GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

If you missed Part 1 of 2, you can find it here.

Philippe Silberzahn, a consultant, keynote speaker, and associate professor at EM Lyon Business School, works with large companies confronted to disruptions in their markets: it was natural that he summarizes the mechanisms of disruption,  in his book A Managers’Guide to Disruptive Innovation capitalizing on the various books of Clayton Christensen. Philippe doesn’t leave us unarmed, and suggests practical actions to transform, and reinvent your business model in face of disruptive competition.

I read his book with great interest, and Philippe kindly accepted to anwer the questions I raised. This post continues the conversation started here (questions 1 to 5).

6) Management systems adaptation for disruption

Nicolas: You demonstrate that “Management systems are blind to a creativity breakdown as they focus on current performance. As disruptive innovation takes place outside of the company’s value network, management systems cannot detect them”, and a few pages further on, “To be able to innovate disruptive, it is necessary to assure that the resource allocation process takes into account the non consumers”. Have you examples of companies who have managed to adapt their management system and resource allocation according to develop disruptive innovation? Is there a company that you would quote as exemplary in  ‘creating a strategic capacity for disruptive innovation’, ticking all the boxes that are incentives for innovation, and “offsetting incentives that currently prevent people from innovation”: organization, process, culture, HR, and management systems?

Philippe: Unfortunately I am more in touch with the ones that struggle than with the ones that succeed. I think few do, and that’s a question today when we consider the future of large organizations. There is a view – call it the Silicon Valley view – according to which we should give up such organizations and that inevitably, they will be displaced by new entrants, in a kind of Schumpeterian creative disruption. Christensen’s theory seems to suggest indeed that incumbents will fail to respond adequately to disruptive change. I would not be so pessimistic. There is no reason why it should not be possible to respond. I think it only works when the top leadership put all their weigh on the disruptive unit at some crucial point.

7) Haste is one thing, speed another: Fail fast or Learn Fast?

Nicolas: “An incumbent can protect a disruptive project in a separate entity that will establish a completely new business model including a specific set of RPV”. “Scaling this value network will take time, it is complex and tedious, you better look for profit rather than sales”. “In an uncertain environment, the trial and approach, fail fast, fail early, will work poorly, risking giving up too early, and for the wrong reasons”. I was never convinced by the fail fast mantra, but more by the learn fast objective: confronting quickly one’s value proposition to the user target, learning from his feedback, and iterating in short cycles, until the product/market fit is proved, and the comprehensive business model is ready to scale. It is in short cycles, but it can actually take some time, and doesn’t translate in giving up quickly… So my advice would be to apply Business Model Canvas and Lean Startup to the corporate startup that will work on the disruptive project. What is your opinion?

Philippe: Different methods can be applied and they can provide value. The problem with the learning paradigm such as LS is: what do you learn? How do you interpret what you see? If Nespresso had used LS, they would probably have concluded quite quickly that the project was hopeless. In uncertain context, research has shown that we have causal ambiguity: you see stuff, you see customers’ reactions but you cannot easily explain it. Learning models assumes organizations respond to experience by repeating behaviors that have been found to be successful in the past, and avoiding those which have not. This has proven quite robust in situations where preferences are clear, alternative courses of action are specified in advance, and outcomes are unambiguous, but that is not the case in innovative contexts by definition: everything is new.

To this learning paradigm I oppose the shaping paradigm. Entrepreneurs, such as the ones using the practice of effectuation, don’t learn, they create new markets. It’s an entirely different posture.

Nicolas: I’m not convinced by the opposition between lerning, and shaping: you shape a new market by actually learning what the users do out of your solution. The faster you lern, the better you shape. Sometimes you are surprised by user reactions, and it creates new opportunities as you explain in the effectuation path: take benefit of surprises!

8) An approach yet to be defined for Corporate Scale-up?

Nicolas: Assuming the former phase of proving the business model is completed, the next stage would be to scale-up, bring the RPV to a broader dimension. And this time look for sales multiplication. Aside from the Scaling Lean d’Ash Maurya which is limited to startups, there doesn’t seem to be many methodologies to scale-up a corporate startup: what is your view on this? Is this a topic of interest for you?

Philippe: I mainly focus on the entrepreneurial period, i.e. getting projects from inception to the scale up phase so I don’t have much to say on this, except that scale up is when being part of an existing organization should provide a big advantage, providing potential conflicts with the legacy business are solved.

9) Modular design

Nicolas: In a recent post, you value the organization of Amazon, and the way it combines small teams (2 pizze team) with API-based design (in other words modular design) to remain creative, and entrepreneurial, when you’re growing at fast pace. In the Rapid Innovation platform, modular design is one of the 4 components to achieve a rapidly innovating organization: autonomy (separate unit), creative tension, strategic alignment, and modular design. Aren’t APIs a perfect way to sustain the relationship between the separate corporate startup, and the core company, “finding the balance between complete autonomy and lack of autonomy”? Have you already noticed disruptive innovations which are based on modular design with APIs?

Philippe: That’s key and Bezos’ approach is really interesting. But it is not modular. The word to describe it is near-decomposable. It means that you can decompose the organization into small units that are autonomous, but not completely. While they are autonomous, they are still part of a whole, they define the whole. The strength lies in this subtle mix of autonomy and collective identity.

Nicolas: Modules with little dependance but precise interface is precisely what I call Modular Design. By designing building block (APIs) that let other assemble them, Modular Design lets you create new business almost instantaneously. Moreover Modular design empowers the organization by letting others create value on top of them: with its creative components, Modular Design sustains organic innovation.

10) Clayton Christensen makes a mark with recent debates

Nicolas: Your book explains how it takes “Clayton Christensen work as a springboard to explore the topic of disruptive innovation”. You mention, and comment at the end on recent debates related to Christensen theory. Could you come back on your opinion on the Jill Lepore’s article? Do you agree with this answer ‘Necessary disruptions, state of paralysis?’ from Michael Graber in InnovationExcellence ?

Philippe: Well yes, disruption is a way to break an industry’s paralysis, but that is not Christensen’s argument. I think Lepore did not really understand Christensen’s theory. She writes about disruptive technology whereas Christensen talks about disruptive business models, and she accuses him of mistaking disruptions for progress. In fact nowhere do we find in Christensen’s work the idea that a disruption is good or necessary. It is something that happens, and Christensen studies the reaction of the incumbent to something that happens. Nothing more, nothing less. Is everything about disruptive change? No. Is disruption necessary? It’s another question. Is it a good thing? Again, it’s another question. Disruption is a phenomenon, one among others, that is worth studying. In short, I think Leopore’s article did not bring much to the table.

If you missed Part 1 of 2, you can find it here.

