(CLP) Programs

Appleton Greene corporate training programs are all process-driven. They are used as vehicles to implement tangible business processes within clients’ organizations, together with training, support and facilitation during the use of these processes. Corporate training programs are therefore implemented over a sustainable period of time, that is to say, between 1 year (incorporating 12 monthly workshops), and 4 years (incorporating 48 monthly workshops). Your program information guide will specify how long each program takes to complete. Each monthly workshop takes 6 hours to implement and can be undertaken either on the client’s premises, an Appleton Greene serviced office, or online via the internet. This enables clients to implement each part of their business process, before moving onto the next stage of the program and enables employees to plan their study time around their current work commitments. The result is far greater program benefit, over a more sustainable period of time and a significantly improved return on investment.

Appleton Greene uses standard and bespoke corporate training programs as vessels to transfer business process improvement knowledge into the heart of our clients’ organizations. Each individual program focuses upon the implementation of a specific business process, which enables clients to easily quantify their return on investment. There are hundreds of established Appleton Greene corporate training products now available to clients within customer services, e-business, finance, globalization, human resources, information technology, legal, management, marketing and production. It does not matter whether a client’s employees are located within one office, or an unlimited number of international offices, we can still bring them together to learn and implement specific business processes collectively. Our approach to global localization enables us to provide clients with a truly international service with that all important personal touch. Appleton Greene corporate training programs can be provided virtually or locally and they are all unique in that they individually focus upon a specific business function. All (CLP) programs are implemented over a sustainable period of time, usually between 1-4 years, incorporating 12-48 monthly workshops and professional support is consistently provided during this time by qualified learning providers and where appropriate, by Accredited Consultants.

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Executive summary

High-Performance Innovation

History

Innovation is one of the major levers of our evolution. It characterizes and triggers the major phases of history, from the facilitation of transport thanks to the introduction of the wheel to the management of terrestrial resources thanks to space observation, passing through the distribution of books thanks to the introduction of printing.

Each of these steps is the result of the conjunction of two phenomena: the generation of an idea and the transformation of this idea into a process deployed on a large scale. Two types of actors are systematically necessary to achieve this, innovators and transformers, researchers and industrialists, triggers, and leaders. The organizations hosting the most impactful innovations are not always the ones that benefit the most. Let us think of the founders of McDonald’s who imagined a concept with great potential and of their partner who was able to deploy it on a large scale, thus realizing this potential. Examples of this dissociation between ideation and scaling up abound: the Wright brothers and the major brands in the aeronautics industry, the creators of the concept behind Facebook and Facebook, the development of rocket propulsion and its military and space applications; but also lesser known but equally impactful devices such as ubiquitous (yet invisible to the general public) cybersecurity applications, invented by an individual and filed in the patent office by a separate organization, or exotic financial products first tested on the market by a boutique, before becoming the norm when a large bank decided to industrialize them.

Conversely, there are in history organizations capable of generating a large number of ideas, sorting them, prioritizing them and transforming them into profitable and sustainable products and services, even structuring for society as a whole. The saga of the digital revolution, at work since the invention of the microprocessor in 1971, has produced champions of high-performance innovation who have been able to maximize their gains and limit their losses. Because innovating means making mistakes, infrequently and not for long, and focusing on good ideas, more often and for much longer. Let’s think of Apple, ABC, LinkedIn or Microsoft to name just a few examples. In the entertainment industry, Pixar and Disney have developed a culture of innovation that is both very free and very structured; in reality, whenever the question of investing arises, a rational approach systematically complements the creative process. Organizations capable of achieving the symbiosis between freedom to innovate and the ability to focus on the right priorities have always come out on top, including in ultra-competitive environments.

Since the end of the twentieth century, the importance taken by the control of the innovation process in the performance of companies does not stop growing. While between the end of the Second World War and the turn of the century, the key to success lay above all in a race for volumes to optimize the price-quality couple, since the end of the 1990s differentiation has been the new Grail. Why? Quite simply because thanks to the digital revolution, access to information has become rapid and general, allowing everyone to assemble the knowledge available to transform it first into a concept, then into products and services. The meta-strategy of any organization therefore consists in realizing the immense potential constituted by the knowledge of humanity, which has become deeper and more accessible than ever (see figure A below).

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Current position

Nowadays, innovation has become an imposed theme of every board of directors, every institutional communication, every marketing campaign or every message addressed to staff. From this point of view, we can say that the innovation dynamic has reached a certain maturity.

Curiously, innovation is less present or unequally present at the level of customer relationship management, training, establishment and monitoring of budgets, investment, piloting, management, career management, automation, partnership management, mergers and acquisitions, benchmarking, strategic planning, or commercial action. Indeed, innovation as a major performance lever has not yet completely supplanted strategies based on the race for volume, especially since the realization of the potential of an innovation often depends on a transition to successful scale. There is therefore confusion between the old approach consisting in sustainably dominating a market thanks to its size, and a new approach consisting in managing its competitive edge by introducing new families of products and services at a sustained pace. The key difference lies in the lifespan of the product families. Although the Bic Cristal pen has been around since 1950 without any real evolution, the latest iPhone is as different from the first as a modern car can be from a Fort T. However, only a few years have passed since the introduction of the iPhone 2G on the market (in 2007).

Based on this observation, it is now essential to steer your innovation process to make it both fertile and profitable, creative and rational, borrowing the best from the left brain and the right brain. This imperative is made all the more critical as the valuations of innovations measured by the statistics and forecasts in the private equity sector are melting like snow in the sun. We are witnessing a real flight to quality, a well-known phenomenon when times are uncertain or when a chronic crisis dynamic forces leaders to manage emergencies more often than they would like. What prevails for scaleups and unicorns, which are often very specialized, is also structuring for diversified companies, because all of them must innovate. Knowing how to sort and stimulate, measure and encourage, choose and finance, decide and support is at the heart of the performance of the company of our time (see figure B below).

By pushing this logic to the limit, an ideal model emerges. It takes up certain characteristics of historical models, such as the matrix organization of General Electric, or the cellular organization of Microsoft, by sublimating them. Its ultimate outcome is a collection of hyper-growing spin-offs fueled by activities that have already reached their maturity stage, serving as a crucible for future innovations. More and more concrete examples are now operational: financial groups succeed in carve-out and IPO of hyper-growing activities supported both by exceptional market dynamics and by the promotion of a internal breakthrough innovation culture; pharmaceutical groups successfully arbitrate, on very specific perimeters, between in-house R&D and collaborations with biotechs on a human scale, or even buy them out if necessary; finally, digital service companies manage to isolate process outsourcing offerings allowing them to move up the value chain.

In a world where an unprecedented quantity of knowledge is accessible to a large number of actors, the intensity of disruptive innovation is increasingly strong. An indication of this trend is given by the combined inflation of the amount of data held by organizations, all statuses combined, and the number of proven unicorns on the planet (see already mentioned figure A above). Recall that a unicorn is, in the most common sense, an independent, unlisted company with an estimated capitalization of over US$ 1 billion. Thus, while the amount of information available grows exponentially, the number of structures capable of exploiting it to successfully innovate grows concomitantly. The mechanisms at work are no longer solely a matter of intuition, hard work and chance, but are increasingly based on proven processes and methods, while protecting the necessary freedom to create for individuals as for teams. In a way, the macro-trend for innovation has reached the beginning of its level of maturity, sorting out the actors equipped to last and the others.

Sources for figure B:

• The 10 Best Performing Stocks of the Decade, The Motley Fool, 2020.
• The World’s Biggest Startups: Top Unicorns of 2021, Visualcapitalist.com, 2021
• Presentation and correlation by C. Auriach (scenent.com)

In this context, a multinational like an SME cannot hope to develop sustainably without creating or participating in breakthrough innovations. Hyper-growth experiments are possible and seem within reach. The large established companies are aware of this and naturally seek more and more to compare themselves to the unicorns, so as not to risk suffering from the market. As there are now more than a thousand of them, statistics exist and make it possible to carry out benchmarks on precise perimeters of activity, because these structures are most often very specialized. More generally, this is a characteristic of so-called hyper-growth companies, which in fact constitute benchmarks in terms of performance (see already mentioned figure B above).

As liquidity remains abundant, one of the major challenges for managers is to steer them towards the right innovation projects, and therefore to identify the dynamics with the best potential. The question then arises of the target economic model, somewhere between the two extremes of the investment fund and the synergistic group exercising a broad spectrum of professions. In the pharmaceutical sector, for example, historical laboratories have to make choices between internal R&D and the acquisition of biotechs at the right stage of development, between producing and having them produced, between optimizing and innovating, both at the strategic level and at the operational level. Finding the right compromise between specialization and a multifunctional approach on the one hand, and on the other hand between a continuous innovation approach and a disruptive dynamic aligned with fundamental trends, constitutes a major challenge. It starts with setting goals aligned with the trends the organization believes in.

The major development goals of an organization must be clear, conscious and stable enough in a changing world to be effectively shared with its ecosystem (in and out). They depend on a good appreciation of market conditions and the reality of existing offerings and capacities, in order to determine a readable and lucid roadmap. As part of this training, an analysis framework that can be operated by executives of all levels, alone or in groups, is proposed to carry out this work. Three main families of sustainable development objectives should be considered and broken down according to the culture, potential and aspirations of the organization’s stakeholders: creating or embracing trends, existing in one or more niches, being or becoming a reference local actor, or a combination of the three. Distinct but coherent objectives can be declined by subset of the organization.

To achieve these sustainable development objectives, an appropriate innovation strategy must be adopted, for example changing economic models, focusing, choosing niche markets with little or no competition, continuous improvement, arbitration of target markets, automation and robotization, or partnerships and mergers. This list is not exhaustive. At this stage, it is already possible to evaluate certain projects in the light of the axes defined. Indeed, as soon as there is an innovation project underway in an organization, it is necessary to frequently ask the question of continuing, stopping, or changing the working hypotheses of the said project. From two projects, it is necessary to compare the potential of each frequently and possibly to arbitrate between them. These initiatives must at all times respect a logic of co-creation and constructive collaboration, by stimulating everyone’s creativity. A decision, one way or the other, is only taken after consultation and debate with the right people. As in a startup or a scaleup, pivoting is a potentially frequent occurrence. The statistics are cruel: out of 7 ideas, one will be successful. One of the major factors for improving this ratio is the consistency of the portfolio of innovation projects, its alignment with common objectives to maximize synergies, the dynamics of creative sharing and collective intelligence. While knowledge of the cumulative investment in innovation is necessary to be able to steer it, the return on investment is only calculable for a small subset of projects that have reached an advanced level of maturity. Uncertainty is a characteristic of the upstream phases of innovation projects and must be assumed otherwise creativity will be curbed, an untenable situation in the context described at the beginning of this text.

The dynamic of innovation is itself a space conducive to innovation. The planning, development, implementation and maintenance of an innovation project portfolio management process are all opportunities to create operational, organizational, strategic, cultural or relational disruptions within the organization. As part of this training, we propose a four-year approach with one one-day session per month, ie 48 sessions in all. By the end of the first year, elements of the process are in place on an experimental scale. If the organization is sufficiently mature, it can decide to anticipate their deployment in advance. Nevertheless, experience shows that many established multinationals have before them a major cultural, organizational and skills challenge requiring a profound transformation of practices, and therefore time is needed to convince, train, develop, communicate, demonstrate success by example, finally acquire lasting reflexes. Paradoxically, you have to be patient in order to one day be able to accelerate sustainably. Innovation is a muscle that we propose to train to take it to the highest level.

We choose to break down a state-of-the-art Innovation Portfolio Management process (IPM), benefiting both from the fruits of specialized management research and the experience of structures of various sizes and cultures, in 6 major capacities: maintenance of the innovation strategy, realization of the innovative potential of assets, participatory communication of innovation, evaluation of innovation, sale of innovation and the driver of innovation development (see figure C below). These 6 components benefit from being implemented in this order, starting with producing an updated innovation strategy and ending with the implementation of a growth engine creating value through innovation. Once in place, they are regularly improved by their process owners, either continuously or by introducing breaks.

Sources for figure C: C. Auriach (scenent.com)

We propose a framework for determining an innovation strategy taking into account development objectives and the reality on the ground. The result is a set of strategic axes corresponding to the situation of each subset of the organization considered. Assistance in defining the scope of application of the IPM process is provided, based on a maturity model developed after a cumulative ten years of concrete experience, for example in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry sectors as well as in financial services. The gain provided by the updating of an innovation strategy is immediate: it allows making justified choices of investment and management of the organization, thanks to a dynamic of scripting. The scenarios are revisited each time the previous working hypotheses are brought to evolve under the pressure of the ecosystem or unforeseen events, undergone or provoked (Cf figure D below).

Sources for figure D: C. Auriach (scenent.com)

The realization of the innovative potential of assets makes it possible to detect and implement value-creating innovation opportunities (also called sources of value), such as internal software with a buoyant external scope of application, distinctive skills not yet transformed into offerings, prototypes frozen for lack of favorable budgetary arbitration, or descriptive data of a strong need not yet covered. This original and proven approach makes it possible to not depend solely on circumstances and fortuitous alignments of interests between stakeholders in order to innovate. The exercise which consists in identifying assets, tangible or immaterial, and confronting them with the strategic axes previously defined makes it possible to complete the portfolio of existing innovation projects with a new list with a strong potential. For example, an open innovation manager for a leading multinational in the construction and public works sector willingly confides that breakthrough innovations within her group are systematically at the crossroads of two dynamics: on the one hand the identification of a strong and unmet need, on the other hand the identification of dormant assets. We propose a simple and effective asset identification model that can be widely shared at all levels in dedicated workshops (see figure E below).

Sources for figure E: C. Auriach (scenent.com)

Participatory innovation communication makes it possible to involve the organization’s employees in the construction and dissemination of the targeted culture of innovation, thus accelerating the achievement of group efficiency objectives (collective agility), contributing to retain or attract critical talent, encouraging creativity while avoiding the dispersion of creative energy. A method of facilitating co-creativity workshops is proposed in order to materialize the production of content of all kinds, textual, visual or sound, intended to be shared on various channels inside and outside the organization. The first year, the collaboration tools already present in the company are generally favored so as not to add-up too many simultaneous changes. From the second year, specialized IPM software solutions are gradually introduced to manage both the internal project cycle and an open innovation approach, potentially including partners, customers and prospects.

The evaluation of the innovation makes it possible to compare oneself with the competition, internally and externally. The portfolio of innovation projects is evaluated using a series of methods adapted to each situation, emphasizing both the efficiency and the homogeneity of the approach in order to make relevant, rapid and useful comparisons. At each iteration, trade-offs are potentially made, a portfolio of innovations being by definition eminently dynamic. 4 types of management plans are proposed, from maintaining a competitive lead to penetrating a market niche, through value-added partnerships and operational excellence initiatives.

The sale of innovation makes it possible to plan as far upstream as possible the mechanism for marketing an innovation, considering it as an integral part of the offering, product or service, in the same way as a material or a manufacturing process treatment. Salespeople become sensors of trends and needs and are an integral part of the teams involved in innovation from the beginning to the end of projects. In terms of information systems, extended CRMs are now as strategic as ERPs and the issues of interfacing between the two capabilities are at the heart of increasingly heavy investments. Beyond the involvement of men and women in direct contact with prospects and customers, the choice of channels for presenting offerings is crucial: multichannel approach, chatbot-assisted sales, customized demonstrators, coupling product and services, as many examples of possible choices (non-exhaustive list). In reality, the sales channel is part of the offering. The more the possibilities offered by artificial intelligence develop, the more significant this principle becomes.

Finally, the innovation development engine is an agile system focused on increasing the value of innovation. It is made up of dedicated professionals within innovation cells with variable geometry, created according to needs and disappearing when the need fades or the working hypotheses evolve, in favor of new cells assigned to new needs deemed to be priorities. One of the methods put forward consists in creating communities of interest around innovative products and services even before they are put on the market, in order to carry out potential impact assessments that feed arbitration decisions and investment. The members of the cells maintain and present dashboards for monitoring and arbitration of the dynamics of innovation within the organization. The nature of the indicators is aligned with the sustainable development objectives and with the innovation strategy (see figure F below).

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Sources for figure F: C. Auriach (scenent.com)

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Future outlook

Ensuring that a strategic choice is sustainable is a permanent challenge. In terms of innovation, one of the ways to improve its success rate is to imagine the future in the form of scenarios (see already mentioned figure D above). The content of the scenarios varies according to a variable deemed relevant given the context of the organization concerned: ambition, scope of deployment, evolution of the ecosystem, structuring trends, evolution of the expectations of the targeted markets, potential of the assets are just a few examples of such variables. If the future is never certain, it is still possible to say that if such a set of hypotheses is verified, then such and such a scenario is appropriate. When the hypotheses vary, it is of course necessary to update the scenarios in order to make the organization manageable. For example, ABC already mobilizes significant resources in order to identify positional rents on the market, which it chooses to compete on the basis of a scientifically assessed penetration potential. The insurance sector thus becomes a privileged target, first by offering comparators, then by offering products.

Scenario planning, underpinned by the exploitation of mass data, by machine learning and deep learning, by the rapid interpretation of information captured by connected objects and by human intelligence (interacting in an efficient and serene way with these devices) is the future of successful innovation processes. This dynamic will gradually replace more traditional methods, for example the PESTEL analysis, which have become unsuitable in a time of accumulation of successive crises linked, among other factors, to a generalized interconnection between geographies, economies, individuals and natural phenomena, which make any event propagable at high speed on a planetary scale. The exercise of simulation now struggles to be carried out by human intelligence alone. It needs, like a chess player assisted by a computer analysis program, to be reinforced by the use of automated processes endowed with an unprecedented level of autonomy, while retaining control.

