies don't understand American aerospace tolerances."

The digital model predicted 0.03mm alignment. The physical assembly matched. Boeing cancelled all future physical mock-ups that day.

Boeing's 1994 validation silenced the skeptics. The 777's first flight succeeded perfectly. Floor beams requiring nineteen weeks assembled in three. The aircraft became Boeing's most-produced wide-body jet. Jack Wilson personally called Bernard to apologize.

Dassault Systèmes now generates €6.68 billion annually serving 290,000 customers, controlling 16.5% of the €31.1 billion PLM market—nearly quadruple PTC's share. By the 1990s, seven out of ten aircraft and four out of ten cars were designed in CATIA. Today ninety percent of automotive production runs on Dassault solutions.

Yet constraints exist. The 2006 Airbus A380 crisis: incompatible CATIA versions across factories resulted in cables failing to match. Two billion euros in delays. Even superior simulation infrastructure fails without governance coordination.

Bernard quit as CEO in 1995 after fourteen years. The stress proved immense. But irreversible transformation had occurred: 1996 IPO while Dassault family maintained 45% ownership ensuring long-term vision over quarterly pressure.

Jack Wilson predicted five-millimeter failure. CATIA succeeded within 0.03mm. Boeing cancelled physical prototypes worth tens of millions that same day. Francis Bernard and twenty-two engineers built a second reality where Boeing could test aircraft before committing atoms.

From strategy to legacy

Simulation monopolies demolish the assumption that industrial software remains commoditized utility. Bernard's paradox: engineers who built aircraft design tools for internal use achieved global dominance by making those tools the mandatory language of aerospace collaboration.

While Siemens, PTC, Autodesk, and Ansys compete on paper, the reality persists that whoever controls simulation validated by Boeing's zero-prototype 777, FDA's cardiac device approvals, and ninety percent of automotive manufacturers creates gatekeeper positions competitors cannot replicate. Boeing's Jack Wilson predicted CATIA would fail by five millimeters in 1992. It succeeded within 0.03mm. The critics never understood that when reality becomes too expensive to test, owning the mirror owns the future.