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GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Philippe Silberzahn, a consultant, keynote speaker, and associate professor at EM Lyon Business School, works with large companies confronted to disruptions in their markets: it was natural that he summarizes the mechanisms of disruption,  in his book A Managers’Guide to Disruptive Innovation capitalizing on the various books of Clayton Christensen. Philippe doesn’t leave us unarmed, and suggests practical actions to transform, and reinvent your business model in face of disruptive competition.

I read his book with great interest, and Philippe kindly accepted to anwer the questions I raised.

1) Innovation at record speed, really?

Nicolas: As you write in your book, the mechanism of Schumpeter creative destruction is not new, but “today the perception that dominates is of accelerated change, and of rapid and significant disruptions”. Concurrently, I found your post ‘Disruptive innovation: a false impression of speed’ very accurate. On the paradox of ‘accelerated technology waves’ versus’ the fact that disruptive innovation takes time’, would you elaborate on this misleading feeling of acceleration?

Philippe: There is an ongoing debate on whether our modern society changes more rapidly than previous ones did. Was change bigger for our parents or grand-parents? I would say that for a generation born in, say, 1850, change must have been enormous. One factor that gives us an impression of rapid change is the fact that change is non linear. It has long been observed that the diffusion of new technologies is usually very slow at first, sometime for many years, and then suddenly, the diffusion accelerates. For instante AI started in the late fifties but didn’t have much of an impact until the early 2000. Similarly, the first ‘car’ was invented in 1765, but it was not until 1908 and the Fort T that it became a mass market. So my point is that we must learn to deal with non-linear change. Slow at first, and very fast later on.

2) Don’t be prisoner of your business model: manage ambidexterity

Nicolas: In your book, Kodak’s failure toward digital photography new business model shows how a company can become prisoner from its traditional business model. “Preventing disruption leads to being able to manage 2 business models concomitantly”. Is it in the same course of thoughts as the organizational ambidexterity concept?

Philippe: It’s very close, but it not the same thing, and the difference matters I think. Ambidexterity refers to learning. You have exploitative learning – improving what you already do, and explorative learning – learning to do new things or to do things differently. Business models refer to the very identity of the organization, not just learning. In Kodak’s case for instance, there is a conflict between Kodak as a chemist and Kodak as a software company. In both cases Kodak was learning a lot, indeed it was a pioneer in digital photography but it did not resolve the conflict until too late.

3) A network to value your innovation in the digital era

Nicolas: You stress that “Disruption is the combination of new knowledge, business model, and value network. The latter corresponds to uncovering a network of stakeholders -partners, suppliers, influencers,…- allowing the innovator to share value. The innovator attracts a growing variety of partners to create that value network, and finds out how to motivate them to promote the innovation”. So proved it to be true for digital photography, inkjet printer, Sony radio transistors or Nespresso, who all called for original value networks. In the era of digital, would you say that digital helps into the creation of a tailored and powerful value network?

Philippe: In some ways digital makes it easy to connect and create new relations, but sometimes it may lead entrepreneurs to believe that they don’t need to go in the field. Nothing could be further from the truth. Paul Graham grasped this subtle truth when he said “do things that don’t scale” ie take the time to create your network by hand, before scaling, otherwise you build on sand.

4) Disruptive innovation focuses on new performance criteria

Nicolas: As showed in the value curve of Blue Ocean strategy, and the adoption of the new tech by non-consumers, “it is not the tech itself that constitutes the disruption, but the fact that it brings forth / henceforth a new business model, and new performance criteria”. Considering artificial intelligence technology, would you identify new performance criteria emerging, and that it unleashes new business model?

Philippe: A new tech does not per se unleash a new business model. Often new technologies are trapped in old models at first, and the real breakthrough comes when an innovator unlock the potential of the new tech with a good model. It’s always been like that, and it should be the same for AI.

5) Retaliating to disruption by mimicking the disruptor

Nicolas: “The attractiveness of an opportunity is determined by the company RPV (Resources Processes, and Values) framework, its business structure. The first advantage of a startup is that it is more easily motivated by opportunities linked to disruptions than larger companies: they are motivated to enter small markets, and they’re not constrained by history. Incumbent can retaliate with a new RPV framework in a separate unit, akin an internal startup (a low cost offer in the case of low cost disruption)”. The latter reminds me of the Sosh initiative by Orange, to anticipate Free low-cost mobile offering. How can an long-established company provide this separate unit with a clean slate, free of the historical culture? Is intrapreneurship program a convincing way to give birth to these autonomous creative units?

Philippe: Doing that for an established player is often the only way to take a disruption seriously. Otherwise the disruptive business is too small to assert its existence in the face of the legacy business. At the same time being separated as its issues, and the key will be the quality of the relations that are created between the mother ship and the unit. So you need a combination of entrepreneurial talent to give a chance to the unit, and serious political talent to lobby for the unit at the HQ level. My experience is that often, intrapreneurs adopt a defiant “us versus them” attitude and alienate almost everybody at HQ, whose goodwill they need nonetheless. At the same time, one can understand the frustration of these intrapreneurs who waste a huge time and energy getting anything done. It’s not easy but strong political skills and an intimate knowledge of HQ help a lot.

Nicolas: Take a look at Orange Intrapreneurs Studio, which seems miles away from the “us versus them’ mindset, and definitely hits the “together” state of mind!

We will be bringing you part two of this post very soon, so stay tuned!

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GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Dr. Daniel Witthaut is Head of Corporate Innovation Strategy at Evonik Industries AG, a global leader in specialty chemicals. He completed a brilliant presentation at R&D Innovation Strategies & Process Excellence Summit last November in Berlin. He kindly accepted to answer a few questions about some of the innovation approaches he’s developing at Evonik. 

1) Hi Daniel, would you explain what is the main businesses of Evonik, and why innovation is key in the development of your company?

Evonik is one of the world´s leading specialty chemical companies. Evonik supports very different market with e.g. with additives for the oil and coatings industry, with materials to raise performances and with products for nutrition and care businesses. The focus on more specialty businesses, customer-orientated innovative processes, and a trustful and performance-oriented corporate culture form the heart of Evonik’s corporate strategy.

We believe that they are the lever for profitable growth and a sustained increase in the value of the company. Last year more than 36,000 employees generated sales of 14.4. Bil. Euro and an adjusted EBITDA of about 2.4 Bil. Euro.
Innovation is an important margin and growth driver, and will continue to play a key role in our growth strategy. New products, solutions and business models will make a significant contribution to the growth and profitability of Evonik.

2) How does corporate innovation team support the innovation endeavor?