Future innovation management models could be described as crisis managers, capable of transforming probable threats into short-term opportunities. The resulting organizational systems would then resemble collections of specialized cells over a short time horizon, the cells forming and disintegrating according to the anticipation of crises. This logic would be in a way an extension of the Sprint, agile and other Scrum approaches that are flourishing today, revisited to stick to scenarios duly supported by data. To illustrate this trend in the pharmaceutical sector, forecasting the amplitude of the development of crises as soon as they emerge is a determining success factor for innovation choices, as evidenced by the gigantic gap separating the winners from the losers in a period of global pandemia. Another example, the situation of large companies in the energy sector will constantly oscillate between scarcity and abundance depending on events of a geopolitical nature, combined with increasingly frequent and disruptive innovations, creating dazzling growth accelerations and decelerations in a variety of markets with distinct behaviors.

The main obstacle to adapting to this new situation will be the ability of individuals to question themselves. The shortage of key skills is already visible in this field and will only increase in the medium term. It is therefore urgent to create the conditions for the evolution of today’s professions towards the professions of tomorrow, both in terms of interpersonal skills and know-how, even if it means getting used to interacting more and more with avatars, but not only.

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Curriculum

High-Performance Innovation – Part 1 – Year 1

1. Part 1 Month 1 Scope Definition
2. Part 1 Month 2 Strategic Positioning
3. Part 1 Month 3 Setting Objectives
4. Part 1 Month 4 Innovation Culture
5. Part 1 Month 5 Organizing Innovation
6. Part 1 Month 6 Asset Potential
7. Part 1 Month 7 Methodology Sharing
8. Part 1 Month 8 Pilot Projects
9. Part 1 Month 9 Reporting Results
10. Part 1 Month 10 Prioritize Actions
11. Part 1 Month 11 Program Schedule
12. Part 1 Month 12 Communicate Plan

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High-Performance Innovation – Part 2 – Year 2

1. Part 2 Month 1 Innovation Patterns
2. Part 2 Month 2 Innovation Cycle
3. Part 2 Month 3 BBZ Approach
4. Part 2 Month 4 Selecting Software
5. Part 2 Month 5 Valuing Innovation
6. Part 2 Month 6 Benchmarking Innovation
7. Part 2 Month 7 Facilitating Innovation
8. Part 2 Month 8 Promising Trends
9. Part 2 Month 9 Portfolio Management
10. Part 2 Month 10 Sustainable Innovation
11. Part 2 Month 11 Servitization Model
12. Part 2 Month 12 Innovation Management

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High-Performance Innovation – Part 3 – Year 3

1. Part 3 Month 1 Customer Voice
2. Part 3 Month 2 Innovation Structure
3. Part 3 Month 3 Training Program
4. Part 3 Month 4 High-potential Assets
5. Part 3 Month 5 Innovation Dashboard
6. Part 3 Month 6 Spinning-Off
7. Part 3 Month 7 IPM Software
8. Part 3 Month 8 Open Innovation
9. Part 3 Month 9 Self-Assessment
10. Part 3 Month 10 Communicate Strategy
11. Part 3 Month 11 Involve Sales
12. Part 3 Month 12 Generalize IPM

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High-Performance Innovation – Part 4 – Year 4

1. Part 4 Month 1 Performance Analysis
2. Part 4 Month 2 Update Dashboards
3. Part 4 Month 3 Visual Management
4. Part 4 Month 4 HR Lever
5. Part 4 Month 5 Technology Lever
6. Part 4 Month 6 Prototyping Lever
7. Part 4 Month 7 Modeling Lever
8. Part 4 Month 8 Agility Lever
9. Part 4 Month 9 AI Lever
10. Part 4 Month 10 Symbolic Lever
11. Part 4 Month 11 M&A Raising
12. Part 4 Month 12 Next Steps

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Program Objectives

The following list represents the Key Program Objectives (KPO) for the Appleton Greene High-Performance Innovation corporate training program.

High-Performance Innovation – Part 1 – Year 1

1. Part 1 Month 1 Scope Definition – The approach is adaptable to the size of the structure. Thus, we distinguish 3 levels from the SME (or scaleup) to the multinational, passing by the unicorn-like organization. In the case of a very large organization, deployed in several dozen countries, it is necessary to break down the scope of application of the approach into manageable units. For each of them, an IPM strategy is defined. After having introduced the origin, the interest and the success factors of an IPM process, a method is proposed to carry out this division. It is based on the assessment of the level of maturity of the innovation process and its variations depending on the regions, legal entities or businesses. The idea is to group together the homogeneous subsets of the organization from the point of view of the maturity of the innovation process. To achieve this, a 12-level model is proposed. These 12 levels are themselves grouped into 4 zones (detection, measurement, opening and prioritization). These zones correspond to levels of maturity of the process. The actors of this first evaluation are leaders, managers, project managers or directors of innovation projects. The approach is all the more visible and effective as the decision-making power of the first actors mobilized is great. For example, the members of the executive committee can divide up subsets of the organization and mobilize to gather information allowing them to refine or confirm the assessments of the level of maturity of the process, before meeting to share a vision and an IPM strategy. The results of this step are recorded in an existing collaborative tool, pending the subsequent selection of a more specific technical environment. Each step of defining the scope is illustrated with a realistic example, freely inspired by several real cases in the pharmaceutical industry sector, and nevertheless fictional.
2. Part 1 Month 2 Strategic Positioning – At this stage, the first strategic level objectives are identified. They will be constantly refined as the IPM process is planned, developed, implemented and improved. In particular, the stimulation of a dynamic of connection to representatives of the target markets of the organization is proposed. This involves organizing pilot project meetings with witnesses of these markets, prospects, customers and partners of the organization, in order to better understand their aspirations in terms of customer or partner experience. Employees who have already participated in the previous information collection phase, in contact with the leader(s) of the initiative, are naturally approached to lead these sessions for half a day each. They must be trained in the proposed animation method, which is precise and proven in around fifteen different professions. Strategic positioning leads to a collection of current and future performance factors relevant to the scope of the pilot projects considered. They make it possible to complete IPM’s strategy with strategic axes of innovation such as changing an economic model, focusing on continuous improvement through lean, rapprochement or partnership with more agile than oneself, or focusing on a decisive competitive advantage. The same case of a pharmaceutical laboratory is used to illustrate this phase of the approach. In order to start sharing a common repository between the protagonists of the IPM project, a flexible and simple collaborative environment chosen during the first stage, preferably already existing within the organization, is configured for this purpose. It will allow the various stakeholders to classify the results and access them according on a need to know basis. In particular, the contributors to the identified pilot projects will be among the authorized persons.
3. Part 1 Month 3 Setting Objectives – The first elements of the innovation strategy, existing and new, are translated into concrete projects, with project file, prospective team, expected return on investment and budgeting. It is critical to ensure that creativity and entrepreneurship are not undermined by over-bureaucracy. Also the project mode is resolutely favored, taking up the pre-existing codes within the organization and carefully balancing freedom to create and control of investment. It is only gradually that the culture of innovation spreading, new reflexes inspired by agile methods will complement the old ones. A framework for arbitration between two projects with an equivalent level of investment and ROI will be proposed. It takes up the dimensions of the innovation strategy already established and makes it possible to verify the alignment of an innovation project with these strategic orientations. It is illustrated by an example deduced from the “common thread” case study. In steady state, the role of the IPM is to constantly improve the performance of existing innovative offers, and to create new ones by exploiting assets with potential. A first monitoring dashboard is proposed and illustrated by the “common thread” case study. It identifies the relevant indicators given the context, their target valuations, their units, their completion time and the means of measurement used. At this stage, the approach is of the continuous improvement type, inspired by Lean and adapted to the management of a portfolio of innovation projects. It allows the concept to be tested on a limited perimeter before future deployment and scaling up. The tool supporting this dashboard is common to other reporting sectors, reusing known practices in order to save time while simplifying the number and complexity of validation stages, where applicable.
4. Part 1 Month 4 Innovation Culture – There are several types of innovation cultures, illustrated by emblematic examples, from the World Bank generalizing a clever process imagined by an African nurse, to the innovation ecosystem structured by Apple, passing through the selection funnel of ideas of a Pixar or a Disney. They are often the result of successive developments experienced either by the organization itself, or by their founders or managers in their professional lives. The objective here is to build a message and a cultural repository consolidating the identity of the organization in its innovative dimension. In practice, it is just as critical to consider the future as the past, by calling upon sets of hypotheses and scenario building, to identify the fundamentals of a culture of value-creating innovation. The lessons of the past are mainly drawn from the study of successes and failures in innovation. Retrograde analysis of the causes of these successes and failures, by interviewing the project managers involved if they are still employed by the organization, or by collecting information from the departments responsible for capitalizing on the knowledge if they exist and have this type of analysis, makes it possible to identify typical patterns corresponding to the potential pillars of this culture. With regard to the future, a set of promising trends has been identified by a working group linked to the strategic function of the organization. A method is proposed for, on the one hand, choosing the tendencies in which the organization believes, and on the other hand, for developing hypotheses relating to the occurrence of events suffered or provoked. This results in scenarios that are more or less probable and more or less value-creating. A narratology exercise concludes this phase, in order to convey in a pleasant form, easy to integrate into a communication plan, a message and a cultural repository consolidating the identity of the organization in its innovative dimension.
5. Part 1 Month 5 Organizing Innovation – A number of collaborators were involved in the first four stages of IPM planning. It is proposed to them to be part of the first innovation cells, prefiguring the elementary entity of the future organization of the IPM. This is more of a loose membership in a club than a formal assignment to a structure at this stage. Nevertheless, it makes it possible to test with motivated personnel who have first experience of the voices of the customer (exercises to survey market expectations in terms of innovation) the target innovation culture, the level of spontaneous adherence to the orientations defined by the innovation strategy and their application to concrete projects. The members of the innovation cells are necessarily involved in innovative projects, in the sense that this word is defined in the innovation strategy of the organization in question. They give a duly documented opinion on the life of these projects and help align field experience and strategic objectives to make them credible and give them a concrete foundation during subsequent large-scale deployment. In particular, they create current stories of successes but also of failures, which complete the corpus gathered during the previous stage and feed the legend of the organization. Without prejudging the future structure of innovation cells, typical roles are identified. Relevant collaborators can jump from one role to another depending on the circumstances or topics, but for a given project, an individual is given only one role. An organizational model is proposed, including the roles of project leader, concept guarantor, prototype manager, functional expert, technical expert, scaler and communicator. We observe that there is no role dedicated to the generation of ideas, because everyone is concerned.
6. Part 1 Month 6 Asset Potential – Among the mechanisms (or schemes) of innovation, the identification of assets with potential is particularly attractive, although rarely mastered by companies. Everything starts from the observation that each successful innovation is either the exploitation of a general opportunity, or the exploitation of a specific opportunity. A general opportunity could be exploited by other organizations with the same chances of success. A specific opportunity benefits from being exploited by an organization particularly capable of leading it to success, within more competitive deadlines and with a level of investment in time and human energy that is more controlled than in another organization. Exploiting a general opportunity implies detecting it before the others and moving very quickly to avoid being caught up, most often thanks to very heavy levels of investment. Let us think, for example, of the successive generations of mobile telecommunications standards, which are the subject of large-scale auctions. Innovation projects that build on such opportunities are by definition few in number and managed at a highly strategic level. If they are good candidates to be part of an innovation portfolio, they appear there as large carriers escaping the overall statistics of the said portfolio. Exploiting a specific (to the organization) opportunity is of great interest since there is a latent competitive advantage just waiting to be transformed into value. To achieve this, opportunities of this type need to be identified and an appropriate investment policy adopted, based on a detection, prioritization and implementation method. A solution involves a model of assets with potential to collectively scan the field of possibilities and to deduce a selection of most often new projects, based for example on a distinctive skill, a forgotten prototype or transposable software in a new application context. To avoid casting too wide a net and thus risk losing control of the process, it is confined at this stage to looking for projects with very high potential. To fix the ideas, it is a question of detecting opportunities capable of becoming hyper-growing spin-offs within a two-year horizon.
7. Part 1 Month 7 Methodology Sharing – The project portfolio at this stage contains lines resulting from the voice of the customer, the historical dynamic of innovation, the reactivation of old projects in favor of new market conditions and large carriers linked to general opportunities or specific asset exploitation opportunities. The innovation portfolio is gradually expanding with new projects suggested by members of the innovation units and prioritized by decision-makers who are increasingly involved in the IPM approach. In order to control the growth in number and quality of projects registered in the portfolio, a project audit methodology is proposed. It is first used as an entry filter for a new line in the portfolio, before being applied, later in the IPM deployment cycle, to existing lines. It takes up the achievements of the previous stages, for example the framework for arbitration between two projects of equivalent level of investment and ROI, by supplementing them with tools and methods for defining and validating operational models and economic models. The members of innovation cells and their privileged correspondents must be trained in the operational and economic modeling of projects using simple and effective frameworks that have proven themselves in several very different sectors from each other. Participants in this training receive guidance in facilitating these trainings. As leaders of the innovation process in their organization, they are called upon to disseminate good practices and to be trainers themselves, through theory, practice and example. An illustration in the context of the common thread pharmaceutical laboratory is offered to them, thanks to the analysis of two typical projects, one multi-year, the other supposed to generate value in the shorter term. It is also proposed to build a business case close to the reality on the ground of their organization, serving as a guiding thread for the training they are required to provide.
8. Part 1 Month 8 Pilot Projects – It is important to capitalize on the achievements of each stage in the collaborative environment chosen for this purpose. Methods, tools, portfolio, decision records, callouts, strategic directions, trends, voice of the customer results, innovation process maturity, success factors, goals, dashboards, role definitions, asset lists and training courses kits are duly listed there and made accessible according to the need to know. With these resources, the organization is ready to anticipate results over a period ranging from a few weeks to two years. Why two years? Because it is a limit beyond which the visibility of a market context becomes too difficult to assess with sufficient reliability. Admittedly, the return on investment horizons of funds specializing in innovation are more like seven years on average; but they require tangible results before this deadline: we speak of visible steps. The challenge is to announce more and more good news as the IPM project unfolds. This is made possible by the gradual improvement in the success rate of innovation projects, by the reinvestment of earnings, by extending adherence to the approach to new subsets of the organization, by connecting approach to the expectations expressed by the voices of the customer and by the dissemination of a culture of innovation that is as attractive as it is effective. It is on this condition that the momentum of the IPM initiative is sustained over time. A number of pilot projects are identified as having the potential to become cardinal models of success for the future. They are chosen according to their operational terrain, their nature, their time horizon and their high chances of success. All of these pilot projects cover a spectrum of functions, technologies, skills and market segments representative of the variety of situations in which the organization wishes to innovate. The statistics are terrible: between 80% and 90% of new products and services do not last beyond the first year of operation according to specialized academic sources; and this is true everywhere in the world. The only factor that increases the probability of success is the quality of innovation management. These pilot projects make maximum use of the content of the repository shared via the collaborative environment and constitute a privileged illustration of it, becoming in fact the examples cited in future training and communications.
9. Part 1 Month 9 Reporting Results – There comes a time when higher-level decision-makers demand accountability. This is an opportunity to involve them in the process and to transform them, if they have not already done so, into its powerful promoters. To do this, at least three challenges must be met: ensuring that they recognize their own agendas in that of the IPM, that they are pleasantly surprised, either by the first results already recorded, or by favorable echoes contributing to maintaining the confidence, finally that they learn something. “Tell me about something that I don’t know yet”, said the President of a large bank who had just given an hour to a project team in charge of applying a lean method to a management control process deployed on a multi-country and multi-business scope. These three principles should guide the development of high-level reporting. We must compare innovation to an art, and realize that in musical composition for example, if inspiration plays a big role, in fine the dissemination of a work on a large scale passes through the use of a universal notation, and the exploitation of techniques and practices that it usually takes ten thousand hours to learn in a conservatory. So it is an art, yes, but it is also a body of knowledge and know-how whose impact must be demonstrated in these high-level reporting bodies. Success ratios, levels of mobilization, performance gaps between a standard innovation project and a pilot project, future spin-offs, so many key topics that must be presented in the right order and with a convincing argument, starting with the conclusion and unfolding its rationale rather than the other way around. Indeed, the common reflex is to report on the approach in the order in which it unfolds, starting with the first step and ending with the last, where the results finally appear. This is to be avoided, in favor of a more assertive, more surprising, more audacious communication. A reporting process is also in itself an opportunity to innovate. You have to know how to take advantage of it.
10. Part 1 Month 10 Prioritize Actions – With the sum of innovation projects in the portfolio increasing month after month, it becomes possible to begin to establish relevant statistics and observe repeatable patterns. In particular, the decision-making process must be the subject of particular attention insofar as it is often a bottleneck and a factor slowing down the deployment of IPM. Very often, optimizing this process is unavoidable. High-level involvement is of course a non-negligible success factor for this initiative. The list of assets with potential is expanding and is being aligned with the innovation strategy. Any opportunities to protect intellectual property or file a patent are studied, and the corresponding policy is updated if necessary. Some organizations set targets for the rate of registration of patents or even publications in scientific journals. Large high-tech companies go so far as to invest in fundamental research, considered as a basis for applied research; this approach also makes it possible to recruit exceptional talent in a context of shortage of specialized skills. Patents or assets with potential that do not fit into the innovation strategy, or that are regularly arbitrated in favor of other assets, may be sold to third-party organizations, which represents another lever for creating value. The decision-making process integrates the handling of this type of file, usually involving a high level while respecting the necessary imperative of efficiency. The pilot projects federated in the innovation portfolio integrate the objectives of protection and exploitation of intellectual property. Major multi-year projects are the subject of particular attention, insofar as their success generally depends on long and costly research and development efforts. Principles of management, arbitration and pivoting specific to these projects are shared.
11. Part 1 Month 11 Program Schedule – A progress report is carried out in order to put the major milestones of the deployment program into perspective. In particular, the dependencies between the achievements and the objectives remaining to be achieved are identified and illustrated on a PERT-type diagram, before being transposed into a GANTT. Iterations take place between different stakeholders to consolidate the plan before wider dissemination and sharing. The deadlines envisaged for the carve-out and launch of high-potential stand-alone entities, considered as possible future hyper-growth structures (for example, spin-offs deemed capable of becoming unicorns), constitute strategic milestones. Their positioning in a multi-year schedule must take into account the time needed to separate them from activities or offerings that do not have the same potential, to mobilize key resources, to overcome the obstacles identified in terms of economic models, technological challenges, skills, communication and possibly resistance to change. It is important to position them in time from the first year, when the IPM process is not yet deployed on a large scale, in order to be in a position when the time comes to exploit these very visible and even spectacular stages with a view to stimulate membership. Some of these conclusions are widely communicated, depending on the need to know : key milestones, strong needs not yet covered (identified as privileged breakthrough fields of innovation), stabilized method elements, results obtained at this stage, statistics relating to the portfolio of innovation projects. The objective is to share an expectation expressed by both internal and external actors in the organization, before structuring the customization phase of the IPM process (second year).
12. Part 1 Month 12 Communicate Plan – The action plan is the subject of targeted communication inside and potentially outside the organization. Success stories already recorded, as well as mastered, explained and analyzed failures, contribute to creating a specific and shared culture of innovation. This communication plan sets the stage for the next phase, dedicated to customizing the IPM process. The components of the process and the issues specific to each of them are recalled. At the level of the maintain innovation strategy component, the objectives include the launch of an open innovation approach, a specific budget approach to innovation, an adapted IT equipment plan, preparation for the launch of potentially hyper-growing activities, an evolution of the career model and target skills, the selection of key trends, and the alignment of innovation KPIs with CSR objectives. At the level of the realize assets potential component, the objectives include the recognition of recurring innovation patterns and mechanisms, the initialization of an open innovation portfolio, the testing of an end-to-end IPM process, the customization of IPM software and the initialization of an agile portfolio. At the level of the facilitated participatory communication component, the accent is placed on training initiatives for personnel called upon to contribute to innovation projects, on calls for participation in open innovation initiatives (inside and outside the outside the organization), and on the key points of IPM’s innovation strategy and strategy. At the level of the evaluate innovation projects component, the objectives include the definition of the innovation cycle, the implementation of a benchmarking and project evaluation approach, the definition or update of a reference management system for agile projects, an IPM service level agreement and the implementation of effective IPM reporting. At the level of the involve sales component, the objectives include the mobilization of communities of witnesses of the ecosystem, the contribution to open innovation and the identification of priority trends and the adoption of a dedicated sales action plan. At the level of the drive growth component, the objective is to create and maintain the repository of IPM processes applicable on a large scale from the third year.

