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How can big corporations use open innovation to transform themselves in an ever-changing world?
Open Innovation has become a buzz world, and I have learned to be wary of those! Open innovation is often restricted to the interaction between startups and corporates. I picture it more as an ecosystem working like a real team.
That’s why I like to define open innovation with a metaphor. Big corporates, like supertankers tended to navigate alone. In a changing environment, where speedboats can come, and hit you under the flotation line with crude implements, it is better to move from a supertanker to a fleet of boats formation in order to achieve your goals. This is my metaphor for open innovation. The efficient fleet is made of vessels of various sizes, shapes and pavilions, sharing a common goal, a purpose.
What kind of agile methods should be used so the focus is on the client and end-user experience?
A famous description of innovation separates incremental innovation (akin to continuous improvement), and disruptive innovation. Corporates such as Bouygues have a huge history of practising the former.
It is necessary for any company to constantly improve their processes, reduce their costs, and shorten their delays to improve customer satisfaction.
Yet it is not enough in a world where new entrants can easily shake new markets (oftentimes leveraging digital or new technologies), and potentially reshape them altogether. This has famously happened with airlines, hotels, taxis etc.
The new entrants have disrupted entire markets with the help of new technology but more importantly, with an approach where alleviating customers’ pains plays a central role.
This approach of disruptive innovation was less natural to big corporations. At e-Lab, we have first made ourselves familiar with best of class methods to cope with this: agile methods, lean, design thinking, BMC (business model canvas); C/K method and so on.
The key to our approach is very simple: move from a technology/solution push approach to a usage pull approach.
What lessons have you learnt at Bouygues that can help other companies?
It is useful to have a hands-on approach to help our Business Units (BU) with their pain points this will help disseminate concrete methods with the goal to improve client and user experience.
Our business transformation missions are a good vector since one of their goals, in addition to solving the problem at hand, is to equip the teams with those methods so that they can replicate them internally and use them in other instances.
We also teach a monthly seminar “innovate toward the contributive company” at IMB (Institute of Management Bouygues), a corporate university for group executives; and deploy it occasionally at BU’s requests.
What has been your biggest challenge as a corporate director in charge of open innovation?
We have launched an intrapreneurship program in 2016, “Innovate like a startup” to help our Group reinvent its business activities. The idea is to draw on the creativity of our employees to invent and roll out solutions that will meet the great challenges of the 21st century.
More than forty projects have emerged from the program. 6 of them being close to or in commercial phase. Among them “BHEP” the building concept combining usage optimization; productivity gains through wellbeing; convertibility and reversibility; valorization of local physical flows has received the “Solar Impulse” label awarded by the solar impulse foundation.
Yet we are facing multiple challenges with intrapreneurship, the biggest being our ability to help projects grow and thrive and drive value. We need to be more efficient on this front.
You have diverse experience in marketing, strategy, innovation, project management, telecoms and Information Technologies. How has this helped you in your current role?
It is pretty obvious for everyone that a team is more efficient to solve any type of problem than an individual. We start to realize that diverse teams (gathering a variety of skills/positions and origins present in the company) are even more efficient than siloed teams. I think that the diversity of my own experience has made it more natural to help understand and make different approaches and viewpoints work together towards a solution.
What would you like to achieve by attending the 5th Annual R&D Performance Management conference?
Share our experience with peers and learn from theirs
An interview with:
Vincent Maret, Corporate Director, Open Innovation at Bouygues, France
In the current, fast-changing environment, companies must prioritise and avoid wasteful R&D investments. R&D controllers have to learn how to work well with innovation managers for better results, not least of which is how to ensure you get the most benefit out of portfolios and overcome bottlenecks in the process. Having the right capabilities, the right toolbox, and the right processes in place is crucial if R&D performance management is to make a difference.
By attending this marcus evans pan-European and cross-industry conference for controllers and R&D professionals, you will be able to discuss how to get the most out of your investment; you will be able to benchmark how others are doing valuations and project prioritisation and discuss the R&D finance, more technical aspects, as well as the important strategic question of looking beyond typical project metrics to assess the economic value of knowledge generated by R&D. You will be able to explore the impact of external financing or partnering on how you manage your portfolio. The case studies will be practical and the discussions open and interactive for maximum learning and knowledge sharing.
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About the conference
We would be delighted to provide you with more information on the conference agenda. Please fill in your details below and we will be in touch.
Vincent Maret is Open Innovation director with Bouygues SA, the holding company of the Bouygues Group, Vince focuses on open innovation, business development and business transformation consulting across the whole group, with an emphasis in the field of Digital transformation, Energy, Smartcities. His area of expertise includes agile methods; lean startup; design thinking C/K methods; value quadrant; etc.
Vince has an extensive experience in marketing, strategy, innovation, project management, telecom and Information Technologies; as Marketing Manager; deputy R&D director with Bouygues Telecom and previously as a Project Executive with IBM Global Services. Vince is very familiar with international environments. He was the founder and CEO of the US Office of Bouygues Telecom, in the Silicon Valley, since renamed winnovation and serving the whole Group.
To view the Conference Agenda, click HERE!
For all enquiries regarding speaking, sponsoring and attending this conference contact:
Constandinos Vinall
Email: constandinosv@marcusevanscy.com
Telephone: +357 22 849 380
Fax: +357 22 849 394
Vincent sits on the board of directors of Bouygues Asia, an outpost of the Group based in Tokyo for the purpose of technology scouting, business support & sales development; He is also a board member of Cap Digital, the French cluster for digital transformation and serves as president of its Membership Committee. He also sits on the board of ESPCI alumni, his alma mater.
He used to be a member of the steering committee of the Open Innovation Club (Paris & Co) and to serve on the Board of Directors of the French American Chamber of Commerce of San-Francisco and was Chairman of its High Tech Committee until June 2005. He also sat –as Secretary General- on the Board of Directors of Wireless Link, the French Association managing WIFI
Vince is a graduate of ESPCI ParisTech, Paris, France - Master’s Degree in Physics, Master’s Degree in Chemistry - and from Sorbonne University, Paris – Master’s Degree in Electronics.