Corporate Innovation is the spearhead of strategic innovation at Evonik, and takes on the role of guiding and setting the direction for innovation at Evonik. We maintain a close partnership with our segments to generate new businesses and to position Evonik as one of the world’s most innovative companies. Corporate Innovation is a highly specialized, interdisciplinary team with approx. 330 employees. Researchers, experts, managers, breakthrough minds, talented individuals and visionaries work here together in a team to foster the image of Evonik as an innovative company.

Focal points of the Corporate Innovation unit are Creavis, Innovation Networks & Innovation Marketing, Strategy & Innovation Excellence, and Venture Capital.

• Creavis is the strategic innovation unit of Evonik, and focuses on medium to long-term innovation projects that support Evonik’s growth and sustainability strategies and open up new business options;
• A company’s long-term success is increasingly dependent on building internal and external networks, and enhancing these in a sustainable manner. The expertise relevant to the company must also be identified, and made available to the Group. Innovation Networks is instrumental in this process;

• Strategy & Innovation Excellence proposes innovation targets and the innovation portfolio, identifies innovation potential and, from this, develops the innovation strategy and focal topics for the Group.  E.g. in 2016 we took an important step to pave the way for the future: We restructured our innovation portfolio and now focus on six innovation growth fields with above-average growth rates, and a perfect fit within the company’s growth strategy. The aim is to generate more than € 1 billion in additional sales in these areas by 2025. The six growth fields focus on highly attractive markets which Evonik can optimally serve with new products and solutions based on its core competencies. The innovation growth fields are sustainable nutrition, healthcare solutions, advanced food ingredients, membranes, cosmetic solutions, and additive manufacturing.

• Evonik Venture Capital GmbH, the venture capital group of Evonik Industries AG invests in highly promising start-ups with break-through technologies and leading venture capital funds.

3) You’ve framed a specific business case approach for innovation, sorting out growth innovations from defensive innovations. Could explain how this innovation portfolio works?

We have given us Innovation specific growth targets and the Innovation Business Case is our tool of choice to monitor our progress towards target achievement. It is often neglected that a great contribution of Innovation is the defense of the competitive position that allows us to keep our market share and grow with the market. This type of Innovation is called “Defend” type Innovation at Evonik. Without this type of Innovation the business would erode over time and loose its market share. This erosion rate over time needs to be estimated – e.g. based on product life cycles and industry cost curves – in order to ensure that sufficient “Defend” type projects are in the pipeline to compensate for the expected erosion.

In addition to this defensive function, Innovation serves as a lever for additional growth on top of the respective market growth. There we differentiate between “Extend” type of Innovation which are Innovation Projects that are adjacent to our current market and technologies, and “Create” type Innovation which are Innovations that will result in new products for new markets. From a strategic perspective both –“Extend” and “Create” will support additional growth but these type of Innovation have a different risk profile and need to be managed and evaluated differently.

Every project is earmarked with the respective category. This has two effects:

• First of all we can steer the resources in order that our growth targets are reached, and avoid that we show e.g. high numbers of new product sales which at the end are mainly substitutes for existing products, and serve to defend the current business but to not contribute to our on top of market growth targets;
• Secondly it also helps to steer Innovation in accordance to the respective strategic role, therefore a growth business is expected to allocate resource in the strategic buckets of “Create” and “Extend” type of Innovation (while ensuring sufficient resources are applied at “Defend” to counter the erosion rate) whereas financing business should focus their resources mainly on “Defend” type of Innovation. Applying this concept we can ensure that the resources for Innovation are sufficient and applied in accordance to the strategic role of the business.

4) Intrapreneurship is live at Evonik: what are the key steps of the program, and what kind of budget / support do intrapreneurs receive? Have you an example of intrapreneurial project under development? What is the profile of the winner of the contest?

Corporate entrepreneurship is an important milestone in our culture of open innovation. We are intentionally promoting a culture where employees have the courage to try something, new and are not afraid to make mistakes. This year was the second time that the award was presented, and it is now a permanent feature of Evonik’s innovation strategy. It promotes the implementation of unconventional ideas, and strengthens the innovation culture as well as collaboration across departmental and country boundaries.

The six teams that presented their ideas during the final had been chosen during the course of the idea competition, the so called Ideation Jam. In total, 65 ideas had been submitted on the company’s strategic relevant topics of nutrition, living, and mobility of the future. 2,000 members followed the Jam in an internal community. After four months of brainstorming, the participants were sent by Corporate Innovation to boot camp, an intensive three-day-long workshop where they received specialist training from experts and developed business models and created business plans. Each idea team benefited from the experienced coaches from the Group who accompanied the process the entire time and motivated the teams and showed them the right path.

Dr. Sarah Hintermayer, who studied bioprocess engineering at the TU Munich and works at Evonik Technology & Infrastructure, won the 2017 Evonik Entrepreneurship Award for her new business idea called “WallCraft”. The idea behind “WallCraft” is about an additive that extends the longevity of concrete by combining hydrophobing agents and self-healing. She now has the opportunity to spend one year as an entrepreneur within the company developing her business idea and bringing it into a business model. For this she will receive a budget of €200,000 from Evonik.

5) What would you like to improve in the intrapreneurship program?

We do believe in Intrapreneurship! A person who is motivated, and willing to develop his idea further.

But we also believe, that just a single person is not enough to fulfill every role which is necessary on the way from the first idea to the market. So during the process the potential Intrapreneur has to build up a team around him, which supports him through the whole process. But in the end, on the day of the Entrepreneurship Award, there is just one person winning the “year off”, not the full team. In the future we would like to give at least one more person out of the team the chance to further work on the idea.

This leads to another challenge we face: getting the people out of their daily business and give them as much freedom as possible. This is not just an HR topic, but also a cultural topic. Try to imagine that you are the previous supervisor of the Intrapreneur. If your employee wins the competition, you will “lose” him for at least one year. Not every supervisor would be pleased thinking about this situation.

The third challenge I want to mention is the implementation of the ideas after one year into the operative segments. During the Ideation Jam we are searching for new, and most important, radical ideas. But after one year of development they somehow have to fit to the operative segments and their strategy. To summarize it, we have to make sure to find a “new home” for both: the ideas AND the Intrapreneur.

6) More broadly, what are the next challenges for your innovation team?

The Innovation way is changing and we need to be a driver for that change. Significant additional growth through Innovation is mainly achieved through transformational Innovation or what we call “Create” Innovation. This type of projects face a high uncertainty – not only from the market and technology but also in the area of resources and organization. We are currently in the process of upgrading our Innovation Management style for this type of “Create” projects, ensuring that depending on the phase of the project –e.g. be it in the Discovery, Incubation or Acceleration stage- these uncertainties need to be addressed at the right level of insight.