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High-Performance Innovation – Part 2 – Year 2

1. Part 2 Month 1 Innovation Patterns – Innovation can be achieved in various ways, formal or informal. In all cases, patterns of innovation were identified through post-analysis of successful innovations and experience of their implementation. Transposition, coopetition, model mutation, so many areas of reflection allowing both to guide the teams concerned and to reuse proven good practices. The idea here is to select the innovation schemes best suited to the context of the organization in question. Identifying and promoting innovation patterns is part of the realize assets potential component. Its objectives are to make the organization aware of the detection of innovation opportunities, to feed subsequent training programs, to help create a common culture, to facilitate the establishment of statistics and the identification of success factors. For example, transposition is a pattern common to many innovative organizations. It consists of adapting a process deemed virtuous in one area to another area. This domain can be a market, a manufacturing step, or any definition of the scope of application of said innovation mechanism. Typically, noting that the success of the introduction of the Iphone on the market is due, among other factors, to the simple idea of combining three devices into one to concentrate frequent uses on it, an industrialist in the pharmaceutical sector may decide to combine three active ingredients in a single drug to concentrate the treatment of particularly widespread pathologies. If this works, the transposition of the process can then be envisaged for three devices for measuring health constants combined in a connected watch, then for three sensors for tracking a package at the supply chain level.
2. Part 2 Month 2 Innovation Cycle – The innovation cycle generally includes the phases of ideation, design and prototyping, exposure and deployment. But each organization is free to chart its course in its own way. Beyond the known cycles resulting from experience, nothing prevents us from innovating at the very level of the innovation process. This personalized cycle will then be used to perform consistent reporting across the organization. The definition of the innovation cycle is part of the evaluate innovation projects component. Its objectives are to harmonize the way in which projects are planned, estimated and monitored, to facilitate decision-making, to feed subsequent training programs and to allow various profiles to work together quickly, after a shortened synchronization phase. On this occasion, the profiles of asset pilots, project facilitators and ecosystem animators are identified. Asset pilots are mainly in charge of the realize assets potential component of the IPM process, project facilitators are mainly in charge of the evaluate innovation projects component, while ecosystem animators are mainly in charge of the involve sales component. These professionals are trained to train other employees involved in innovation projects in the elements of the process stabilized at this stage. For example, if a prototyping approach is favored each time the investment exceeds a certain threshold, or if there is a panel of market witnesses available to test it in an upstream phase, this rule will be part of the definition of the innovation cycle. Resources and prototyping tools can be recommended and customized according to the culture, constraints and objectives of the organization in question.
3. Part 2 Month 3 BBZ Approach – The budget process applied to innovation is preferably of the ZBB (Zero Base Budget) type. This means that the budgets are validated over time, depending on the detection of assets with potential and the emergence of promising projects. The deviations and accelerations of projects observed are consolidated in order to carry out arbitrations within the portfolio. This process must be compatible with the standards of the organization and fit into them as harmoniously as possible. The BBZ approach is part of the maintain innovation strategy component. It is defined by a level of management high enough to have a cross-functional impact. Its objectives are to avoid the recurrent renewal of annual budgets devoted to innovation (with systematic reassessment and updating), to connect the budget envelopes to the reality on the ground and to needs aligned with the innovation strategy and IPM’s strategy, and to respect the principle of frequent arbitration between projects (with the aim of identifying pivoting opportunities at the right time). For example, if a research and development department specializing in the industrialization process of the company’s products increases its budgets by 7% each year, with no other justification than an alignment with the group’s sales growth rate, looking at the portfolio of innovation projects and asking the question of its performance proves useful. Are disruptive innovations planned or already implemented? Do they need to be encouraged by a budget extension, or on the contrary arbitrated for lack of results after several years of trial and error? What patterns of innovation are at work? What synergies can be expected vis-à-vis the rest of the portfolio and the methods and tools proven at this stage? What indirect benefits can we hope for that were not foreseen at the start of a project? Resetting the counters to zero and revisiting the triggers of the projects makes it possible to give them an impetus aligned with the strategy or to make an arbitration decision specific to freeing up and redirecting the mobilized capacities.
4. Part 2 Month 4 Selecting Software – There are many software packages dedicated to IPM. Beyond the first collaborative environments mobilized at the start of the program (planning phase), generally based on what already exists, it is necessary to professionalize the computerization of the process over time. For this, a master plan is proposed in order to find its place in the information system of the organization, while respecting its standards and constraints or by making them evolve in a justified way. Building the master plan is part of the maintain innovation strategy component. It involves the information systems department and is part of its roadmap. Its objectives are to facilitate an open innovation approach, to efficiently generate statistics and decision support, to share methods and tools, to structure and provide online training, to supervise innovation cycles and to facilitate the participatory communication. If a solution already present in the group’s information system is selected, its configuration must take into account the choices made at this stage. For example, if an initiative to call on external skills is launched to solve a complex customer experience problem, the greater the range of actors solicited, the greater the chances of success. Specialized software gives access to hundreds of thousands of startups, researchers, experts and design offices potentially able to offer their services and save the organization time. In this case, such a problem may have already been encountered on the other side of the planet and the solutions put in place may be rapidly adapted to this new context.
5. Part 2 Month 5 Valuing Innovation – The projects in the portfolio are subject to a value analysis initiative. Any innovation project can be linked to one or more initial assets, the value of which has changed at the end of the cycle. The method for evaluating the impact of an innovation project is determined on the basis of a generic proposal. The valuation of innovation projects or underlying assets is part of the evaluate innovation projects component. Its objectives are to manage the consolidated value of the portfolio over time, identify carve-out and spin-off opportunities, identify hyper-growth potential, and compare it with internal performance benchmarks as well as external ones. This original approach has proven itself efficient in various contexts, making it possible to overcome the limits of reporting focused mainly on the notions of investment and return on investment. Indeed, reasoning by value potentially affects the balance sheet and not only the income statement, thus widening the horizon of potential innovations. For example, if an innovative centrifuge prototype that had been sleeping in a laboratory cupboard for several years gets a second life thanks to an ongoing project, there is a sudden appearance of value. It is essential to capture this phenomenon, to manage it and possibly reproduce it elsewhere. It is also possible that the expected value at the start of the project decreases or increases after reassessment, which leads to readjusting the objectives, or even pivoting, considering a spin-off or deciding to suspend the investment in favor of a more advanced – or more promising – project.
6. Part 2 Month 6 Benchmarking Innovation – In order to compare themselves to the leaders, specialty by specialty, a method is proposed. It is based on “voice of the customer” type exercises that are now well known to the organization since they condition the alignment of projects with market expectations. It is customized to fit into the organization’s target innovation culture. The benchmarking process is part of the evaluate innovation projects component. Its objectives are to give benchmarks to the actors of innovation, to generate a healthy emulation following the example of the palpable dynamics within startups and scaleups, to raise awareness of the importance of steering competitive advance, to gauge the effort required to catch up with or overtake a competitor, or to move away from overly competitive markets. For example, if in a supply chain ecosystem, there is a gap between the benchmark considered by professionals internally, and the benchmark considered by the group’s BtoB customers, the customer experience is potentially disappointing. In this type of analysis, the commercial function can be called upon to collect and organize information from the field. They animate communities of witnesses of the ecosystem participating in the definition of service levels dictated by the best practices observed. Focus group type workshops are organized at regular intervals, either virtually or physically, the sales representatives in charge of their animation having been previously trained and integrated into the innovation cells. Their conclusions are analyzed and shared on the collaborative environment dedicated to innovation, in order to serve as a decision-making aid in the project management bodies.
7. Part 2 Month 7 Facilitating Innovation – The members of the innovation cells will themselves have to train their colleagues in basic workshop facilitation techniques, in accordance with the strategic axes adopted during the planning phase. Before sending them to the field for this purpose, they are trained to train. Their career model is defined and gradually rolled out at the HR level. The facilitating innovation activity is part of the facilitate participatory communication component, at the junction between the functions of human resources management and communication. Its objectives are to create a homogeneous and effective culture of innovation, to disseminate good practices quickly and fluidly, to recognize the contribution of the personnel dedicated to this initiative at its fair value and to propose new ways of developing careers. For example, the configuration and use of new software dedicated to innovation can generate resistance to change with various causes: perception of the arrival of an additional administrative layer, lack of knowledge of preferred use cases, lack of training, lack of time, poor prioritization of tasks, problems with the quality or performance of the solution. The training of trainers must enable them to anticipate these obstacles and to propose answers and good practices to the participants in the trainings that they will provide themselves. This means encouraging them to maintain ongoing relationships with various profiles within the organization, from the IT specialists in charge of the solution to the most experienced users, including the most visible refractories and the most strategic sponsors. Because a solution is not just software, but a combination of constantly evolving behaviors, processes, strategic objectives and tactics.
8. Part 2 Month 8 Promising Trends – In order to avoid the Kodak syndrome (namely the involuntarily suicidal behavior of a company which holds a decisive asset in the laboratory but does not industrialize it for fear of self-competition), a bouquet of trends in which the organization believes is determined. This work makes it possible to contribute to arbitrating between projects judged to be equivalent from the point of view of their potential. Identifying and selecting trends in which the organization believes is part of the maintain innovation strategy component. These trends are considered both sustainable and promising, specifically for the organization and its ecosystem. The activity aims to provide benchmarks to all professionals deployed on innovative activities, the focus of documentary research and monitoring work on keywords and key expressions deemed strategic, the orientation of benchmarking work on a manageable scope and the natural emergence of new innovation opportunities. For example, if biosynthesis techniques are considered to have potential for a broad spectrum of applications, the presence of representatives of the organization is essential in this ecosystem. It can take the form of an open innovation partnership with a university, collaboration with a scaleup in the sector, participation in congresses and conventions dedicated to the subject or the financing of collaborative projects. The scientific and competitive watch function will also be mobilized to provide the teams of the projects concerned with up-to-date and operationally usable information. All staff will be made aware of this topic in order to contribute to the detection of new opportunities around them, in their context and their daily lives.
9. Part 2 Month 9 Portfolio Management – The IPM process is ready to be deployed. End-to-end simulations are carried out on real cases in order to test the system transversely. The observations are categorized according to procedural, human, technological and strategic dimensions. The portfolio management activity is part of the realize assets potential component. Each innovation project is linked to a description of one or more underlying assets and its expected or measured valuation, to one or more promising trends, to one or more innovation mechanisms, to one or more performance factors, to one or more axes of the IPM strategy. Simulating end-to-end portfolio management functions allows collecting and implementing improvement suggestions before deploying them on a large scale, verifying their reliability and ease of use, helping to generate buy-in to the process, to prepare for the following phases and to emphasize the importance of sharing a well-understood culture of agility. For example, if methods already exist within the organization, materialized by buzzwords such as scrum, sprint, agile, design thinking or jugaad, should they be integrated into the IPM process, should they be considered as opportunities to create synergies, or should they simply used in a pragmatic and uncodified way? Most often, the solution lies in flexible referencing in the form of a capacity to contribute to innovation, with correspondents and experts potentially integrated into the innovation cells. If one of these methods proves to be essential and constitutes the common denominator of many successful innovations, it is gradually nourished by this feedback and benefits from the sharing of best practices in the field.
10. Part 2 Month 10 Sustainable Innovation – At this stage, the process has a transverse existence. The portfolio already contains pilot projects, some of which are identified as having a marked societal or environmental impact. Since the beginning of the IPM project, sustainability reporting standards have been specified and constitute new reference systems that must be cross-referenced with that of the IPM. The sustainable innovation activity is part of the maintain innovation strategy component. Its objectives are the alignment of the innovation dynamic with the organization’s sustainable development strategy, the targeted facilitation of communities representing the ecosystem from the point of view of CSR (corporate social responsibility) issues, the creation of synergies between open innovation and regional economic development, raising awareness among salespeople of the results already obtained and providing details on trends deemed to be promising. For example, if the carbon footprint of a network of factories presents a significant level of heterogeneity, the causes of these differences are analyzed from the angle of the realization of the potential of dormant assets, or the transposition of processes that have worked in one place and can be adapted to another place. The search for breakthrough innovations is favored, in preference to a logic of continuous innovation, in order to generate the most significant gains possible, to create particularly visible performance leaps and to avoid any confusion with projects that do not present with a marked innovative aspect. An indicator of the success of this approach is the identification, launch and even completion of promising new projects thanks to IPM. The use of open innovation is particularly suited to the context, because an external dynamic can prove to be virtuously contagious and accelerate internal mobilization around these issues.
11. Part 2 Month 11 Servitization Model – A map of the services provided by the IPM is produced and published. For each of these services, performance level commitments in accordance with the organization’s quality, time and profitability requirements are established. The establishment of a servitization model is part of the evaluate innovation projects component. Its objectives are to recognize the contribution of IPM at the level of the subsets of the organization on which it is or will be deployed, to measure its perceived and actual performance, to create the conditions for its effectiveness, the establishment of service contracts with its direct beneficiaries, the availability, updating and dissemination of a map of the services provided, and its integration into the list of potential assets of the organization for improvement purposes keep on going. IPM is a space for innovation in itself and should not be an exception to the rule. A servicization model can be considered as the transposition of capabilities that have proven themselves in the field of logistics in the field of IPM. Thus, Amazon Prime and AliBaba have deployed these models on a large scale with the efficiency that they are known for, with an unprecedented level of automation and a list of human issues that are also unprecedented. Servicization models consider everything to be a service, including products seen as collections of uses (and no longer as goods, machines, software, clothing or consumables). This results in a focus on service interfaces, their scope of application and their performance promises. If, for example, support is urgently requested by a salesperson to help him lead a voice-of-the-ecosystem workshop using the design thinking method, the timeframe for mobilizing the right experts could be agreed in advance and be subject to an appropriate service contract.
12. Part 2 Month 12 Innovation Management – The innovation strategy and IPM’s strategy are revised in the light of the achievements of the development phase: the portfolio has expanded, operational results have been recorded, simulations and cross-functional tests have revealed new imperatives. Updating innovation and IPM strategies is part of the maintain innovation strategy component. Its objectives are to prepare the next phase of scaling up the IPM process, to feed the communication plan announcing this phase, to integrate the contributions of the previous stages, to take into account the movements of the competition and the markets targets, and to enhance the operational results obtained at the end of recently completed innovation projects. For example, as IPM’s strategy depends on the maturity of the innovation process in its scope of application, it was able to evolve at the same time as said process. 5 levels of ambition are proposed for the IPM strategy: detection, measurement, prioritization, openness and acquisition strategy. Each level corresponds to simple criteria for assessing the maturity of the innovation process, such as the identification of at least one proven or projected hyper-growth activity, the deployment of IPM software facilitating open innovation with a deep ecosystem, the success rate of the innovation projects in the portfolio, the level of involvement of the sales functions or the rate of conclusion of innovative partnerships. The innovation strategy is itself tuned according to the levels of success recorded and new prospects identified, for example the rate of penetration of targeted niche markets, changes in projected, ongoing or proven economic models design, a rate of automation on a perimeter considered strategic, or measures of competitive advances on offerings with high potential.