But it is not only a different management style to be successful at “Create” Innovation. We also need to ensure that we have the right partners for our Innovation – be it an agile start-up or a big conglomerate that is even bigger than Evonik. Here we already have several levers like the above mentioned Corporate Venturing or our Cross Industry Team that support to find the right partners. With the dynamic developments in technologies including digitalization, it will be important to work together with the right partners and create and manage the respective Innovation Ecosystems for the mutual benefit of the partners and Evonik.

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GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Five days for an innovation journey: is it speed or haste?

Using the three basic premises of Design Thinking – Immersion, Ideation and Prototyping – and leveraging the creation of a multidisciplinary environment, Design Sprint is emerging as new way for accelerated innovation, where speed and innovation go hand in hand. Design Sprint is a smart track for fast experimentation: building on what Jeff Bezos claims -“If you double the number of experiments you do per year, you will double your ability to invent”-, Design Sprint mastering can bring a tremendous value to the company.

What are the various methods, and are there some limitations to their benefic use? This is what we’re going to go through.

What is a Google Design Sprint?

Philippe Antoine did an enticing job presenting the Design Sprint methodology on Google booth at Vivatech last June. What is Google Design Sprint approach? It’s a five days framework, combining Design Thinking with Lean Startup, to move from a customer problem to a range of creative ideas, and a tested prototype. In other words, it helps answer critical business questions through rapid prototyping, and user testing.

At Vivatech, Philippe managed to turn the 5 days in a 10’ demo, processing the 5 steps of the approach in an impressive whirlwind: the faster the better as they say at Google, meaning time pressure is good for the project!

Let’s go back to the main steps of the Design Sprint framework:

1. Understand: the team maps out the problem to focus on, and unites under a shared brain; this phase involves lightning talks, which are 10- to 15-minute sessions given by knowledge experts, as well as the “How might we” note-taking method, and affinity mapping; the team puts himself in the shoes of the user with user journey mapping, user interviews, empathy building exercises, and success metrics;
2. Sketch solutions on paper: generate a broad range of ideas, and narrow down to a select group; team members are given time and space to brainstorm solutions on their own: they can look to comparable problems for inspiration, take note, boost idea generation, share and vote, and narrow down to one well defined idea per person, creating their own detailed Solution Sketch;
3. Turn your ideas into testable hypothesis, and Decide as a team what to prototype to answer your sprint questions; after the presentation of individual solution sketch, the team will identify the assumptions it wants to test, vote, and select a direction; a decision matrix can help the team evaluate ideas;
4. Prototype only what you need to validate your ideas in a very short time; hammer out a realistic prototype, a facade of the experience you have envisioned in the sketch phase. Design a barest minimum but usable prototype, taking advantage for instance of of Pop App, an app that transforms pictures of a story board into clickable UI; think of your prototype as an experiment in order to test out hypothesis;
5. Test the prototype with real live humans, and validate. The team finally gets to see live users interact with their idea,s and hear direct feedback from the target audience. Everyone on the team observes the Validation sessions: watching your users try out the prototype is the best way to discover major issues with your design, which in turn lets you start iterating immediately. In addition, the team can organize a review to collect feedback from Technical Experts or Leadership Stakeholders.

To make your Design Sprint more efficient, Google suggests a few preparation tips, like writing a Sprint brief, collecting User Research, assembling a cross-functional team, planning Lightning Talks, creating a Deck, finding the right Space, getting the Supplies, setting the stage, the ground rules for Sprinting, and choosing a good ice-breaker! Innovation fortune only favors the prepared mind.

Another way to look at Design Sprint is what Google Ventures says about it: “The sprint gives teams a shortcut to learning without building and launching. You can fast-forward into the future to see your finished product and customer reactions, before making any expensive commitments.”

What is a Mc Kinsey Concept Sprint?

The concept sprint by McKinsey is a fast five-day process for cross-functional teams to brainstorm, define, and model new approaches to business issues. It follows the following steps, not unlike the Google Design Sprint, but tailored to the business realities of larger, more complex incumbents, and vetted for tangible business impact.

Going down to 3-days or 1-day Design Sprint?

I attended last year a workshop facilitated by CxStudio (C stands for both customer and collaborator experiences, which must re-connect one to another according to CxStudio vision). They explained their Design Sprint approach in 3 days, moving from interviews to discover the user problems, to ideation, and prototyping.

The specificity of CxStudio is to bring employees and customers together for the 3 days: it creates then an autonomous collective, and activate change inside the corporation at the same time.

1. Day One aims at unfolding the main user problem that the brand shall address
   • going through the user journey of persona, what they do, what they feel, what is tiring to them, what they need, how it would work better if…, at specific moments of truth in their relationship with the brand;
   • identifying main irritants, enchanted pleasing moments, needs, tension points, insights, drivers, directions to untangle the situation;
   • crossing views between customers and collaborators.
2. Day Two focuses on ideation
   • diverging, letting go, and converging;
   • keeping in mind persona, and stakeholders;
   • leveraging ‘work cafe’ configuration.
3. Day Three is dedicated to prototyping, and modelling or mock-up (video translating the user experience), MVP test with users

The next steps are based on continuous improvements, and pilots, to transform the prototype into a business stream.

Are three days too long? Never mind, MJV Technologies mentions a One Day Sprint: “By creating viable prototypes in a short period of time and using the capabilities of internal teams, the company can, in just one day, take a substantial leap into the future.”

Is Design Sprint speed, or haste?

As they say, speed is one thing, and haste another. The Design Sprint seems definitely a wise booster for innovation.

But are there some drawbacks that would turn speed into haste? I suggest to keep in mind five potential pitfalls:

1. On-boarding of users for testing: Design Sprint ends the 5th day with the validation of the prototype with the real user target: but will you always find the user target at your door in one day? Some prototypes need real on-boarding  endeavor that shall not be underestimated. What if the Google Design Sprinters target farmers from the Middle-Esat with their creative idea? Will they will find them in the Silicon Valley in the neighborhood of the Google Campus? Probably not.
2. Misleading innovation timeline: the short time frame of the Sprint can give management a false idea of the timeline of an innovation project. At the end of the 5 days, you have a validated concept, not a go-to-market product. The road can still be long until the market launch.
3. Transforming concept into business: transforming the prototype into a business stream, is not only a question of  product industrialization, it’s also a matter of distribution channels, customer relationship, resources, partnerships, profitable model, all things that often require the engagement of parent business unit within the company. This transformation process where your innovative concept creates an opportunity for your partner business unit is a delicate scale-up to handle.
4. Test Fast, Fail Fast philosophy inconsistent with the uncertainty of disruption: Design Sprint borrows to Test Fast, Fail Fast mindset; this might be difficult to align with the time frame of disruptive innovation where the innovation first appears uncertain, almost unappealing, and takes time and resilience to become the new tradition.
5. Testing the viability, not the usability: at the validation stage, this is what we’re looking for, and the wise design of an appropriate Minimum Viable Product aims at validating assumptions. While in the Design Sprint, prototyping seems the only way to go, prototype is only one among various possible MVPs as shown below.