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High-Performance Innovation – Part 3 – Year 3

1. Part 3 Month 1 Customer Voice – The first building block of an innovation portfolio management process is the organization’s connection to representatives of its ecosystem. Indeed, it is illusory to hope to create value by innovating without having first surveyed its target markets, its potential partners, its own employees and colleagues and sometimes the regulators (in particular when the ambition of an innovation is to societal scope, with a strong impact on the ecosystem). It is certainly possible to be lucky and to succeed with the only mobilization of your flair, but on a large scale the statistics are against this type of approach. Also the process of IPM must rely on a network of correspondents, market witnesses, with whom ideas and approaches are tested at the right time, that is to say before the investments are so important and the development so advanced that it is no longer possible to call into question a project in progress. This supposes having meshed the organization with privileged contacts of these witnesses. Their skills include network management, online community animation, meeting facilitation, agile methods and knowledge of the key professions involved in current innovation projects. Their qualities include empathy, ability to synthesize, curiosity, creativity and rigor. They apply a 4-step method that has proven itself in fifteen different professions. A shared repository hosts the results of the innovation sessions, accessible to the teams involved in the scope considered. Only the summaries of these results are available for witnesses outside the organization, for purposes of animation and reward for the efforts made. These summaries form a forum-type discussion base and never contain any trade secrets.
2. Part 3 Month 2 Innovation Structure – While we must of course avoid undermining the entrepreneurial spirit and creativity within the organization, we must not fall into the opposite excess and consider that innovation should not be structured. The cumulative budgets of innovation projects in a large company being as high as they are difficult to estimate, it is necessary to set up a transverse process for identifying and evaluating these projects, at least for those which are intended to enter in the portfolio. The voice of the customer facilitators are the first professionals asked to be part of these cross-functional structures, called innovation cells. Other profiles are required, whose skills include project management, project steering, project monitoring and reporting ; leurs qualités incluent la clarté, la capacité d’analyse, l’écoute et l’adaptabilité. The sizing of the innovation cells follows a proven scheme. It depends on the maturity of the innovation process (model provided) in the subset considered, on the size of the organization and on the ambition given to the IPM deployment program. It is preferable that these cells be federated at the level of the executive committee, or at the level of its members who each take responsibility for a subset of the organisation. The scope of application of IPM takes on its full meaning here. It is determined according to an innovation process maturity scale specific to each subset considered. This scale with 12 levels, which can be simplified into 4 phases of 3 levels each, makes it possible to constitute homogeneous subsets from the point of view of the maturity of their innovation processes.
3. Part 3 Month 3 Training Program – The members of the innovation cells constitute the audience for this training. They interact on a daily basis with a number of professionals, some of whom are aware of IPM but do not all have knowledge of the issues, methods and tools that can be used. The members of the innovation cells must therefore be trained to train them, thus becoming capable of passing on part of their know-how and experience to them. The training courses intended for employees not deployed in the innovation cells are simpler, less complete and shorter than the present course. They nevertheless favor a similar format, i.e. one-day sessions separated by a month in order to properly assimilate the shared notions and to experiment with them in the field. There are three of them: level 1 day, level 2 day and level 3 day. The level 1 day emphasizes creativity tools, including a so-called “springboard” exercise, an exercise called “jet of titles” and a story telling exercise. The level 2 day focuses on analysis tools, including an uberization model, an economic model canvas and a model for identifying potential assets. The level 3 day emphasizes communication and collaborative tools, aiming to share common repositories of roadmaps and continuous innovation. The members of the innovation cells have already practiced these tools and methods operationally during the first two months of their course, or before that for some pioneers of the approach. They are therefore legitimate for conveying the right messages and the right knowledge. Employees who have completed the 3 levels of training are potentially invited to join the innovation cells if the need arises.
4. Part 3 Month 4 High-potential Assets – The use of the tool for identifying assets with potential is deployed thanks to the relay constituted by the innovation cells and the employees already trained by them. It is a matter of creating a map of the assets awaiting and deserving to be transformed into value by mobilizing reasonable energy consistent with the expected gains. Software developed internally and finding possible applications externally with the organization’s customers, processes tested on a product or service capable of being replicated in other families of offerings, models or prototypes that are convincing but not still industrialized, under-exploited electronic showcases, so many potential lost opportunities as long as they fit into the organization’s innovation strategy, and therefore honor the criteria defining this strategy. The innovative character of the transformation projects for these assets is assessed with regard to these criteria before entering the portfolio. This means that a large part of the assets remains on the shelf and is therefore not the subject of a dedicated investment. They can be integrated later in favor of a change of strategy, for example. In order not to waste energy identifying assets with low potential or that do not meet the criteria corresponding to the group’s strategy, an “open-closed” approach is implemented. Initially, the proposed model makes it possible to draw up a Prévert-style list of assets, by widening the field of possibilities but without digging into the subjects mentioned in detail. In a second step, their possible evolution is extrapolated in at most 3 positive stages and 3 negative stages, the negative and positive evolution factors being duly noted on this occasion; the field of possibilities begins to close. Finally, a selection of assets presenting probable positive evolutions offsetting probable negative evolutions is carried out by respecting a strict method.
5. Part 3 Month 5 Innovation Dashboard – The innovation portfolio at this stage is made up of high-potential asset transformation projects, projects triggered by Voice of the Customer and innovation projects already in progress. A consolidated vision of the portfolio is built using a highly collaborative process, integrating the same parameters for all the protagonists, in particular the level of correlation to the strategy, the expected return on investment, if necessary a proven return on investment, the means of measurement of performance, replicability, contribution to the dissemination of a culture of virtuous innovation and arbitrations in progress accompanied by arguments and scenarios. This transversal consolidation is preferred to a classic Russian doll system because of the need for speed and responsiveness, as well as the need to protect an entrepreneurial mindset potentially threatened by the implementation of processes that are too slow or too heavy. The members of the executive committee in charge of high-level arbitrations can delegate lower-level arbitrations to designated relays within the innovation cells. There is no impact of this activity on the budget process. Indeed, the logic adopted is a Zero Base Budget (BBZ) type approach, which does not provide for an a priori investment envelope but releases the funds necessary for the implementation of projects on a case-by-case basis, relying on a flexible arbitration process. In principle, the maximum budget managed by the members of the executive committee corresponds to a delegation threshold which it is not compulsory to spend, but which must not be exceeded. The objectives set for each member of the executive committee are rather of a statistical nature, for example by targeting a percentage of projects meeting with success, success being measured against the criteria of profitability, image, valuation or societal impact, to mention only a few typical cases.
6. Part 3 Month 6 Spinning-Off – This activity is particularly exciting insofar as the intended impact is significant and visible inside and outside the organization. Among the innovative projects in the portfolio are candidates for the rank of scaleup , centaur or unicorn. These are the 10% to 20% of projects that combine characteristics specific to these types of target organization, in particular a unique and clearly identified area of innovation, a scale of operation mobilizing at least 50 people, communication focused on the innovation considered and nothing else, a proven potential, a mode of steering the activity based on the regular evaluation of the theoretical transfer value, finally a competitive advantage that is both measurable and greater than a threshold specific to the organization (threshold expressed in number of months necessary for the immediate follower to catch up with this advance). From a legal point of view, spinning-off is not compulsory. The important thing is to encourage the creation or development of an iconic project and activity that serves as a model for the following. In order to carry out such an operation, it is still necessary that the adhesions to the rest of the organization are eliminated. Thus the target entity will not depend on strategic functions housed in the parent entity. A mapping of these adherences is constructed by following a pragmatic methodology based on the analysis of value. Inspired by lean and in particular by the VSM (Value Stream Map) tool, the mapping method alternates value-added and non-value-added process steps from the point of view of the subsequent development of the scaleup, centaur or unicorn candidate. The carve-out is then planned, this phase of the innovation project consisting in arbitrating between keeping and abandoning a function of the organization for the benefit of the future spin-off. Projects in this phase (there may be several) are monitored more closely than the others given their exceptional challenges.
7. Part 3 Month 7 IPM Software – At this stage of the deployment of IPM, collaborative tools already present in the organization and to which its employees are largely accustomed were used to manage the portfolio. Before moving on to the next step (open innovation), it may be necessary to strengthen the range of functionalities of the tool in question or more likely, given the strategic weight of IPM, to change the tool. The needs to be covered include, for example, the management of collaboration with external players, known or unknown, in loose or tight partnership mode, potentially bound by service agreements including quality and sustainable development constraints. There are software publishers specialized in IPM, such as Qmarkets, craft.io, planview or ideascale (non-exhaustive list). The chosen platform must both be compatible with the organization’s information system and cover the needs of the IPM process. It must make it possible to facilitate the evaluation of projects and the consolidation of their contributions to the creation of value, manage the need to know about it from various internal and external actors, include efficient search engines including in relation to external capacities (make or buy logic) and support a large and rapidly growing number of users. It can be configured in such a way that the correlation factors between project content and innovation strategy are integrated and play a key role in the selection of investments to be approved or confirmed. Voice of the Customer results can be aggregated into trends that the organization believes in and widely communicates about.
8. Part 3 Month 8 Open Innovation – When the portfolio reaches a certain size, it becomes increasingly difficult to finance projects deemed to be interesting and with potential. The number of projects reaching maturity simultaneously is too large to leave room for all the new projects that deserve it. This situation can generate deeper and deeper frustrations, ultimately threatening long-term adherence to the approach. Open innovation is an effective way to overcome this difficulty, provided you are well organized and equipped. The open innovation approach consists of replacing an internal capability with an external capability that is more efficient or whose development is more advanced, in order to lower the overall cost of deploying an innovation. One of the major challenges of such an approach is the fair remuneration of each contributor, both in terms of the services provided and in terms of the possible transfer of intellectual property of the components used. So when the agri-food giant Danone bought the Michel et Augustin scaleup, it inherited a place of co-creation located in inner Paris where visitors design and test the recipes of future products themselves. Similarly, the innocentive platform allows multinationals to anonymously submit their R&D challenges to a large community of researchers without concern for competition. In general, coopetition approaches (contraction of competition and collaboration) are developing at high speed, with yesterday’s competitors becoming today’s partners before becoming tomorrow’s competitors again, without necessarily knowing it. In the pharmaceutical sector, the CDMOs (contract development and manufacturing organisations) integrated into laboratories producing both their own products and those of the competition are a perfect illustration of this.
9. Part 3 Month 9 Self-Assessment – Not content with collaborating with a growing number of partners, the organization increasingly compares itself to its ecosystem. The references for this comparison are most often scaleups, centaurs or unicorns whose specialization strategy makes it possible to isolate a performance on a single family of products or services, becoming in fact a benchmark for the entire sector considered. Just as innovative financial products break down global risk more and more finely into elementary risks, hyper-growth companies break down the supply of a market into more and more fine components. This evolution is natural if we consider that it is easier to succeed by moving away from competitive universes than by confronting them, therefore by creating a new specialty thanks to a focused innovation approach and a communication plan itself focused on a narrow but buoyant field of innovation. At this stage, the organization builds a database of competitors maintained over time by collecting open information. It is possible to call on economic intelligence companies or an internal service with this skill and the right tools. The IPM software package can itself host this information and contribute to assisting the innovation cells in their comparative evaluation work. Catch-up or distance objectives are then set by specialty, a specialty corresponding to an axis of the innovation strategy and to a group of projects sharing common characteristics. A model for defining specialties is established and deployed on a large scale. Thus it becomes possible to build synthetic dashboards taking stock of competitive advances and delays, which can be enriched with financial data such as the investment made and the expected return on investment.
10. Part 3 Month 10 Communicate Strategy – The organization now has a cross-functional, flexible and widely shared IPM system. Dashboards are available to show the evolution of innovation performance and match it to the right levers. In order to anchor the organization’s new culture of innovation and to promote it to the right targets outside, a plan for communicating the gains is developed and disseminated. The structure of communications is based on the links between levers and results. For example, open innovation enabled a pharmaceutical company to speed up the time to market for a new family of products, and this process will be extended to other parts of the company. Another example, IPM’s approach made it possible to detect a high-potential asset in the form of highly innovative internal software, which can easily be adapted to become an offering for the company’s customers. The communication approach is multi-channel and is subject to validation stages by guarantors of compliance with the innovation strategy. Everyone in the organization can potentially contribute to creating content. The innovation cells maintain an internal network of regular contributors, motivated to participate in the communication effort by embodying change. It is possible to go so far as to set up content production workshops combining creative writing, creation of visuals, video production or even motion design. This is an opportunity to use modern and flexible participatory communication tools, in line with the innovation strategy. Associating a large number of field correspondents with the production of content is an important factor in adherence to the IPM approach, by creating internal legends.
11. Part 3 Month 11 Involve Sales – As innovation projects come to fruition, the resulting offerings need to be marketed. The earlier the sales people are involved in the process, the more effective the associated sales action plan will be. The main change is temporal. The cycles of evolution of innovative products and services are very fast, because the cardinal strategy corresponding to this type of offer is more the management of the competitive advance than the price-quality couple. On the one hand, salespeople play a crucial role in evaluating this advance by collecting the opinions of their prospects and customers on a daily basis and transmitting them to the project teams via the IPM software. On the other hand, they must constantly adapt to new sales principles, linked to the frequent marketing of new versions of innovative products and services. The innovation cells welcome representatives of these functions responsible for coordinating the two interfaces, upwards and downwards, informative and commercial. When the sales channels are indirect or largely virtualized, the logic is the same. The management of the two interfaces can then be ensured in a contact center centralizing and managing multi-channel requests. Over time, the sales people integrated into the innovation cells in turn become contributors to the upstream design of innovation projects. This role is assigned to the most creative or analytical profiles, motivated and available to spend part of their time in project mode. Career development can then be offered to some of them, which can help to cushion economic model shocks linked to the acceleration of sales virtualization.
12. Part 3 Month 12 Generalize IPM – An assessment of the deployment of IPM is shared within the organization. It is structured according to the split into 6 processes, namely maintain innovation strategy, realize assets potential, facilitate participative communication, evaluate innovation projects, involve sales and drive growth. It can be detailed in subprocesses or subcomponents such as the voice of the customer, the innovation structure, the training program, the assets with potential, the dedicated dashboard, the hyper-growth spin-offs, the IPM software, open innovation, self-assessment, strategy communication and sales engagement (non-exhaustive). For each item, a level of maturity is communicated, along with an action plan for the coming year. Another report is structured according to the axes of the innovation strategy. It is shared less widely, or in a less precise way, because it contains confidential elements vis-à-vis the competition. The members of the executive committee use this document to build or adjust the one-year strategy. This time horizon is shorter than historical strategic plans as the innovation model is highly adaptive. Given the speed at which disruptive innovations emerge, it is critical to be able to identify visible stages at least on an annual basis, even if it means refining the performance of the resulting products or service over time, in continuous mode. However, some projects will not be able to offer finished products at this rate because they are tackling mountains: the electric plane, the hydrogen car or quantum computing, for example. These multi-year projects are identified as such in the innovation portfolio and are subject to appropriate management. Finally, IPM is mobilized in its societal and environmental dimension. For example, citizen science projects become easier to manage and extend the impact of the approach to the general public.