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GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Jeanne Bretecher is a young entrepreneur, who co-founded with Steven Bertal the agency Génération2, a new kind of consulting agency who’s acting for partnerships for the greater good. As more and more we see innovators with a social purpose, I’ve  asked Jeanne a few questions to better understand the social innovation aspiration among young entrepreneurs.

1) Hi Jeanne, you’re leading the agency Génération2 , could you tell us what’s its purpose, and its main lines of services?

Génération2 is a cooperative of advisors, working to increase and guide corporation, and social innovators’ partnerships, from Philanthropy to more business oriented solutions.

Our niche domain: create conversations and collaboration between corporations, non profits, and social innovators and public sector.

We have mainly 4 lines of service:

1. A Survey Office which produces societal analysis, cartography, and strategic surveillance on general interest matters;
2. Project engineering & responsible communication advisement, with a specific focus on employees involvement;
3. Master class & trainings;
4. Event & conference organizations about social innovation, and innovative corporate philanthropy.

2) Could you specify some of the exemplary missions that you’ve conducted?

Of course.

1. We realized several societal analysis on various thematic, from Pain societal handling for an Insurance company, to Education stakes, and prospect in Centre & West Africa. We are also realizing currently an open map of supermarkets and social groceries to create links between them. We also publish papers in specialized media.
2. We accompanied Thales corporation with the creation and program development of their foundation. During 3 years we helped them thinking of their potential impact on social issues they could address with their own resources beyond financial support. Then we designed program with them in this perspective to implement a monitoring process, and help them with their first assessment.
3. We teach Master Classes on Social innovation, Innovative philanthropy, links between social and tech innovation. We also organized a Learning trip at Web summit this year with a mix delegation to explore social innovation and tech ecosystem in Lisbon.
4. We organized several events for us or our clients. This year we are really proud for having one within Web Summit with former France President François Hollande.

3) No success without a cohesive and passionate team, would you kindly present your talents?

I must say talent and passion are our main ressources. As we were transforming our organization (from a family corporation to a young cooperative), we tried to create a collective of beginning advisors and only one among us (me) was really experimented.

A lot of people did not fit in the end, and I have learned that main qualities for co-entrepreneurs are : hard work capacity, faith for the shared goals and faith in the team, selflessness that is to say capacity to put the common interest before personal ones, and mainly autonomy, curiosity, eagerness to learn and progress. Also and assured and self-confident personality, which can be improved with time and support of the team.

Apart of these human qualities, which are crucial in our changing times to adapt fast, grades are secondary.

4) You’ve recently initiated a new initiative whose mantra is: More Social Good in Tech, more Tech in Social Good. It materializes through the SocialGoodAccelerator web site. It seems more like a Think Do Tank than a startup accelerator, could you tell us more about it? Is there anything for startups in it? Have you customize some startups tools toward a social purpose, akin a social business canvas? 

We are just at the beginning to a story with the Social Good accelerator, which started one year ago at Web Summit with a very fierce intuition : everyone was talking about innovation on a tech perspective, but no one was talking about social innovation. Our belief is that social innovation must be a driver for or at least taken into account by tech innovation, and that social innovation dramatically needs acceleration.

We took the accelerator metaphor to speak the same language as Tech actors, but as innovators we intend to transform it a bit.

Our message : facing huge social an environnemental challenges, today very well shared withe the UN Sustainable development goals, we need to accelerate social innovation real fast. Join forces, use tech innovation in this purpose and find the same capacity of fundings to scale them up.

But today, and that was the share statement last Monday and Tuesday at the High conference organized by European Commission  (and Carlos Moedas, Science & innovation commissioner) in Lisbon, acceleration and funding are mainly focus on tech start-ups. Its a temporal mistake.

We really do need to create bridges and collaboration between tech and social innovation, and Millenials, who as the main workforce of tech sector today, are perfect holders for that.

After Web Summit we drew our french & portuguese hub’s 3 missions and 2018 calendar :

1. Communicate, launch a media a a European pledge (our manifesto here);
2. Speak within take events along with social innovators to raise awareness and collaborations;
3. Organize a whole learning and networking process, and between volunteer tech corporations, and non profit in need for digital transformation thanks to our partners organizations (Fondation La France s’engage, ProBonoLab, ShareIt, MicroDON, Hello Asso, Social Entrepreneurs agency, Make Sense, Simplon.co, etc.).

An association is being created to bear them. A lot of solutions, among our partners and further, already exist to help start ups willing to commit and we just want to connect them better. We are also launching a wider survey to learn more about the resources Tech sector – any size of corporations – is willing to put resources in favor of social innovators. Beginning with an online survey.

5) Your mantra reminds me of FastForward which accelerates non profit tech startups, have you heard of their work, and what is your view on this? Similar question with https://www.aguialabs.com/, an agency focused on social business models?

As the native center of start-ups, San Francisco is quite advanced on these matters, but we think that fundamental differences of culture exists between European and American non profit (and tech sector). For example, in France but also in Portugal or in the Netherlands, we have a very large and dynamic ecosystem of social innovators. They are developing in parallel of European tech clusters, widely inspired but Tech scaling methods, but the vice versa is not true. There are an emerging awareness with Station F (hosting Ashoka and Fondation la France s’engage office) or Numa creating an incubator for Social good Tech.

6) In the large companies you’re working for, do you observe a link between CSR and Innovation departments? Is social impact a clear attribute when developing innovation projects?

First and foremost, and I deplore it, CSR as very few to do with social innovation. Sometimes special departments are created (Danone, Total, Essilor, Orange…) to lead mainly base of the pyramid project but it is very rare. We think Innovation department, as Aymeril Hoang is doing at Société générale, must naturally integrate social innovation, create drivers and partnerships. And work with philanthropy department on innovative way to support non profits.

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GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

I met with The DO School team in Berlin: The DO School is a renowned development ground for young social entrepreneurs, which has developed an original innovation offering involving corporates and startups, in a journey for disruption!  Florian Hoffmann, charismatic founder and managing director of Berlin’s DO School, and his great team kindly accepted to dig into The DO School value proposition.

1) Nicolas: You call The DO School ‘a BtoB engine for large companies, to get a better picture, figure out a business purpose, and develop solutions beyond the organization, bringing together international entrepreneurs & students with corporate intrapreneurs’.

Would you like to refine this definition? And would you provide us with an example of a typical program you’ve conducted (for example Axel Springer on the future of radio, 20 young entrepreneurs embedded with Axel Springer employees)?

Happy to Nicolas. The DO School addresses the need for large companies to reinvent themselves in order to drive the change that every industry is facing today. We see CEO´s invest in new business, upskilling their teams and driving the culture. But we see that this effort is rarely taken holistically, and is therefore often inefficient and costly.

The DO School drives trusted partnerships with selected corporations to add a different way to create innovation. We don’t want to discuss but DO the future of work together and most importantly, further develop the purpose of the business, not only for the shareholder but also for society.

We define important Challenges with our partners and around those bring together passionate young entrepreneurs, employees and experts from around the world. This diversity employed in actually implementing solutions to a Challenge creates value.

If 20 young entrepreneurs come together with heads of radio stations, Axel Springer and experts for three months to create the future of audio solutions, they each bring their unique experience and knowledge. But the employees of the radio stations also practice a new way of working within and by incorporating outside expertise – all geared towards making a solution happen. In the process, each participant gains skills but also formulates her or his passion, and thus creates purpose for the company. What we see is that the results and the process of working together can transform companies to create their future success with empowered employees.

2) The DO School program is based on a genuine methodology you’ve developed: the Challenge > Dream > Focus > Plan > Do framework. It is usually run over 10 weeks within 6 months: could you describe the successive steps?

Our DO School Method is build to bring highly diverse teams together to quickly understand a problem, develop solutions, detect which solutions are valuable, plan them out, and implement them. Quickly, cheaply and by learning from it. The Method works for large organizations as much as for start-up entrepreneurs. The shortest program we run with the Method lasts 2 days, the longest process 2 years. It all depends on the Challenge at hand.

3) Attracting corporates, and building a network of entrepreneurs contributors, a global community of doers, makes The DO School look like a market place with 2 sides. How do you on-board entrepreneurs on your platform, and develop their loyalty? Do you also engage mentors to train, and follow-up on the innovative project developed during the 10 weeks program?

Yes that’s a great question. I also think this is what makes us really special. I described the value for the companies but at the same time we want to create value for the participants, young entrepreneurs and experts alike.

For this purpose we always build a program for them around the company Challenge. Sometimes that means that we support them for another year with their start-ups, sometimes it means they receive specific coaching, and access to our DO School network comprised of passionate Doer´s across 90 countries.

Building a global community of Doer´s that are excited about solving tough problems effectively is our raison d´être and we put a lot of care into the curation.

4) There wouldn’t be a successful The Do School business, without a brilliant The DO School team: could you present the various team members, and their roles?

Our team is a diverse as our community but everyone joined the DO School with the belief that being able to turn ideas into action, to find entrepreneurial solutions to the big changes our industries and societies face, is one of the best ways to create the world we want to live in. So we have program designers from Australia, India and Germany, former economist and artists, strategy consultants, philosophers and social workers. We are a closely knit community from over 10 countries, the majority of the team is in Berlin with outposts in New York and Hong Kong.

5) One more thing… what’s your next challenge for 2018?

Detecting which industry of those that we are not active in could also benefit from our approach to innovation and purpose, as well as to manage our growth and the different activities in more than 20 countries well. And of course, continue to build and celebrate our global community.

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GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Leonard   is the new innovation entity initiated by VINCI, a major player in construction, and concession agreement indutries. VINCI designs, finances, builds, and operates infrastructure and facilities that help improve daily life and mobility for all. I spoke with Matthieu Lerondeau, Leonard Head of Communications & Communities, about the missions, and organization of Leonard.

Nicolas: Leonard rolls out a range of various activities:  technological watch, prospective analysis / foresight (autonomous car, smart city, and digital infrastructures & buildings), incubation, and acceleration. Would you describe these 4 missions for our readers? How would you name this new type of entity: innovation center, innovation incubator, innovation fab, another name?

Matthieu: The combined effects of the digital revolution and energetic transition are reshaping business models in the scope of work of the VINCI Group, a major player in the construction, and concessions fields. We need to think long term, add perspective to our market developments, and seize the new growth opportunities that are opening in this transforming landscape.

In order to identify and tackle these new opportunities, the VINCI ExCom has decided to create Leonard, which you could call an Open Laboratory for the future of cities, and the infrastructure. The project has officially launched in May 2017.

We explore new trends, and point ongoing and coming transformation and disruption in our businesses around the world. You can have a fairly good idea of our fields of interest by checking out our daily trends watch on our Twitter account, and subscribing to our newsletter.

We host and facilitate foresight groups that bring together representatives from all our brands, and lines of work in order to propose new courses of action, and business projects to the VINCI ExCom on emerging long term issues that will be addressed best if addressed together: cities and infrastructure resilience to climate change, the connected and autonomous vehicle and the infrastructure, the future of work, and the impact of digitization on the value chain in construction.

We accelerate cross-business innovative projects led by VINCI employees, support innovative projects emerging at the Group level, and help startups that may open up growth opportunities for VINCI to find their way within the Group.

This Spring, we will open a new 1,400 sq. meter space in Paris that will offer coworking, host innovative projects and promote events dedicated to the future of cities and the infrastructure.

Nicolas: My VINCI Startup is the intrapreneurs incubation program: would you explain how VINCI support its employees in order to turn them into intrapreneurs? The first season just highlighted 10 intrapreneurial projects: would you share some of them? If you share this view, would you illustrate how some are close to Vinci core business, while others seem to open new market opportunities?

Matthieu: Our first Group-wide call to innovative projects among VINCI employees received almost 100 answers. A selection committee including external partners selected 10 of them, led by people from a large diversity of brands and trades in VINCI. The only instructions that they were given were to craft a new business value proposition, and to suggest new business ideas that would be relevant to at least 2 brands of VINCI.

Projects include a huge variety of innovative approaches of our trades: a new offer of shared housing, financing the energy transition, developing a new 3D conception tool for renovation, 3D printing and circular economy!

These guys were offered a 4-months journey, during which they would dedicate 20% of their time to developing their projects as well as coaching, and mentoring from the Leonard team, experts and entrepreneurs ready to share their knowledge and experience.

A new selection committee in February will determine which projects will carry on their journey on an extra full-time 4 months period (100% time dedicated to the project).

Our Intrapreneurs are just getting done with their Rush Week: we have just spend 4 days together in our brand new HQ near Gare de Lyon, in Station F, and coworking places such as Numa. During this intensive week, they will have lived the life of entrepreneurs and met more than 30 mentors, among which Julien Coulon, one of the founders of Cedexis, who shared a lively view of his own journey…

Nicolas:  What will be the acceleration program for startups, and when will it open? What startups will you target?

Matthieu: This aspect of our operations is still work in progress. We have a very pragmatic and cold-headed approach to open innovation and dealing with startups.

There is no “one size fits all” when dealing with young ventures. A personalized and hands-on framework is to be designed for every collaboration opportunity.