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High-Performance Innovation – Part 4 – Year 4

1. Part 4 Month 1 Performance Analysis – The effectiveness and efficiency of the IPM process are analyzed and symptoms and obstacles to performance are identified and qualified. Thanks to the use of root cause research methods, new performance levers are prioritized. The performance analysis activity is part of the facilitate participatory communication component. Its objectives are to involve as many people as possible in improving the performance of innovation, welcoming and acculturating newcomers within the organization, updating monitoring dashboards and decision support, critical confrontation with the aim of improving the quality of the innovative offers in the portfolio. Thanks to techniques derived from lean, which can be referred to as lean innovation, symptoms are translated into causes and then into levers. The levers are prioritized by level of impact on performance. Participants are trained in the first steps of the method, unless they already have experience. Innovation performance is defined using a number of indicators contained in the dashboards that have already been produced. New indicators emerge during these analysis sessions involving new profiles and people exposed to varied experiences, including newcomers to the organization who have participated in innovation initiatives in other contexts. The categories of performance indicators include, for example, growth, operational efficiency, well-being at work, impact on the ecosystem, profitability, asset valuation, the KPIS being translated into concepts that can be manipulated by all participants without requiring advanced knowledge in finance, management control or organizational management. The levers identified at this stage will be implemented during the rest of the year, theme by theme.
2. Part 4 Month 2 Update Dashboards – In line with the diagnostic work that has just been carried out, the IPM monitoring dashboards are updated by integrating new indicators, or by arbitrating indicators that have become less relevant. The processes for producing, validating and using these dashboards are themselves subject to a continuous improvement process. The update dashboards activity is part of the evaluate innovation projects component. Its objectives are the integration of precise field data capable of constituting a heritage of information by successive aggregations, the enhancement of this database thanks to the identification of new performance factors and innovation schemes, the continuous improvement of quality and speed of decision-making. For example, if open innovation seems to work better for industrializing processes in the factory than for designing them upstream at the laboratory level, the calls for contributions conveyed by the dedicated open innovation platform could focus on this phase. The confirmation or invalidation of the phenomenon will be provided by the analysis of the observations made on the basis of a history of one to three years. Where appropriate, target contributors will be selected based on their skill and experience in industrialization and not upstream design. It is also possible to identify new factors to improve the performance of open innovation based process design and introduce them into the arbitration and selection procedures. Dashboards will be updated to reflect these inputs and decisions. Finer statistics will become available over time, feeding the organization’s data heritage for later use, in particular when artificial intelligence levers will be implemented.
3. Part 4 Month 3 Visual Management – Wall performance cards are displayed in the places most frequented by the innovation cells and by the personnel concerned. They can be static or dynamic (on screen or touch screen) and are intended to maintain the momentum of the IPM and to provide the company’s employees with information that can be communicated to partners, customers and potential prospects. The visual management activity is part of the maintain innovation strategy component. Series of visuals are produced on the occasion of events or key stages of innovation projects and distributed within the ecosystem. Their objectives are to communicate on a need-to-know basis, to extend internal communication initiatives to the external ecosystem, to mesh the available channels in order to stimulate the spontaneous notoriety of the organization’s innovative initiatives. and to retain the communities of market witnesses. For example, if a community witnessing the health market has helped create a combined offering between food supplements and connected watches, and the concept appeals and has the potential to go viral, visuals featuring the more convincing customer experiences are designed by the collaborators and disseminated widely. If, on the other hand, the subject of the potential communication is more confidential and concerns, for example, a manufacturing tip intended for operators of an assembly line, a diagram or a video describing the device in question will be distributed to the interested parties and only to them. Elements extracted from the dashboards are also distributed internally, and sometimes externally when the indicators concerned can be shared (carbon impact measurement for example). They make it possible to make the data more reliable thanks to any comments made by the teams exposed to them.
4. Part 4 Month 4 HR Lever – Among the performance levers analyzed, the HR lever is implemented as a priority. Training courses in leading the key phases of the innovation process are organized. For this, old and new members of the innovation cells are trained to train. The implementation of human resource management type levers is part of the facilitated participatory communication component. Its objectives are to recognize the contributions of professionals deployed within the innovation cells, to adjust their career models according to the experience they have had over the past three years, to identify skills and strategic specialties, the updating of training programs and the continuous improvement of methods for leading co-creation workshops. Asset pilots, project facilitators and ecosystem animators are evaluated by their management in accordance with the corresponding career management guides. These roles are perpetuated within the organization and are the subject of dedicated training plans. Strategic know-how emerges and in turn becomes assets that can be transformed into innovations, for example through mechanisms of transposition or scaling up. Scheduling availabilities and assigning key persons to key innovation projects is a critical process that must be evaluated and continuously improved. Bridges between the 3 key roles are offered in order to promote versatility within the innovation cells. The ultimate role is, for example, that of leader of a spin-off or a hyper-growing activity, with a view to retaining the best profiles and encouraging intrapreneurship. A mentoring network has been set up to facilitate the natural transmission of know-how in the field and to have new recruits advised by the most experienced employees.
5. Part 4 Month 5 Technology Lever – By exploiting the possibilities offered by the IPM software package deployed on a large scale, dynamic management of requests for technical improvement of the innovation process becomes possible. The information system roadmap and the ordered and prioritized list of change requests are synchronized through the publication of major and minor version content. The implementation of the technology lever is part of the maintain innovation strategy component. Its objectives are to perpetuate and enhance the use of the IPM software package, to correct its defects by prioritizing their resolution efforts, to make it evolve in line with new needs, to align its operation with the recommendations resulting from the lean innovation workshops, to interface it effectively with the platforms with which it must potentially exchange information, in particular CRM and ERP type applications. Sales representatives as well as accountants or production experts may be mobilized in this respect. Among other functions, the IPM software package ensures the maintenance of the assets realization pipe, the dissemination of innovation stories, the contribution to the establishment of dashboards, the management of open innovation requests, the provision of online training or consistency with the business innovation action plan. For example, it manages the exploitation of project success rate statistics and their correlation with factors such as the level and frequency of support by members of the innovation cells, alignment with the strategy and with trends deemed to be promising, or the availability of innovation-accelerating assets. It provides support for decision-making and allows the organization’s leaders to manage investment in innovation in a transparent and agile manner.
6. Part 4 Month 6 Prototyping Lever – Advanced prototyping devices are introduced depending on the context. For example, 3D printers or simulators can be adapted to the illustrative case of the pharmaceutical laboratory. The implementation of the prototyping lever is part of the realize assets potential component. Its objectives are the exposure of concepts to witnesses of the ecosystem upstream of the investment decision-making, the testing of an argument with a view to future marketing, the identification of potential obstacles to the progress of a positive customer experience, the characterization of the most frequent and expected uses, an initial assessment of price ranges and the generation of stories. For example, there is more and more talk of transporting the manufacture of a drug as close as possible to the patient, using a 3D printer that could be housed in a pharmacy. The objective is to adapt the dosage to the real and precise needs of the person concerned, noting that the standard doses are only suitable for an average individual profile. The prototyping of the scene makes it possible to collect the opinion of key players such as a pharmacist, a patient and an operator, on the basis of various indications (oncology, cardiology, pneumology, angiology or any other medical specialty envisaged within the framework of such a deployment). Here 3D printing is both the tool for creating a prototype and the target of innovation, but most of the time it is only a means of quickly representing the aspect, the shape, the weight and dimensions of an object that can be manipulated by the future beneficiaries. For the representation of a service, simulation or virtual reality tools may be preferred, accompanied by interaction scenarios and sets of quality criteria to be tested.
7. Part 4 Month 7 Modeling Lever – Having reached a certain level of maturity, the IPM approach has an increasingly profound impact on the business model itself. By extrapolating this phenomenon to the limits, in particular when several hyper-growing spin-offs have realized their potential, and some of them have even been the subject of IPOs, the leaders come to consider these successes as the prefiguration of a model similar to those of investment funds specialized in innovation. So determining the right balance between generic know-how and operational variations becomes the new key to performance at a strategic level. The implementation of the modeling lever is part of the maintain innovation strategy component. Its objectives are the alignment of strategic simulation models with the reality of the organization, the use of these models to update the innovation strategy and the IPM strategy, and the extension of these models to part of the ecosystem. The organization is placed at the heart of an innovative ecosystem defined by common target markets, differentiating know-how and collaborative processes. It can, for example, choose to move towards a model of subsidiarity, consisting on the one hand of a parent company holding key assets conditioning the innovation dynamic, on the other hand of vertical business lines declining the realization of the potential of these assets, by market or by family of products and services. In the field of biotechnology, for example, it is possible to house a stem cell bank in a strategic entity and to decline their exploitation in specialized subsidiaries with variable geometry, agile and capable of adapting quickly to the evolution of the conditions of market.
8. Part 4 Month 8 Agility Lever – Agile methods are already deployed within the organization, with more or less spontaneous levels of support. Their organizational and managerial impacts are analyzed to determine the right balance between linear and dynamic approaches, depending on each context. Implementing the agility lever is part of the realize assets potential component. Its objectives are the integration of best practices from the ecosystem in terms of agile development of solutions, the upgrading of the corresponding training programs and the planning of training sessions intended for the personnel deployed in the innovation cells. For example, the rite of daily meetings present in most agile approaches is challenged in order to verify its usefulness and performance in various contexts, to define the conditions for its maintenance and to share facilitation techniques deemed to create value. In the advanced development phase, they can be replaced by recurring thematic meetings, each dealing with a stage of the customer experience, before returning to the rhythm of daily meetings as the launch of the offering approaches. This type of development must be based on feedback from the field and on a posteriori analyzes of successes and failures. Visual management can help disseminate these best practices. Collaborative tools also have a role to play in the preparation and debriefing of meetings, by stimulating the updating and sharing of information, thus reducing initial synchronization times and freeing up time for co-creation and constructive criticism. For example, successful series production studios adopt this type of operation in order to reconcile speed and quality.
9. Part 4 Month 9 AI Lever – At this stage the IPM has directly and indirectly generated a large amount of data. Some are accessible in a structured way, others are stored in a more diffuse way. A work of inventory and evaluation of their potential for exploitation by deep learning and machine learning initiatives is performed, in order to reveal and realize their latent value. The implementation of the AI lever is part of the maintain innovation strategy component. Its objectives are to launch studies of opportunities for using artificial intelligence, to update the organization’s knowledge on this topic, to adapt the knowledge available to the issues specific to the organization, and to solve problems resistant to the use of other methods and techniques. The artificial intelligence lever is a long term one, its relevance becoming more and more obvious and its impact more and more measurable over time. For example, deep learning and machine learning are two fields of proven and distinct techniques, adapted to different contexts. Preferred use cases are identified, evaluated and tracked in the innovation portfolio, such as predictive supervised learning, segmentation of information by affinity, mass scenario testing or on-the-flow analysis. The existence of potential data deposits makes it possible to build data lakes accessible by artificial intelligence engines. Dedicated training courses are set up to raise awareness among members of the innovation cells on the subject, recruitment is planned and a dedicated mentoring structure can be organized in order to retain key professionals. The corresponding career models encourage the acquisition of skills in data science, mathematical analysis, programming in the languages concerned such as python for example, and knowledge of business.
10. Part 4 Month 10 Symbolic Lever – Among the innovation projects included in the portfolio, there are potentially “large carriers”. This can range from developing a hydrogen engine to developing a sustainable artistic foundation through building a state-of-the-art factory. These lines of the portfolio are the subject of a symbolic analysis based on the importance of their expected societal and environmental impact, and on the reasonable horizon for achieving these objectives. A rescheduling of the visible stages of these projects is then envisaged, in phase with an ambitious corporate communication project. The implementation of the symbolic lever is part of the facilitated participatory communication component. Its objectives are the creation and maintenance of unifying stories, the definition of their target and their dissemination. For example, if a revolutionary transformation of the supply chain has been carried out, making the choice of a massive use of IOT technology unprecedented to date, writing workshops can be organized on a voluntary basis to create a business fiction on this theme, transposing this successful experience into another context such as the production or commercial function. This fiction can be broadcast on several media, visual, video, sound or even interactive. The gamification of uses is also an effective way to share a future concept or a strategic axis of innovation. These initiatives can be combined with design thinking workshops to transform stories into real concepts, by mobilizing complementary skills around the table. The articulation between story telling of restitution and design thinking is a proven technique, allowing to immerse oneself in a context to better stick to its reality whilst imagining new use cases.
11. Part 4 Month 11 M&A Raising – Once open innovation has reached maturity within an organization, questions arise more and more frequently relating to the possible acquisition of partners, or the disposal of entities that no longer fit into the general strategy of the company, itself redesigned in light of the impact of IPM. Potential synergies between IPM and M&A must then be assessed and facilitated. The M&A raising activity is part of the maintain innovation strategy component. Its objectives are to explore the potential presented by opportunities for mergers, the sale of activities, close partnerships or the creation of service entities common to several partners in order to pool innovative resources and know-how. Candidate capabilities to become hosts of acquisitions, to be the subject of a merger or resale are qualified as such in the list of assets with potential. For example, at the level of hyper-growth activities, a scan of the most promising acquisition targets is carried out in order to consolidate their competitive edge. It is possible to tap into the pool of partners mobilized within the framework of open innovation initiatives, or to turn to new players, while keeping in mind the search for the right compromise between control and flexibility. Thus Apple has certainly built an innovative ecosystem in China, but has reserved the possibility of deporting it quickly to India, at least partially, when the situation has imposed it. More generally, the right balance between organic growth and external growth is the order of the day. Appropriate analysis models are developed to drive this balance.
12. Part 4 Month 12 Next Steps – With the IPM system in place, what are the next steps? The answer to this question involves updating the promising trends in which the company believes, identifying new assets with potential that have emerged over the past four years and the nature of the ecosystem impact desired by managers, shareholders, the market, employees and partners. The planning of the next steps is broken down into all the components of the process, maintain innovation strategy, realize assets potential, facilitate participatory communication, evaluate innovation projects, involve sales and drive growth. Its objectives are to outline the main lines of development of the IPM process, to raise awareness among the teams concerned of the challenges of the following year, to communicate on the stable capabilities of the process and to give new impetus. Key trends, reviewed and updated, are used to challenge the potential assets dashboard to detect new opportunities. A bouquet of lessons learned is analyzed and inspires widely disseminated stories. In the medium term, a desirable impact on the future ecosystem is described. For example, an evolution profile of CSR indicators can be drawn by anticipating the introduction of breakthrough innovations. The IPM process itself remains a privileged field of innovation. All of the previously described levers, the implementation of which was triggered by the performance workshop at the start of the year, are also applicable to it. Thus artificial intelligence can play a role in detecting the success factors of an innovation, the M&A dynamic can lead to acquiring differentiating open innovation management tools and becoming a reference player capable of structuring its ecosystem.

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Methodology

High-Performance Innovation

Program planning

This training program is intended for leaders, managers, project managers and innovation project directors working within organizations employing 100 to 100,000 employees, wishing to measure, improve and compare the performance of their innovation projects. The objective is that at the end of the course, participants will have implemented within their organization, at the scale they choose, a state-of-the-art innovation portfolio management (IPM) process.

The power of the IPM resides above all in its ability to provide an effective model for arbitration between competing innovation projects which, once deployed on a large scale, makes it possible to manage the investment envelope devoted to innovation. Existing initiatives deemed to have high potential are stimulated and benefit from a concentration of energy capable of accelerating the achievement of tangible results and increasing their impact. New opportunities are revealed and prioritized when the assessment of their potential justifies it. Deprioritized initiatives remain referenced in the portfolio and reappear if new assumptions or market conditions become favorable to them. The model is adaptable to the culture of the organization concerned, to its system of creativity, to its strategy, to the different phases of its project cycles, to the potential of its assets and to the trends deemed promising in its target markets.

In order to deploy the IPM process on its scope of application, an agile approach is proposed, based on the theory of cellular organizations. Innovation cells are created when a need for support, accompaniment or specific management is arbitrated favorably, disappear in the event of unfavorable arbitration or mutate on the occasion of the pivoting or the advancement of one or more projects within the portfolio. Its members are on the one hand trained in IPM and its customization, on the other hand trained to train other collaborators contributing to innovation initiatives.

The impact of the deployment is multiplied thanks to the development and maintenance of a collaborative ecosystem that goes beyond the boundaries of the organization, facilitated by the implementation of a dedicated platform.
The first 12 modules are intended for the top management of the subsets of the organization considered for the deployment of IPM, for witnesses of current or past innovation projects potentially brought to contribute to the deployment of the process and for any line manager or intermediate manager approached to take part, on a part-time basis, in future innovation cells. They are dedicated to defining the innovation strategy, determining the organizational scope of application of the approach, evaluating the current and projected maturity of the process, putting into portfolio and stimulating pilot projects, planning the major milestones of the program, establishing a list of assets with promising innovation potential, implementing a simple collaborative tool, driving solicitation tests of an external ecosystem, producing the first dashboards, and communicating and highlighting the visible results.

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Program development

At this stage, participants have tested methods and tools on a panel of pilot projects federated in an initial portfolio of projects. A first structure, the innovation cells, brings together the pioneers of IPM within the organization. All the components of the approach are tested on a manageable scale and the lessons learned are duly listed in a collaborative environment organized for this purpose. The program’s major milestones are anticipated, such as the emergence and shaping of future spin-offs. Finally an innovation strategy and an IPM strategy are stabilized and have been communicated on a need-to-know basis.

New employees potentially join the innovation cells, always on a part-time basis. Their assignments are not full-time so that they remain mainly connected to an operational function of the organization and are the promoters of the approach on their own ground. They lead by example.

During the following 12 modules, participants learn how to customize the IPM process before going to scale. They practice identifying and listing recurring patterns of innovation, specifying the conditions for the success of an open innovation approach, contributing to the selection and implementation of a dedicated software platform, leading communication workshops, training to train their colleagues, defining indicators and their valuation methods, involving sales from the start of innovation projects and choosing promising trends.

They learn to measure the impact of the combination of the three dynamics, IPM, cellular organization and collaborative ecosystem, determine the operating rules and update the innovation strategy. The cumulative effect of stimulating high-potential projects, revealing new opportunities, carrying out targeted divestments, increasing employee skills and multiplying the impact provided by an effective collaborative ecosystem must become increasingly virtuous as the process unfolds. As the economic model of the organization may need to evolve given the place taken by innovation in its culture, decision-making aids are offered to them in this regard. For instance, finding the right balance between customer experience and R&D is key. In fact, effective companies have found the right balance between the importance of customer experience as a driver of innovation, the power of R&D and enterprise-wide creativity. Where is your center of gravity? What if R&D pushes too hard for a product that the market doesn’t want? What if the results of customer focus groups were simply inconsistent with supply chain constraints?

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Program implementation

At this stage, the IPM processes are customized in order to constitute a deployable repository. They embrace the target innovation culture of the organization concerned and are tested on the portfolio of current innovation projects, which continued to grow and to be piloted in accordance with the innovation strategy and IPM’s strategy.

The composition of innovation cells may evolve both in terms of number and skills. Three new profiles appear and are assigned flexibly to the various initiatives based on a list of prioritized needs, always on a part-time basis in order to remain connected to an operational function in the field: the asset pilots manage the list of assets with potential for promising innovation, whether it is, for example, a center of distinctive skills, an under-exploited electronic showcase or a data lake rich in the recording of several years of operations; innovation projects facilitators support innovation projects either in advisory mode or by being operationally integrated into the initiative; ecosystems animators manage the communities of market witnesses forming the collaborative ecosystem on which the pilots of innovation projects rely to align their objectives with a target customer experience, thanks to a dynamic called the voice of the ecosystem.

During the following 12 modules, participants learn to deploy the 6 components of the process on a large scale: maintain innovation strategy, realize assets potential, facilitate participatory communication, evaluate innovation projects, involve sales, drive growth. They practice adjusting the speed and ambition of deployment, delineating and piloting potentially hyper-growing activities considered to be future unicorns or centaurs, organizing prototyping sessions, managing risks, identifying success factors, mobilizing key skills, updating the right indicators, using the dedicated software platform wisely, communicating regularly by anticipating the next steps and reporting on the results, testifying and supporting the teams in the field, performing benchmarks, coordinating with sales teams and synchronizing sales action plans with the innovation agenda.

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Program review

At this stage, the IPM process is deployed on a large scale, in line with the ambition of the organization. It now enters continuous improvement mode and uses so-called operational excellence techniques based on lean and derived reference systems (lean startup, running lean for example) and on agile methods.

The members of the innovation cells evolve according to a specific career plan, the ultimate position being the leader of a hyper-growing initiative. In fact, closing the performance gap with hypergrowth companies is a permanent challenge. Most organizations compare themselves to hypergrowth companies and ask themselves where they stand and where they could stand on the spectrum of “creating value through innovation”. All of these hypergrowth entities have two common characteristics: they focus on the right innovation portfolio, and they focus their communication on this portfolio, which means that the rest is arbitrated with rigor and determination. Why not apply Lean principles to innovation in your business?

During the next 12 modules, participants learn how to facilitate lean innovation workshops, identify levers for continuous improvement in the performance of the innovation portfolio and how to implement them. They practice deploying a visual management initiative, creating the conditions for the success of asset pilots, innovation projects facilitators and ecosystems animators, helping develop the dedicated software platform in line with new needs, determining the criteria for applying prototyping approaches, developing the economic and operational model of the subsets of the organization concerned, promoting agile methods, selecting potential mergers & acquisition projects and getting to know the fundamentals of the post-merger integration phases of startups, handling symbolic communication and orchestrating the transition from a transitional regime to a permanent regime.

At the end of this course, the trends deemed to be promising benefit from being updated and being subject to a strengthening of the criteria for arbitration of the innovation projects in the portfolio. Thus, if for example machine learning and deep learning are considered to be widely applicable to the context of the organization, a targeted search for opportunities can be carried out in a transverse manner.

The so-called permanent regime starts when a set of conditions are met, in particular the achievement of the level of maturity targeted at the start of the cycle. This level is assessed on a 12-degree scale enabling the assessment of the program to be qualified.

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Industries

This service is primarily available to the following industry sectors:

Healthcare

History

The health sector is both multiple and coherent: pharmaceutical laboratories, biotechs, medtechs, pharmacy networks, public research organizations, small or large health establishments, all very different from each other while contributing to the same objective through a value chain whose structure is relatively stable over time. Practitioners historically hold a place of choice. Their power being the counterpart of their duty, they dose the introduction of new practices while respecting the precautionary principle. For example, they slowed down the initiative of Marie Curie when she undertook to democratize radiography on the occasion of the great world war of the beginning of the twentieth century, before giving her free rein once the conditions of harmlessness of the process defined and demonstrated. Indeed, the matter concerned being life itself, the fear of error is omnipresent and the long ordeal of the clinical test is often coupled with an equally long work of conviction in the field to drive change. In this, the health sector has similarities with the aeronautics sector and its certification deadlines.

This skilful balance between the imperatives of medical ethics and the pressure of scientific advances has been a constant throughout the centuries. It takes all the force of conviction and the talent of a Pasteur or a Fleming to make both practitioners and patients believe in the need for vaccination or the life-saving reflex of wise recourse to penicillin. Moreover, the major laboratories have always aligned their pace of innovation with this tempo, only putting on the market a limited number of new molecules each year: on a planetary scale, all institutions combined, only around 3,000 clinical trials are launched each year. It is not uncommon for a research and development cycle to last more than a decade and commit a cumulative budget of the order of a billion dollars.

But the drug itself is not the only area affected by innovation, far from it. A laboratory is also made up of, among other capabilities, a network of chemical and pharmaceutical plants whose equipment and processes evolve with the times, teams of salespeople and marketing specialists whose practices adapt permanently to the mores of the final patient and the sum of the intermediaries, or transverse functions having adopted approaches of continuous improvement of their performance. These companies are at the heart of an industrial and research network articulating the contributions of subcontractors, co-contractors and M&A targets such as biotechs, this ecosystem naturally stimulating creativity at all levels. Innovation that is not specifically focused on the synthesis of new molecules is all the more essential as the lifespan of exclusivities has shortened against the backdrop of the generalization of generic drugs. Players must therefore reinvent themselves on other parts of the value chain or their economic model.

Current position

Nowadays the sector is experiencing a wave of profound changes linked to the disruption of historical balances. Indeed, the role of the practitioner is more and more diluted while a number of medical information sites, autonomous personal equipment and the dynamics of the well-being vogue, acclaimed by patients, come to complete his action. Self-medication, self-measurement and self-prevention are the major trends of the moment. A flowering of new devices is invading our interiors, from the connected watch tracing an electrocardiogram in a few seconds to the miniaturized insulin pump through the exoskeletons of assistance to the elderly.

The value chain is evolving under the pressure of two powerful levers: on the one hand the acceleration and democratization of technological innovation aimed at the general public and no longer just practitioners, on the other hand the emancipation of an over-informed patient. These two dynamics have their origin in the same phenomenon: an increasingly generalized access to a mass of information just waiting to be exploited. While a few years ago, oncology was still considered avant-garde by sharing databases globally, by lowering borders and organizational limits in the service of greater statistical depth guaranteeing a better knowledge of effective treatment protocols, today this practice is becoming widespread. It goes beyond the sole medical framework, creating bridges with other sectors and other scientific, professional or commercial disciplines.

In such a context, patient pressure relays that of innovators to the academy, forcing it to rethink its role, and therefore that of the other links in the chain. The great COVID pandemic has only accelerated the movement by pushing players in the sector to accelerate their cycles of bringing new vaccines to market, integrating technologies and processes that have not yet been proven according to the usual validation and certification canons, which were jostled on this occasion.

Future outlook

This movement of disintermediation will continue for a long time, like what other sectors experienced before the health sector. Finance and tourism, for example, have already lived the same kind of revolution, with customers now having the habit of bypassing the large traditional intermediaries to get as close as possible to the solutions offered by a dense ecosystem of platforms and online providers. In terms of health, this will result in the specialization, personalization and empowerment of care and prevention. The 3D printing of finely dosed drugs based on the constants of a particular patient, and not on the basis of the averages observed within a target population, constitute a typical example of this change. It is conceivable that such a device be housed as close as possible to the person concerned, either in a pharmacy or, why not, at his home. Telemetry and remotely piloted actuators would eventually allow it to be controlled remotely. The prescription of a lifestyle based on the measurement of constants in real time, for example the recommendation of a personalized diet or physical exercises, already exists and is adopted by a section of the younger generations with a certain enthusiasm ; it will probably become widespread and progress by integrating more and more measurements and catalogs of recommendations, going as far as finely mapping a metabolism second by second, simulating the effects of such and such a menu or sequence of movements. The augmented being will change its habits, its mores will evolve in depth to invent a new way of life, in particular with regard to the differences in treatment with populations having late access to these advances and their anticipated benefits.

All these innovations are attainable with the current knowledge of our civilization. It is therefore a matter of selecting, financing and nurturing the right initiatives, both technologically and humanly. Compliance with short, medium and long-term sustainable development imperatives certainly involves the emergence of disruptions in health, leading all of its actors to get used to changing more quickly than they have done in the past.

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Financial Services

History

Banking and insurance are professions whose raison d’être has changed only slightly over the ages, even if their practice has never ceased to be modernized. Two same observable phenomena for millennia have always constituted the main reasons justifying their existence. Indeed, the history of financial services is first linked to the sedentarization of populations and the concomitant development of agriculture, leading humanity to feel the need to hoard and protect exchangeable values. This observation would even be at the origin of writing, used to count before telling. Then a reverse movement, driven by the proliferation of land and sea communication routes, brought out the need to transport these values, then transform them into coins and paper, before virtualising them in the form of digital currency. Until today, the permanence of the joint need to store and circulate values confirms the usefulness of banks, insurance companies, capital markets and their satellites.

Over time, sedentarization has extended to the broader notion of territorialization, whether agricultural, industrial, residential, administrative, diplomatic, tertiary or military. Communication has developed in all directions in the form of specialized networks, some in the authentication, notarization and securing of transactions, others in the dissemination or control of information, and still others in the sale of products and services, to name but a few examples.

Territories and networks therefore constitute the fabric of the financial planet. From the Florentine Medici deploying their branches across Europe to Japanese cryptocurrency guru Satoshi Nakamoto sparking the creation of miner ecosystems all over the world, both in the Swiss mountains and under the Brazilian sun, there has always been an anchor geography and development geographies linked to the former by increasingly efficient means of communication.

Current position

Nowadays two circumstances make it possible to refine this vision. Territories and networks have to deal with an unprecedented availability of liquidity and with a range of assets whose quality is increasingly weakened by a succession of crises, also of exceptional magnitude. In such a context, potential investors in a situation of excess liquidity are looking for the rare nuggets presenting a reasonable risk/return ratio, in which they could place their investment. Financial companies are adapting to this situation. On the one hand, they measure their presence in each territory, sometimes with delay when the assessment of the country risk is not precise enough to anticipate a conflict, a shortage or a regulatory provision with serious consequences; on the other hand, they streamline and optimize the circulation of values as much as possible by digitizing their products and services, while lowering the cost of operating their networks. Among the many signs of this trend, we can cite, for example, the development of inter-bank APIs (application programming interfaces), allowing small and large players to present their clients and partners with visions of inter-establishments, inter-institutions, inter-geographies and inter-asset classes consolidated accounts, and the proliferation of agile players in virtualized, split or conditioned payment.

At the same time, the return of inflation has positive effects on the balance sheets of banks and insurance companies thanks to their rate transformation functions, while potentially slowing growth and thus threatening the health of their customers. Scripting efforts are going well in the staffs, trying to discern the nature of the next crisis or the deadline for the first clearing, hesitating between the desire to exploit the potential for gain presented by a high level of volatility and the hope of knowing the comfort of a newfound stability.

Future outlook

When market conditions are particularly fluid, it is risky to make plans, unless you stick to the fundamentals of the business and think long term. What is a financial group? How does it create value? In three ways: by borrowing in the short term to lend in the long term, by taking intermediation commissions and by charging for its services. The performance of the first two levers depends closely on market conditions, namely the predictability of rates and the speed of the disintermediation movement affecting all sectors. The third lever is the most readable. The range of services tends to widen and expand under the threat of increased competition stimulated by increasingly powerful fintechs. Since account maintenance or the execution of a payment order is destined to be, if not already the case, commoditized through automation or outsourcing, actors must constantly reinvent offerings in line with fortunately constantly changing needs. The experience of financial institution customers is becoming as changing as that of fashion retail customers, so product cycles are also getting shorter and shorter. In this regard, it should be noted that 2 of the 5 best capitalized unicorns worldwide are fintechs. They are called Stripe and Klarna.

But the extension of the sector’s service offering is not the only lasting phenomenon at work. The unprecedented level of indebtedness of both developed and emerging states is accompanied, as often in history, by a globally increased level of insecurity. Conflicts are unfortunately frequent diversions in this kind of situation, leading financial institutions, like other actors, to adapt to sudden geopolitical shifts, to ally or disassociate, to make decisions on the basis of the most reliable information possible without necessarily having the means to obtain it. We must expect an unwinding of the most unsustainable debts either from the top or from the bottom, creating increasingly widening gaps between winners and losers. The growing likelihood of a new type of crisis, neither sanitary nor geopolitical, but rather cyber, should also lead financial companies to revisit their risk management models.

In reality, the job of a banker or insurer consists above all in getting paid for taking selected risks. It is still necessary to appreciate them, whatever they are, and to evaluate them in terms of the expected returns, by exploiting the possibilities offered by scientific advances, both in the so-called hard sciences and in the humanities. This notably involves careful management of investments in innovation and frequent reassessment of their impact on a sometimes complex and diffuse ecosystem. Under these conditions, the future may prove to be particularly lenient, not only for financiers, but also for their clients and partners.

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Professional Services

History

The tertiary sector is aptly named, arriving in history after primary and secondary. It brings together everything that cannot be attributed to its predecessors, neither exploiting the planet’s resources like a farmer, a miner or an energy company, nor transforming raw materials into finished products, but providing services. It has always been more difficult to define because of its greater heterogeneity and its faster evolution, even its volatility. To find your way around, the scope must be restricted to a group of professions that clearly share the same fundamentals, as defined for example by professional services.

Law firms, multinational consulting firms, accounting firms, communication agencies, all have in common a distinctive skill that makes them able to collaborate with their clients by selling their time. This skill is of two kinds: either complementary or additional. It is additional when it allows the client to increase its workforce for a limited period, it is complementary when it brings non-existent know-how within its organization.

The reason why these professions have developed vigorously, especially since the middle of the XXth century, is that the professional world has become increasingly interconnected, diffuse, complex, globalized, and therefore increasingly difficult to read. It is even harder to master. In simple cases, an entrepreneur of 1950 could concentrate in a single head the skills necessary for the development, management and administration of his or her activity. Nowadays, even in a modest-sized structure, he or she needs to be surrounded by complementary skills to be able to comply with accounting standards aligned with international regulations, respect complex labor law, meet the challenge of making the brand known on the web or conduct competitive intelligence in order to avoid being marginalized by a newcomer from the other side of the world, to cite just a few examples of the many hats to wear or to have partners wear.

Current position

While professional services have experienced enviable growth for decades, they struggle to generate recurring revenue. In a management consulting firm for example, the average backlog is around 3 months. Admittedly, the mandates of statutory auditors make it possible to anticipate a more distant horizon, but this is most often only a part of the activity of their organization and it is subject to fierce competition, pulling the price down. Also the Holy Grail is the long-term offering, based on reusable assets like an industrialist amortizing machines.

The answer is called BPO, for Business Process Outsourcing. Major companies are doing this with varying levels of success, depending in particular on the quality and stability of the skills mobilized, the care taken in preparing for the outsourcing of processes, the symmetry of information when closing contracts, the realism of the service agreement and the reciprocal experience of the two parties in this area. All specialties combined, this market, valued at around 100 billion dollars, should grow at just under 10% per year in the coming years, which is an improvement compared to its decline in the mid-2010s and is close to the average in professional services. As an exception, in certain particularly buoyant areas such as the outsourcing of business analysis, it is even set to grow twice as fast.

This business still needs to mature and convince the undecided that they will come out of the adventure winners. Indeed, BPO players combine process optimization and automation approaches to generate value; pressured by the urgency of their clients, they place the bulk of these efforts most often after the signing of the deal when the situation is much less favorable than before the division of responsibilities. Suffering on top of that from a shortage and a rotation of skills that are difficult to manage, their obsession is to initially do at least as well as before outsourcing, and struggle to do better in the long term. The exercise is also made difficult by the rhythm of change of the processes concerned: while an industrial process transforms a material, an office activity transforms information, which by definition is much more fluid. Operational excellence methods and techniques that work in factories are different from those that work in the open spaces, even though the fundamentals are similar.

Future outlook

Looking ahead ten years from now, let’s bet that professional services players will have succeeded in improving the performance of their BPO activities as well as that of their historical activities thanks to innovation, and in particular to the exploitation of massive data sets. Indeed, one of the obstacles to recurrence is the low volume of analysable data, the missions still too rarely being the subject of a structured post-mortem generating a capitalization of exploitable knowledge, except in a few very specialized boutiques known for their knowledge in the matter. If the Grail of BPO will remain relevant, it will share the limelight with the Grail of big data, machine learning and deep learning applied to improving process performance, a condition for the viability and lasting interest of its market. Outsourced front, middle or back-office operators will have disappeared in favor of robot managers and expert advisors already at work today, or mixed profiles conducting analysis and operations at the same time.

A typical example of anticipation of this trend is the emergence of offerings proposing to give a score to a file before possibly having recourse to a lawyer to instruct it. This score assesses the chances of the case resolving in favor of the initiating party based on decades of court decisions and associated data. This is not science fiction: several offerings of this type already existed on the market, in an operational state, from the mid-2010s.