At this point, we have started by building a deal flow of companies and partners likely to bring added value to the Group’s offering (construction, infrastructure, mobility, energy, etc.). We also answer to requests from entities of the Group to evaluate the propositions of startups seeking business or funding by VINCI.

At Leonard, startups will be selected in very specific fields of operations in order to collaborate on new business opportunities, and bring their know-how and expertise to the table.

Nicolas: Why did you choose to incubate intrapreneurs and accelerate entrepreneurs in the same location? What synergies do you encompass?

Matthieu: With this new location that will open this Spring in Paris, we want to create a completely new environment for VINCI teams, and all innovators working on the future of cities and infrastructure, that will encourage new encounters, mutual discovery, and finally hybridation.

As our Rush Week just proved, intrapreneurs are first, and foremost entrepreneurs: initiators of original startup projects that will share the same challenges, issues and methods as almost any founder. We expect them to share a lot of their issues and priorities with the startups we will host in the future.

Nicolas:  Leonard’s identity seems to reflect a vivid openness. Why did you choose this angle, and how do you plan to sustain this promise?

Matthieu: We firmly believe openness and hybridation will be key to succeed in creating brand new business propositions and added value for the Group. For instance, we are working on making of Leonard:Paris a hive for all innovators in our trades: coworking and public events will be central to creating those new encounters and collaborations. More: we are impatient to meet the first partners to whom we will hand the keys of our new space to create events and debate ideas we wouldn’t have thought of!

We also believe that the diversity of our team reflects this determination to openness. Leonard is run by a dedicated team of 6 from diverse backgrounds: Philippe Dewost, “Chief Leonard Officer”, has a long record as an entrepreneur and head of investment in Digital at Caisse des Dépôts. Nathalie Martin-Sorvillo, in charge of Innovative Projects and Intrapreneurship, has a long history with VINCI. Julien Villalongue, our Head of Operations and Foresight has spent 4 years working for VINCI Autoroutes.

An entrepreneur for 10 years in the digital communication and innovation agency La Netscouade, I joined Leonard as Head of Communities and Communications, simulated by the ambition of crafting a vision and projects that will impact the life of millions. Pierrick Bouffaron, a former Senior Associate at BNP Paribas in San Francisco and a scholar, runs the Acceleration. We were joined by Laure Blanchard, a talented Communication manager who works with me on our communications and community management.

If you believe like us that the future of cities and infrastructure bring together some of the most exciting challenges for innovation and technology, please join our newsletter and our Twitter account to follow our work and be among the first to discover our future innovation space in Paris!

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GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Lufthansa Systems, IT services provider in the airline industry with over 300 airline customers, initiated an Intrapreneurs program named Invent IT in 2007-2008.

New Business and Innovation manager at Lufthansa Systems, and key executive of the program,  Carina Leue-Bensch takes us step by step through this extensive journey, and draws some leassons learned out of this 10 years experience.

The origin

An online tool was made available to any of the 2,000 employees of Lufthansa Systems (IT company for airlines) in 2008 along with the organisation of innovation, similar to Cooper’s stage gate process.

The goal was to combine ideation with stage gate: following the process, ideas could progress, avoiding the ‘Yes or No’ limited feedback. Employees expressed the need for some time and people to mature the idea, and somehow to make the selection process less mysterious. The platfom was due to embrace continuous adaptation!

Social Collaboration

2014 was the launch of a new tool, more collaborative, with a button to like an idea. It is not only the innovation manager who decides, and neither the top management, it is the trust of colleagues in the idea that matters.

It’s also more progressive. We see what an idea is about, and develop it in small steps. And at the end of 3 months, we know which resources an implementation requires.

The tool is open to any idea, not depending on a specific timeframe. You can enter whenever you want. We handle challenges, 2 or 3 at a time, in addition to a permanent one. A challenge runs for 6 weeks.

Crowdfunding

Employees put the idea, with the smallest barrier possible, and describes pain and gain of the solution. In order to decide which ideas should be taken forward each employee receives an equivalent of €1000 per year on a virtual account.

Once the idea collects €1000 from colleagues, the mployee attends a One day Design Thinking workshop. In this phase, employees can send €50 on each project from their yearly €1000. Basically you need 20 employees to support your idea.

From Design Workshop to Funding

A Design workshop is accomplished with the employee, and he can invite up to 5 people more. The aim is to design a story with a persona in a similar way across ideas, and from the user perspective. Pain, need, solution, what has to be fulfilled to implement the idea are the elements of the story. The output is a 2′ video. The innovation team (2 people) uses story board, and captures the intrapreneur in front of a green wall.

The video will go back to the online tool to receive the financial support. The budget that is needed to realize the idea’s first steps is  pubslished together with the video and open for funding. As soon as money is collected (employee can now invest up to 1000 € per idea during a 8 weeks timeline), the intrapreneur goes to the Sprint stage.

Dedicated Coaching for acceleration

Each intrapreneur follows a thorough and bespoke coaching path to improve his project during a 3 months timeline:

• Google Sprint: developing and testing a prototype over 5 days; it brings together the idea owner, one designer, sometimes a second designer, experts interviews, product, customer, market representatives. You can apply and participate as an employee, we need your passion! 3 or 2 days. It can be a team of people. The outputs are: MVP, feedback from up to 5 customers. The team working on the project has to find at least one potential customer who says ok: then, next workshop is on track!

• Business model canvas: 2 days workshop;
• Pitch deck: 2 days workshop;
• 3 or 4 Demo Days: 10′ presentation + 10′ Q&A; immediate decision; one demo day, to decide or to show everyone the project; the 4th presenting we’re going to the next stage.

Implementation

An app to ensure that drones do not endanger air safety is one outcome of the process. The intrapreneurs were running the project in parallel with daily job part time. The app is about to be implemented as a project for the business.

The innovation program itself ends with the Demo Day. The innovation team stays as project counselors guiding the project, but the final implementation is taken over by project employees

Money gamification 

All people will then get the refunds: you can get up to 30% of your investment additionally on the extra account, depending if you have invested early or not.

You can get points for support, likes, comments. You can be upgraded from innovation pioneer to innovation starter, and become an innovation guru if you comment, and explore. The idea is to trade the points against vouchers.

Benefits

The innovation leader gets a lot of visibility, as he will be presented at Demo Day.

What’s in there for me can ask the employees? Goodies, meeting with manager, learning innovation techniques, and opportunity to implement the creative idea with a dedicated coaching.

Innovation culture is more than just a tool for Lufthansa Systems. It is innovation thinking that the company wants to encourage. With the crowdfunding system combined with intrapreneurship program, people can shape and make ideas better, developing an innovative culture that frames the future of Lufthansa Systems.

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GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

• Intrapreneurship is also for startups!