Professional services players have enormous potential for value creation ahead of them, provided they adapt. The sector is likely to move from an integrated single-provider model to a fragmented logic. Competing value chains will multiply, each mobilizing several specialized entities contributing to the overall performance of business processes ; because the roles of analyst and robot manager will not be able to claim versatility covering the full spectrum of situations, not only at the level of the businesses of the targeted customers but also and above all at the level of the underlying technologies. In addition, to stabilize the composition of a team, one of the key success factors is the grouping around inspiring and recognized experts, by definition rare, and above all specialized. Also, the organization of the ecosystem of professional services should ultimately look like a skilful assembly of loyalty-building agile structures, area of expertise by area of expertise, some grouped under the same banner, others independent.

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Education

History

Between Socrates strolling through the streets of Athens, questioning and enlightening his small group of students, and a XXIst century professor leading a MOOC connected to thousands of participants, there seems to be very little in common. The most notable changes are on the one hand a significant scaling up, on the other hand the empowerment of learners at an advanced level. In reality, these two developments have occurred in the last quarter of a century and have not yet had time to mature. Also, current pedagogies are a mixture of tradition and modernity, continuing to integrate constants that have defined the sector since its very beginnings: the existence of a transmitter of knowledge, of receivers of this knowledge, of an interaction between both parties, of a body of knowledge accessible during and outside of this interaction, of a research effort ensured jointly by the two types of actors, of time reserved for practice, of the sanction of the end of learning through a diploma or a form of recognition giving the right to teach in turn or to practice independently.

These functions are most often exercised in an enclosure called a school, college, high school, university, guild of craftsmen or, more recently, a professional training body. The latter developed at the convergence of two needs, that of supporting the war effort and improving employability in the middle of the XXth century, after the 1930s and during the 1940s of sad memory. This dramatic context gave birth to a lasting movement as soon as peace returned, acknowledging the fact that careers were no longer linear and that know-how was evolving more and more rapidly, leading each professional to regularly update his knowledge and discover new practices. After hesitant beginnings, the traditional establishments got into it themselves; business schools, for example, now propose extensive catalogs of training dedicated to experienced professionals in addition to their so-called initial courses.

Current position

The economic models of higher education establishments are becoming more and more dependent on professional training, with the initial cycles, on the other hand, contributing largely to maintaining the reputation and attractiveness of the place. Establishments welcoming younger audiences, from early childhood to adolescence, are testing new pedagogies based on group self-learning, which are increasingly popular with young parents. These two observations are linked. In both cases, the growing place taken by group creativity in the service of concrete, palpable needs, reflects the ongoing rebalancing between theory and practice. Whether one is newly exposed to knowledge or in the process of updating knowledge already acquired, the effectiveness of its crystallization through repeated use in various contexts is at the heart of the teaching process today.

Also the places evolve themselves to allow this learning by example, in addition to and not in replacement of the necessary acquisitions and understandings of the concepts. They favor sharing, exchanging, experimenting, as well as modularity, scalability and adaptability to variable group sizes depending on the subjects.

This approach presents a certain number of risks that must be carefully managed. Faced with an ever-increasing mass of information, forced to choose between increasingly specialized and increasingly numerous disciplines, the learner can lose his bearings. Moreover, the group in which he or she finds himself or herself is more and more diffuse, with variable geometry, virtual for an increasing part of the time devoted to studies, transforming group self-learning into just self-learning. In this context, one must be strong in order to continue to distinguish what is demonstrated or confirmed by experience from what is not, what is based on reasoning or observation and what is only speculation, what is too general or too specific and what is proportioned to the right measure.

Future outlook

These considerations apply to both private and public structures. In both cases, it is essential to innovate wisely to give pupils and students the means to find their bearings, to allow them to build their system of thought and action on solid and, if possible, relatively durable foundations, while taking into account the extreme volatility of knowledge, real or apparent. The revival of philosophy, whose representatives are increasingly invited into business and into courses that are a priori distant from their art, is a sign of this need to discern. We find more and more of them in professional seminars and conventions, in engineering school programs, in laboratories and in business school juries.

The boundary between learning and work is itself becoming increasingly blurred. The concept of a learning organization is becoming more and more important in business strategies, integrating into career plans periods of taking a step back and post-theorizing on experience. An example of this process is the development of lean and its variants, lean startup, running lean, lean innovation, lean management, thanks to the transformation of empirical observations, in the field, into concepts demonstrated and demonstrable a posteriori.

From this point of view, citizen science has a good part to play, multiplying the possibilities offered by an ecosystem of teacher-researchers by connecting them to a multitude of contributors. The field of open innovation is thus particularly suited to the academic world, at all ages. It is indeed legitimate to encourage children, in the mode of play, to observe, analyze and testify. It is the same with adults, increasing the level of difficulty of the game.

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Digital

History

The digitization of the economy and society has always been accompanied by an evolution in management practices. It has at least shaken them up, and often transformed them. Being an extension of historical delegations of part of its tasks by man, first to animals, then to motorized machines, the revolution consisting in programming a computer is just as disturbing as those which preceded.

The first lever for change is linked to the emergence of a role played by any digital solution, systematically compared to the role that its human equivalent could have. This results in the formation of a nomenclature of goals potentially assigned to it, control, visualization, support, teaching, intermediation, transmission of information, analysis, decision support, organization of information, access to information, process control. For each of them, the human being first constituted a programmer and a beneficiary, before becoming a rival, then becoming a partner within the famous human-machine couple. Relationships between a professional and a computer are not the only ones to be affected. New professions appear, creating new types of interpersonal relationships. Functional experts, information system architects, full stack programmers and other scrum masters and sprint leaders, beyond their jargon, have a rhythm and communication principles specific to their function and considered key success factors. Thus a sprint must produce several demonstrable user-stories in a few weeks from upstream design to downstream testing, respecting a certain number of rituals in the form of meetings with codified names and content. Some event refer to sprint planning, daily stand-up, iteration review, retrospective or backlog refinement as ceremonies.

Current position

The methods and tools for managing digital solutions, both to cover the needs for creating new solutions and to maintain the existing ones, cross the borders of organizations and follow the interfaces of their information systems with the outside world. Software publishers, hardware manufacturers, service companies, information systems directors, all share codes and behaviors that allow them to collaborate in order to make their respective systems converse. They favor schools of thought and practices without considering them as exclusive, for example: open source, specific development or software package; on premise, public, private or hybrid cloud; agile manifesto or V-cycle; open data or private databases. The positions taken by the recognized leaders of the organizations concerned influence their cultures and attract expert professionals who recognize themselves in the choices made and the messages conveyed.

The trend is clearly towards frequent contact between distinct and complementary skills. The spirit of agile approaches is to avoid historical blockages due to communication failures between business experts and developers, between planners and testers or between strategists and operational staff. The fact that individuals belong to a legal entity is certainly important, but once the sharing of value is contractualized between the parties, the project structure becomes preponderant.

Each contributor seeks to maximize the value received, therefore, theoretically at least, the value delivered. In such a context, the protection and enhancement of their respective intellectual properties are considered as key drivers. One of the best ways to manage them is to package modules, APIs, components or entire solutions and assign rights of use or aggregation, with or without a service level guarantee.

Future outlook

These asset-based offerings are expected to replace more traditional service offerings, including when the stakes are low. It is more natural, acceptable and understandable by customers to quantify the price of a use than a number of days of development carried out by a third party. This trend was already observed at the very beginning of the computer age under the name “function points”: the idea was already to quantify the perceived value, that of the function, rather than that of the effort to be provided. It did not last because it was not common at the time to analyze the customer experience in an agile way, by bringing in profiles from different professions working together to develop a solution. Today and even more tomorrow these practices are and will be commonplace. Focus groups, voices of the customer and hackathons have become well-known exercises, supported by proven methods and tools.

Also, service companies will begin to imitate cloud hosts and server rental companies by invoicing their production on a per-use basis, generalizing a model similar to that of software and API publishers, not hesitating to apply to the most elementary problems. To achieve this, they will not only have to master the exercise of evaluating the customer experience, but also anticipate their needs by innovating, and therefore by taking risks. In this perspective, the agility and performance of their innovation project portfolio management will be a determining success factor. Ultimately, this dynamic will contribute to making the digital ecosystem more efficient by avoiding redundancies thanks to an open and precise mapping of the available functions, of which API providers are already giving an overview today.

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Locations

This service is primarily available within the following locations:

Paris, France

History

Paris is what we usually call a world-city, that is to say, it is part of the restricted club of agglomerations which concentrate decision-making centers of global reach, both in the political and entrepreneurial spheres. It has reached this stage of influence thanks to a culture of excellence maintained for centuries, particularly at the level of its university system and its research, its frequent and ambitious urbanization and infrastructure projects – as the Haussmannian plan of the city center testifies – and to its creative and artistic dynamic. For a long time, French was the language of diplomacy, with Paris naturally benefiting from it given its role as both the political and economic capital of the country.

However, the city is facing a number of societal, economic and entrepreneurial challenges at least since the end of the 30 glorious years, this long period after the Second World War during which Paris experienced unprecedented prosperity. Since the two oil shocks of the 70s, the level of indebtedness of the state but also of its capital has grown in significant proportions to reach more than 110% of GDP for one, and the equivalent of more than 5 000 euros per household for the other. Rating agencies remain relatively optimistic given the solidity of the tax system combined with a good depth of savings.

A dynamic of decentralization at work for several decades, taking the example of neighboring Germany whose nerve centers are more distributed than in France, leads Paris and its region to constantly reinvent itself, to remain competitive or to drive its competitive advantage against, for example, Toulouse and its pre-eminence in the aeronautics sector, Lyon and its industrial basin or Grenoble and its technological ecosystem, the list not being exhaustive. By promoting the establishment of a large area promoting cutting-edge innovation to the south of the capital, concentrating the research centers of large companies and leading universities, local decision-makers and influencers are building great hopes, justified by many recent successes in the emergence of hyper-growing structures destined to become future world leaders in their respective fields.

Current position

Today intramural Paris hosts the head offices of more than 70 groups whose turnover exceeds one billion euros. A third of the 500 largest companies on the planet have a head office on the soil of its agglomeration, Île-de-France. The conurbation is unquestionably the first economic pole of the country, while being one of the first world tourist destinations and preserving a dynamic agricultural activity at its doorstep. Of the 27 unicorns in France, 24 are located in Paris or in the suburbs, the other 3 being either in Montpellier and Bordeaux in the south of the country, or in the north in the Lille area. They represent a powerful driver of innovation having exceeded the critical size, whereas there were barely 3 of them in the entire territory only 5 years ago.

The 2024 Olympic Games are set to stimulate the so-called Greater Paris mega-plan of infrastructure, bringing together the efforts of more than 130 municipalities. Even more ambitious than its predecessors, such as the development of the business district of La Défense having concerned only three municipalities, this concerted urban planning project will transform the appearance of an entire region, in a way hitherto rather reserved for boomtowns located on the other side of the planet. The specifications include a number of sustainable development imperatives of which Paris wants to be one of the world champions.

In such a context, the major challenge is to reconcile the level of indebtedness, large-scale projects and decentralization. If the attractiveness of the agglomeration is undeniable, a phenomenon of migration towards the province is still observable, to the benefit of other large cities or even rural areas. The high-speed train network organized in a star pattern around Paris allowing its inhabitants and visitors to reach most of the country’s borders in less than 4 hours, as well as several European capitals, the number of commuters is brought to increase, unless it is offset by the intensity of the development of teleworking and major energy crises.

Future outlook

Let’s project ourselves in a few years. The engine of the hyper-growing ecosystem is fueled by an energy and environmental transition to which any world-city must adapt quickly, otherwise it will lose its attractiveness, competitiveness and influence. The head offices in the La Défense district have partially emptied, some teleworking, others having been remobilized in the provinces. Companies and communities are once again reinventing these emblematic places to host rapidly changing activities, the prototyping of strategic products and services, the piloting of digital twins and the training of their human teammates, or the hosting of advanced virtual reality spaces. Everything must be thought out to simultaneously preserve the imperatives of image, profitability and well-being, while respecting new environmental standards that are increasingly similar to those of passive buildings.

The cohabitation between responsible town planning and land that is still largely cultivated will make Île-de-France a large-scale testing ground (that of Greater Paris) where network organizations will have replaced the concentrations of staff in the monolithic towers of business districts. This dynamic is already at work and is supported by projects promoting the Saclay plateau innovation zone to the south of Paris. Let us bet that the head offices, now distributed over a variety of sites, will have switched to a mode of governance that gives pride of place to innovation and its management. They will integrate it prominently into their palette of sovereign functions.

This will only be possible on the condition that Paris continues to increase its degree of connection to the other major economic centers of the globe, physically and virtually. It is thanks to the credibility and the rapid scaling up of its innovations that its potential for responsible growth can be realized, that investors from all over the world can continue to flow in and contribute to effectively stemming its process of indebtedness, mitigating thus the risk of occurrence of a serious economic and societal crisis.

One of the first steps in this ambitious program consists of meeting demand in a tight job market by accelerating retraining and training for the jobs of tomorrow, which Paris and its region are in dire need of.

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Geneva, Switzerland

History

Geneva is built in a place conducive to exchanges, and therefore to the development of a commercial spirit. The history of its companies testifies to this, making this city relatively sparsely populated compared to the major cities of the planet a world-class business center, demonstrating on a daily basis its ability to hold its own against the giants. This discrepancy between the modesty of the workforce mobilized and the extent of its influence is a constant in its history, stimulated by a tradition of welcoming skills from elsewhere. The mixing of cultures having always been encouraged by a succession of crises at its borders, favoring massive immigration movements century after century, the collective creativity of its inhabitants has only grown over time. This is how, for example, its micromechanical sector developed. Its banking fabric has also been able to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the needs of its large neighbours, with state financing constituting the surest way to sustainably break into this business, as the Rothschilds have demonstrated elsewhere in Europe. Gradually, industry gave way to services, before coming back to the fore today.

These strengths make it possible to meet a number of challenges, such as those posed by Asian competition in all economic segments. From the manufacture of watch calibers in China to the development of private banking centers in Singapore, via the relocation of pharmaceutical factories to India, stimulating dynamics have been at work and have forced the city to reinvent itself. The development of Greater Geneva, encompassing French interests, is an example of the transformation still underway, and one of the responses to the shortage of skills affecting its ecosystem, like other economic centers on the planet.

Current position

The reindustrialization of Geneva requires its alignment with ecological, digital and quality issues. The repatriation of production lines from Asia to its soil must be justified by the adoption of an exemplary circular design, taking into account very long-term life cycles and integrating both a product logic and a logic of associated services. This trend is driven by a high level of confidence in the ability of its ecosystem to propose qualitative offerings benefiting from the latest advances in research and development, advances catalyzed by its digital accelerators. Because Geneva, like the other major cities in the country, benefits from its innovative and entrepreneurial spirit, as evidenced by most of the international rankings that place Switzerland at the forefront of the world in terms of its GDP per capita ratio or its innovation index. Local start-ups are particularly well supported, which, all the statistics show, is a factor in increasing the success rate of business projects. They position themselves both on industrial issues such as the hydrogen sector, or financial and service issues such as the blockchain ecosystem. In Geneva, value-creating innovation can be described as a collective strategic objective.

This vision is aligned with the potential represented by the very close geographical proximity to France, with its language, its territory, its engines of development and its employment areas. However, the culture remains different, so cross-border collaborations respect a set of precise roles preserving, for example, the frameworks defined by the labor laws of each of the two countries, their respective average levels of remuneration, a significant difference in the cost of living or in terms of tax treatment, their distinct geopolitic agendas and monetary policies. Nevertheless, as Switzerland is now removed from the gray lists of tax havens by both the OECD and the European Union, exchanges are set to intensify.

Future outlook

Strolling along Quai du Général Guisan, in the heart of the financial district, one begins to imagine the future of this city of water and mountains, committed to the movement to decarbonize the planet and ideally located to demonstrate all its importance. For example, it is notable that the Ethereum, born in Zug in Switzerland, is one of the cleanest cryptocurrencies, deploying unparalleled efforts to minimize the impact of mining on the environment thanks to an innovation dynamic of its algorithms. In the process, Geneva quickly positioned itself as a pioneer and architect of the crypto-asset planet, effectively exploiting the presence on its soil of leading international institutions to assert its position. It organizes a number of dedicated events, including an annual international conference on cryptocurrencies at the United Nations and the Geneva blockchain congress, and hosts as a resident an activist cryptobillionaire, who is also Grenada’s ambassador to the World Trade Organization. Above all, it maintains and promotes an ecosystem of leading startups specializing in this field, which gives the initiative great credibility, adding to the reputation of professionalism granted to financial institutions in the place for centuries. The idea is to be present on the entire value chain, including fundraising in cryptocurrencies, tokenization, technological services, administration, sale and promotion of offerings, in order to design the next generation of financial services, considered as an essential relay of traditional banking.

To achieve its goals, whether to develop blockchain applications or more generally to continue to innovate successfully in a number of sectors, it will have to mobilize new skills drawn, among other things, from its university melting pot and nurtured by immigration, more than its birth rate. If the process of importing know-how is faithful to its tradition of openness, the phenomenon of aging is on an unprecedented scale. Indeed, with a fertility rate of about 1.5 children per woman of childbearing age on average over the last 30 years, i.e. 0.6 units below the demographic renewal threshold, the canton of Geneva is aging inexorably, excluding the effect of migrations. This is much more than Japan, but significantly less than France. However, its density is already very high, at approximately 2,000 inhabitants per square kilometer, which forces it to extend beyond its geographical limits and to forge partnerships and alliances outside, at an increasing rate.

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Madrid, Spain

History

Compared to the historical cities distributed along the Spanish borders, in particular maritime, Madrid presents at least two originalities: on the one hand it is a recent city, whose creation hardly goes back to the IXth century whereas its rivals already developed under ancient Rome; on the other hand it is located at altitude, surrounded by a circle of mountains making it historically difficult to access, but positioning it today at the center of the peninsula’s land transport network. It has been able to take advantage of this situation to impose itself, over time, from the upheavals and storms of history, as a place that unifies energies. In the XVIth century, from its first exercise of the role of economic and social capital of a nation whose borders were to take several centuries to freeze, it was able to arbitrate, organize, administer and radiate well beyond the limits of the peninsula. This ability to trade, in every sense of the term, is particularly well rendered in the work of Jerónimo de Uztáriz, an eminent economist of Navarre origin who settled in Madrid at the beginning of the XVIIIth century. In his Theory and Practice of Commerce and the Navy, he laid the foundations of the principle of equilibrium of the commercial balance, which is still authoritative today. He demonstrated his competence in the field in a variety of state functions for a quarter of a century, leaving the capital only to audit factories or negotiate international trade agreements.

His spirit blows on his successors, including Cabarrus, founder of a pioneering financial institution in the financing of government bonds, considered the ancestor of the central bank. Through the Napoleonic wars and many other turbulent and dramatic episodes, this culture infused the heads of Madrid entrepreneurs and administrators until it provided the city with its first skyscrapers in the first quarter of the twentieth century, then, later, to consolidate on a planetary scale the entrepreneurial ecosystem that we know today.

Current position

The economic activity of Madrid and its region generates 20% of the country’s GDP, with its average GDP per capita ranking first nationally. Global champions such as Telefónica in telecommunications, Amadeus in BtoB services , Ferrovial in transport infrastructure, Repsol in energy or International Airlines Group in air transport have their headquarters there. They serve customers on all continents, with South America being a historic and particularly important market. These numerous bridges thrown over the Atlantic encourage these players to propose products and services that can be declined in both geographies, and therefore designed as such very early in the design cycle. This South American tropism helps to explain their ability to deploy global strategies with agility, as well as their marked international culture, faithful in this to their history.

The major global consulting firms are located in the capital and the Madrid offices of major brands specializing in digital transformation, such as Accenture or IBM, are among the most efficient on the scale of their respective global networks, reflecting the dynamism of a local innovation momentum. Google has chosen to invest in a Google for Startups Campus there, even though there are only 7 in the world, including 3 in Europe – the other 2 being in London and Warsaw. These private initiatives are encouraged and relayed by umbrella organizations such as AOTEC, the national association of telecommunications and internet service operators. The city is also classified by the observatory of sustainable development at the first national rank with Vitoria-Gasteiz, in the Basque Country, in terms of environmental preservation. In particular, it has greatly extended its pedestrian area by sanctuarizing more than 450 hectares in the center.

Future outlook

Of all the constants of Madrid, the international and global vocation of its large companies is the most structuring. Let’s bet that this tropism will be the driver of its future development, against a backdrop of the deployment of new means of land transport to its borders and the acceleration of its entrepreneurial expansion programs in Europe and Asia. In the wake of the TGV line linking Madrid to Barcelona which was recently put into service and which was immediately and massively successful, other lines are planned, competition between several operators, Spanish, French and Italian, contributing to stimulate the densification of the network. The backing of the ecosystem of young innovative companies to major global players should enable them to increasingly go beyond the local market and to make a lasting breakthrough internationally. For example, Capchase is a Madrid-based fintech company that offers to remunerate the loans it grants as a percentage of its customers’ future sales; created in 2020, it has already raised several hundred million euros and very early on made the choice of a resolutely Anglo-Saxon culture by setting up a strategic office in New York. In a completely different field, audiovisual production, the worldwide success of series such as the very Madrid-based Casa del Papel shows the professionalism of its entertainment industry and confirms its full potential for the future. The convergence between, on the one hand, artistic and in particular literary dynamics of screenwriting, and on the other hand, a marked entrepreneurial culture, pushes the ecosystem to invent and industrialize its inventions. The existence of a three-year course dedicated to science fiction at the Escuela de Escritores, open to welcoming students from all walks of life, is one sign among others of the development of the city’s creative capacities. and its influence.

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Brussels, Belgium

History

Very early in its history, Brussels was administered by large bourgeois families by delegation from the Dukes of Brabant. Then they composed with the craftsmen and their guilds to create a lasting balance, crossing the wars and various occupations by the Spaniards, the Austrians, the Dutch or the French. This framework is at the origin of the entrepreneurial culture of the city and its region, of its prosperity and its influence even under foreign domination. In the darkest periods, such as the Calvary experienced by the inhabitants of Brussels in the second half of the XVIth century under the yoke of southern invaders, these structures persisted and preparer to organize the rebound at the first thinning. This pattern recurred several times, such as after the wars waged by France in Europe in the XVIIth century, after Napoleon’s defeat at the beginning of the XIXth century, or after each of the two world wars. The speed of reconstruction is each time astounding, even if the resulting unbridled urbanism is today the object of numerous criticisms, pushing the inhabitants of Brussels to live in distant suburbs and to make long journeys to go to work.

The capital of Belgium is therefore resilient. Its inhabitants trust its corporations as much if not more than its government, which made them say with a smile during the 3 periods of institutional crisis that the country experienced in 2007, 2010 and 2018, resulting in a lack of power from a few months to almost two years, that they were doing just fine without a prime minister. This sense of humor and this ability to put threats into perspective in order to transform them into opportunities is one of the strengths of the people of Brussels, particularly the city’s economic players.

Current position

Strong with the presence of the headquarters of the European Commission and NATO on its soil and the federation of 19 municipalities within its region, but temporarily weakened by the health crisis, the rise in inflation and a balance of migration of negative corporate head offices, Brussels-Capital is once again seeking to rebound. Among the 50 most successful companies whose headquarters it hosts, only 5 are Belgian, the others being French, German, Swedish, American, Spanish, Indian, British, Dutch, Swiss, Chinese or Austrian. Suffered or desired, this situation reflects the relevance of an international and particularly European strategy. Ideally located geographically, very well connected to the capitals of neighboring countries, with a reservoir of skills maintained by a network of leading universities, the region plays the card of welcoming foreign capital.

It also engages in a reorganization under the name ” shifting economy ”, a regional strategic plan for economic transition. Its key qualifiers are decarbonizing, circular, societal, participative and digital. They preside over future budgetary orientations and constitute a genuine portfolio management program for large-scale, trans-organizational and trans-sector innovation projects. The areas of activity targeted as a priority are agri-food, energy and raw materials, construction, entertainment, transport and health. They are considered complementary and their combined performance potentially contributes to a growth multiplier effect. Focusing on very specific sectors and communication centered on their specific issues give this ambitious plan a perspective of targeted rebound, faithful to the culture of the place. Organizations dedicated to stimulating the local economy relay this strategy, such as hub.brussels, whose vocations are to stimulate and support an entrepreneurial dynamic, the internationalization of the economy and the creation of the conditions for attractiveness of foreign capital on the territory.

Future outlook

The three Belgian stars claiming the rank of unicorn are called Collibra, Odoo and Deliverect. The first is an offshoot of a Brussels university, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the second is based in Louvain la Neuve, a site also known for its academic excellence and barely 30 kilometers from the center of the capital, and the third has its headquarters further north and west, in the city of Ghent. Collibra and Odoo prefigure the future of Brussels and its region, bringing together characteristics in line with the strategic axes mentioned above. Collibra generates its turnover mainly abroad, has attracted prestigious investors such as Alphabet and maintains its competitive lead in data governance, a particularly buoyant digital segment. Odoo also operates in digital and has embraced an open-source strategy to build a modular ERP, positioning itself as a new entrant creating a break in a universe dominated by established giants such as SAP and Oracle.

The process of spin-off of potentially hyper-growth activities by large companies must be encouraged to give little brothers and sisters to these pioneers. Investment targeting should be focused on the right opportunities, knowing that the definition of a good opportunity sometimes varies from day to day. Also the fine management of the portfolio of innovation projects on an intra-company and inter-company perimeter is a key condition for the success of the ” shifting economy “, and itself constitutes a field of innovation: how to streamline the exchange of data between projects, update expectations of value creation in an agile manner, flexibly assess the alignment of new initiatives with a concerted strategy, pivot at the right time and create synergies? Answering these questions constitutes a challenge that the ecosystem itself can take up by proposing breakthrough innovations, which can in turn become, why not, an opportunity to develop future hyper-growth businesses.

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London, England

History

The history of a capital having reigned over an empire where the sun never set is so dense that it can reasonably be approached only by favoring a precise angle of analysis. Innovation is an interesting thread insofar as it has significantly contributed to the influence of London in the past, and continues to do so today. It has been carried by a succession of creative and curious people, of which Sir Francis Bacon is one of the most famous. He is particularly emblematic because he is considered to be one of the fathers of empiricism, that branch of epistemology so close to the pragmatic spirit attributed to Londoners. Born on the Strand in the middle of the XVIth century, he contributed to the progress of various disciplines, always applying his method based on the critical observation of phenomena, including, for example, cryptography and water desalination processes. John Loke will follow in his footsteps a century later by extrapolating the empirical approach to feed liberal theories. He was not born in the capital, but rages there as a member of the household of the Earl of Shaftesbury and a member of the royal society. He draws inspiration from the intellectual effervescence of his adopted city for philosophical essays but also for innovative ideas in the medical or economic field. Three decades later, Sir Isaac Newton became master of the Royal Mint on Tower Hill, a very secular position in view of his other achievements. Edmond Halley was only a few years younger and not only calculated the periodicity of the comet that bears his name, but also successfully experimented with ancestor devices of the bathyscaphe, among other contributions to science, techniques and to manners. Will follow among other discoverers Michael Faraday, Charles Babbage and his vision of the future computer, Thomas Sutton and his color photography, and closer to us Alan Turing, then Timothy Berners-Lee and his contribution to the idea of a certain Web, all Londoners.

The closer we get to our time, the less individuals are able to innovate on their own and the more specialized they are. It is significant to note that in the enumeration above, Timothy Berners-Lee is not presented as the sole inventor of the World Wide Web but as one of its designers, a contributor working as a team; it is also known for a breakthrough in one area and not for a multitude of innovations in a multitude of sectors. He is not the only one in this case: contemporary innovation is a matter of assumed collaboration.

Current position

London is today a locomotive of European technological innovation, giving credit to the discoverers mentioned above, in particular those, many, who made breakthroughs in the theory of information processing. With approximately 25 billion dollars raised in 2021, far ahead of Berlin and its 11 billion, it has the advantage of bringing together in one place a financial center and an educational system of planetary scales. It is certainly still far from the precursor San Francisco, which continues to reap its pioneering bonus by announcing more than 100 billion dollars raised over the same period, but it is refining its sectoral positioning by densifying its ecosystem of fintechs. Unsurprisingly given the City’s place in the world of financial services, London’s innovators excel in this area.

At the same time, the cultural and creative life is intense and employs one out of 6 professionals in the capital. Creativity and innovation go well together and the city’s strategic plan for the growth of the sector, entitled culture strategy for London, gives pride of place to disruptive initiatives. Among other objectives, it has to contribute to strengthening the attractiveness of the place and attracting the talents required by the entrepreneurial ecosystem distributed in areas as diverse as the East London olympic park, Carnary Wharf, Paddington , Kings Cross or the district of Battersea power station. A lot of work is being done to have an infrastructure promoting the development of innovative companies, in particular by developing the East London tech city, which, on the basis of classified ads on LinkedIn, today generates a volume of recruitment equivalent to that of the City.

On the other hand, the energy crisis and its consequences pose a real threat to growth. As the sector has been liberalized and public finances are unable to cushion the shock other than tactically and over a short period, inflation is breaking records.

Future outlook

Assuming that the economic situation will eventually improve at least in the medium term, against a background of normalization of the geopolitical agenda, the major challenge for London is to strengthen its position as a world champion by confirming that it is not only a economic and cultural lung, but also a decision-making center bringing together more and more representations of international institutions and leading globalized companies. The separation from the European governance bodies indeed raises a question of alignment or misalignment with the interests of its large multicultural neighbor, vis-à-vis the major issues such as the place reserved for Chinese investors in the Western infrastructures, aid to emerging countries or the evolution of quality and accounting standards, to name just three in a long list. Sign of the times, for the first time in its history, the cumulative capitalization of the values of the London stock exchange is symbolically exceeded by that of Paris.

In particular, it is crucial to maintain growth in the number of head offices of global companies in London or Greater London, despite the thickening of the border with the continent. Its demonstrated excellence and its volume of activity well above the critical size in terms of innovation constitute a major asset to argue in this direction. By extrapolating this trend, the metropolis would forge an identity as a nerve center for the deployment and management of portfolios of innovation projects on a planetary scale. By insisting on its successes and its experience and by highlighting a differentiating know-how in terms of scaling up disruptive ideas, it would consolidate its ambitious and unifying hub model. Concretely, it would dedicate more and more resources and would concentrate more and more efforts to promote its range of services for the industrialization of innovation, capable of attracting initiators of initiatives struggling to cross their glass ceiling internationally.

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Program Benefits

Testimonials

Servier (Healthcare)

“As leader of the Contract Development & Manufacturing Outsourcing (CDMO) activity of the Servier group, present on 4 continents and equipped with a network of 16 factories deployed in 11 countries, my objective was to absorb part of the costs of the industrial asset thanks to the management of a portfolio of projects both on the active principle and on the pharmaceutical form. This business unit was in competition with other laboratories, but also “pure player” CDMOs.

While developing and producing pragmatically on behalf of third parties when the load of the factory network allows it, and protecting our intellectual property, our know-how and a great flexibility of industrial configuration, a new approach has enabled us to win competitive markets. We called on Mr. Auriach to propose a suitable method and process from the promotion and sale phases of the projects to delivery, including the modeling of value creation. Ultimately, the gain recorded is several tens of millions of euros per year, with a very controlled level of investment, the return on investment being around 5 to 1. Very professional, Mr. Auriach capitalizes on a rich and varied professional experience and transmits the best of it. Agile and responsive, he was able to meet our expectations and support us in this important project.”

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Mentat conseil (Professional services)

“I chair a consulting and integration company specializing in contact centers. These systems manage interactions between customers and companies, regardless of the channel, chat, email, technical interfaces or social networks. We called on Mr. Auriach to determine and set-up a working method and an operational process, on the one hand to define and validate our 5-year innovation strategy, on the other hand to implement it and to include an ambitious communication plan focused on our innovation agenda. This has allowed us to pivot our positioning by focusing on the recognition brought to us by the software publisher Genesys, world leader in the sector, and the perception of our offering by our ecosystem of customers, prospects, partners, collaborators and job candidates. We already had the technical skills, we lacked the process of managing our innovation projects, prioritizing our investments and focusing on the effective execution of our disruptive strategies.”

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Crédit Agricole (Financial services)

“As Innovation Director of Edokial, a desktop publishing and document dematerialization services company belonging to the Crédit Agricole group, I have set myself the strategic objective of greater control of the value created by our projects. We called on Mr. Auriach to select, personalize and infuse a method and tools for managing innovation projects with our employees. By exploiting this contribution, we introduced with our teams an innovative mail virtualization and routing chain for one of the group’s regional banks, resulting in a drop in the volume of paper exchanges by half, i.e. from 746,000 to 370,000 ply per year. We have also helped to optimize the operation of archive warehouses accumulated over several decades of another subsidiary, Locam, which specializes in equipment financing. These two initiatives are part of a portfolio of innovation projects constantly prioritized according to their challenges, their alignment with the innovation strategy and the dynamics of the ecosystem in which the group operates. The list of other initiatives includes, for example, the construction of a blockchain dedicated to collaboration between banks and notaries, the modernization of the customer base of a subsidiary or the capitalization of the experience acquired on agile projects. Very professional, pedagogical and efficient, Mr. Auriach allowed us to complete our know-how by transmitting an operational methodology and a new posture in the face of innovation and support for our customers.”

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Groupe IMT (Education)

“As newly appointed Executive President of the IMT Group, I was faced with the identification and launch of a portfolio of innovative projects, breaking with the previous culture of continuity, in order to create the conditions for a growth relay, able to face new competition. I engaged Mr. Auriach to disseminate a consistent innovation method and process across the organization, training our extended leadership team closely. He has demonstrated a very high level of competence, calling on a diversified approach borrowing from strategy as well as organization, process optimization and participatory communication. The first result was an adjustment of our business model. Then we worked on the potential of our assets, structured around four main levers: invest, innovate, sell and combine. This allowed us on the one hand to qualify our starting point, our reality, where we were; on the other hand, to realize this untapped potential by targeting the right projects in our dense and demanding ecosystem of pharmaceutical laboratories.”

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Halieuticom (Digital sector)

“As CEO of Halieuticom, France’s number one mobile application publisher in the recreational fishing sector, I called on Mr. Auriach to take on a new step. Thanks to a powerful methodological contribution, we have been able to win calls for tenders that were previously inaccessible to us, with European public institutions, and in particular the European Commission itself. We now have a management process for our innovation projects focused on efficiency, arbitration of potential and compliance with our strategy. We are deployed in more than 100 countries and serve a community of 200,000 fishermen both at sea and in rivers, while helping to preserve aquatic fauna on European coasts thanks to our partnerships with authorities in this area.”

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More detailed achievements, references and testimonials are confidentially available to clients upon request.

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