I met with Sylvain Tillon a few weeks ago in the course of the Oracle Startup Cloud Accelerator program set-up by Dominique Van Deth. I must say I was quite impressed by his entrepreneurship know-how.

This was not the end of my surprise: he then mentioned the intrapreneurship spirit that Tilkee has developed, and I couldn’t resist to ask him to share this awesome experience with us.

Hi Sylvain, tell us what is Tilkee value proposition, when it was founded, and how it is greatly developing?

Tilkee was created in December 2013 by Timothée Saumet, and myself. Between us we’d previously launched 7 startups, and were decided to work on this new project together as we felt it had a lot of mileage. Our experience in previous companies revealed to us a common problem. Salespeople would send out proposals and quotes to prospects or clients all the time. They would then randomly follow-up with as many prospects as they could, not knowing who had read what, when, for how long and therefore without knowing who was genuinely interested, and how to prioritise leads. So inefficient and time & money down the drain.

This is why we created Tilkee! Tilkee tells you exactly when, how, and for how long anyone reads any document you sent through any channel. And you’re alerted in real-time! This SaaS tool was initially created for sales in SMEs and startups in France. 3 years down the line, not only are customers sales teams in industries as diverse as transport, insurance & energy, using Tilkee, but also marketing teams, job seekers, recruiters and many more. We have 2 platforms (one entirely dedicated to sales, and the other to marketing). And clients range all the way from tiny startups to multinational global names like EDF (French energy utility) or ADECCO (French interim company).

Tilkee’s culture seems nurtured with innovation: how do you explain it? The success receipe seems a mix of start-up spirit, founders and employee’s profile, using innovation as a recruitment criteria?

Yes, Tilkee is full of innovation. This is what has driven us to think up so many new tools which are currently on the market, or on their way to market today, from connected objects to entirely new SaaS platforms like Tilkee for Marketing.

We’re not intrinsically innovative simply because we’re a startup: ‘startup’ doesn’t always equate ‘innovation’. For me, b2b innovation comes with learning, and experiencing how companies work, what they need, where they’re struggling. This is why I am now part of such an innovative team because we’re all constantly working, and meeting companies of all sizes in all sectors with their own problems to solve. This experience gives you an innovative mind. Being innovative is of course a great trait in a startup employee but it’s not an obligatory criteria for us.

In terms of educational backgrounds the team includes the business school route but also engineering and tech background as well as languages. The diversity of our team is what makes our team great (in my eyes)!

Can you share how the Intrapreneurs Day work at Tilkee?

Every year, at the beginning of September, the entire team takes part in something we called ‘Startup Friday’! The web developers present their ideas to the whole team and based on the best ideas, groups of salespeople and devs are formed. Each team works throughout the day to take the initial idea and come up with a business model, landing page and fully functioning prototype by 18:00. Each idea is then pitched and demoed to the whole team.

It’s a great day which encourages the web developers and sales teams to mix and work together. It’s interesting for both groups to see the ins and outs of the work that the other does and this is actually beneficial for the whole team all year round.

Not only is it interesting, and a lot of fun but we genuinely dedicate resources to each new innovation, and do our best to take them to market just like Tilkee for Marketing, Foxy the connected fox, Tilkee for Events, Autolike, Copilot and SemanTilk which have all come out of ‘Startup Friday’!

Are there some employees’ innovations you would like to highlight, and promote?

I would like to highlight them all but this would result in multiple pages! Tilkee for Marketing is one of the most sought after innovations from ‘Startup Friday’ 2016. Tilkee for Marketing is an entirely new platform and separate from original Tilkee (which is more orientated towards sales). It allows marketers to track exactly how their marketing material is being read including time spent on each page by each lead, no matter which channel the marketeer sent the document through (social media, available online, emailing campaigns etc). Tilkee for Marketing is integrated into most marketing automation tools for improved lead scoring, better qualified leads and improved content.

What the next intrapreneur challenge you would like to set-up?

We’re already looking forward to ‘Startup Friday’ 2018! But in the meantime, we’re focusing on getting Copilot, Autolike, SemanTilk, and Tilkee for Events to market!

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GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Benjamin Ott is a young innovator working at T3LGroup, a French SME who has a long tradition of developing new manufacturing processes, and product applications for office products, and shopfitting equipments.

Benjamin handles the T-Creative project, a recent TL3Group department to address new customers and special products, and he concurrently completes a Master2 at Strasbourg Management School. He tells us more about the way innovation strives to grow in a Small and Medium Enterprise.

Nicolas Bry: What are the name, and business of your company ?

Benjamin Ott: The name of the company is T3LGROUP. The main business of the group is about office product (Display System, Signage and Identification).

How is innovation currently managed? What is the process for new product development?

The innovation product is managed by the Marketing Department. The feedback of the different Sales rep on the ground generate ideas. On one side because the competitor has some new ranges, new sizes, new colors, new options on his product or on the other side, because the customer (in our case the distributor) expresses a need. And this need can give birth to a new product.

You mentioned the incubation of a startup: What was the reason why? Was it linked to digital transformation, and how was it handled?

The paper related business is slightly declining. This is a structural trend due to the digitization. Less and less of paper is used because a lot of company for some years move to dematerialize their documents from paper. Therefore we look forward to prepare our future new offer, cooperating with a startup company which will prepare our new “digital Tarifold” service.

You are committing to intrapreneurship through your current research (Master): what are your expectations? What are the hurdles to translate your intrapreneurship learnings in your company? How would you ideally implement intrapreneurship in your company?

My expectations are that the intrapreneurship is a good solution for a company to innovate, to explore and test new business area. It’s a very attractive solution for employees to show their skills and potential. But if the intrapreneurs have no means (material, machine, tools to work) and no recognition, the passion, the flame are going to switch off.

Ideally intrapreneurship should be an overall program implemented by a specific department with a dedicated budget, the appropriate means of material, and the support of all the management, and the employees of the company.

More broadly, what are the challenges that SMEs are facing related to innovation (lack of means, lack of culture,…)? Reversely, what are the opportunities you try to exploit (open innovation…)?

The SMEs have to listen more to the new innovation solutions, and and evolve from their historical way of working. They have to try bold ideas, and put the necessary means in order to make them a success, and not a disappointment.

To work around the lack of means, and to develop its inovation culture, SMEs can:

• Set-up partnerships with universities, professional associations, and research centers; topics can be submitted to students who have specific skills, that the SME does not master internally;
• Leverage employees’ ideas and skills through intraprenuership program, initiating creative meetings at breakfast, innovation challenges, and idea box;
• Develop its know-how by hiring new employees, or acquiring a new company presenting strong synergies;
• Intensifying customer observation, improving market knowlege and competition, in order to be an innovation leader on its market, rather than facing innovation from the competition.

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