INNOVATION AND DESIGN

Innovation is the link between growth and crisis. In a time of uncertainty and rapid change, innovation is a vital topic for every company and every business line.

« The high stakes of business transition compel us to completely rethink our operating models in order to reconcile growth with sustainability. »
Raphaël Beziz, Partner

4 key principles to instill innovation
in your company's culture

Chart a course

An innovation strategy should be perceived as a response to multiple challenges, such as adapting to the radical changes occurring in one’s environment, meeting the new expectations of current or future customers or leveraging unique and differentiating assets that can be activated in the company or mobilised within its ecosystem.

Bartle breaks down these different components to assist you in identifying your oceans of exploration and defining the right degree of ambition and impact to pursue in light of the available resources, then translating your goals into an operational road map.

Organise innovation

Innovation does not happen by chance. The most innovative organisations have developed actual innovation systems with their own culture, structure, process, governance and metrics.

The challenges are considerable: create structure without rigidity to leave room for opportunism, rely on operational teams without being reduced to incremental innovation, and manage the performance and effectiveness of innovation systems without suffocating projects too far upstream.

In sum, before innovation can be a process, it must be embedded in your company’s culture, which involves creating a new mindset by adopting a 360° approach.

Inject new ideas

Innovation emerges from “contact” with your strengths, meaning it happens when you meet with your customers and suppliers, when you recognise the assets your company already has and when you find new ways to use them.

Idea competitions, intrapreneurship programmes, hackathons, design thinking workshops, innovation labs, incubators, accelerators, open innovation approaches, corporate venture capital… There are many innovation tools, each of which complements the others and each of which targets specific objectives.

Our wealth of experience and our benchmarking of innovation tools enable us to navigate this jungle, selecting the most relevant approaches for you and assisting you in deploying them at your company while avoiding the classic pitfalls.

Run like a start-up

How do you convert an innovative project into a successful product or service? Why do start-ups seem to be better at testing, experimenting and executing their projects?

We think it is valuable to seek inspiration from venture capital funds, entrepreneurs who have nothing to lose and “act like pirates”, and to embrace some of their bold choices:

  • Adapt your strategic time horizon, from 3 to 5 years out, to generate activities that will have an impact on turnover.
  • Follow the law of large numbers: invest in a number of projects to create a greater likelihood that some of them will pan out, and systematically aim for high growth potential.
  • Be radical in your decision making: product offer, team members, when to end a project, etc.

Bartle helps you ask the right questions at every stage of launching a new offer, from formalising the concept to deploying to market, to ensure it hits the mark.

4 approaches to stimulate innovation

We have developed an original model that draws on a combination of 4 approaches to identify new areas of opportunity.

  • Client-centric: based on a thorough understanding of users (ethnological observations, sociological and semiological analysis, etc.) and applying design thinking.
  • Future-centric: based on a forward-looking vision of different possible futures and studying weak signals, change factors and potential disruptions in the market.
  • Asset-centric: based on a mapping of the company’s tangible and intangible assets – whether they exist or need to be built – and seeking new ways to leverage them.
  • Start-up-centric: based on sourcing and meeting with entrepreneurs and drawing on their disruptive vision of the market and opportunities to integrate their solutions.

3 examples of businesses
that built innovation systems

Define a diversification strategy

A retail chain specialising in frozen foods wanted to rethink its strategic plan and supplement it with innovation projects to identify new avenues for growth in a slumping sector.

We assisted the executive committee with deploying a three-pronged approach: identify mega-trends and potential disruptions in their market, conduct an ethnological field study on a panel of 12 customers, and map the brand’s assets and generate creative ideas to use them.

These three lines of work resulted in the organisation of a two-day seminar for the executive committee during which they identified new strategic projects and areas of opportunity.

Define and deploy an innovation road map

For the innovation lab at one of France’s major railway actors, we supported the construction of a road map and led dozens of workshops addressing a variety of topics: urban air mobility, smart city, energy efficiency, urban rhythms, regional presence, etc.

Each workshop afforded an opportunity to generate new ideas, some of which are already being implemented. In addition, the sessions helped further disseminate a culture of innovation at the company by presenting new working methods and approaches to look at complex challenges in a fresh light with unusual perspectives.

Support intrapreneurs in testing their ideas

A major player in social housing organised a series of hackathons that generated numerous innovative concepts related to the housing of the future. After the hackathons, six concepts were prioritised – one per region – with two-person teams appointed to lead the projects.

Throughout this initiative, Bartle supported the design and coordination of a six-month programme aimed at quickly testing all the concepts in the field to confirm or disprove their potential. The programme included inspiration meetings with intrapreneurs at other enterprises, a simple methodological framework to help each team ask the right questions, weekly coaching sessions, mentoring with start-up professionals and sharing seminars to provide constructive criticism on the progress of all the projects.

Define a diversification strategy

A retail chain specialising in frozen foods wanted to rethink its strategic plan and supplement it with innovation projects to identify new avenues for growth in a slumping sector.

We assisted the executive committee with deploying a three-pronged approach: identify mega-trends and potential disruptions in their market, conduct an ethnological field study on a panel of 12 customers, and map the brand’s assets and generate creative ideas to use them.

These three lines of work resulted in the organisation of a two-day seminar for the executive committee during which they identified new strategic projects and areas of opportunity.

Define and deploy an innovation road map

For the innovation lab at one of France’s major railway actors, we supported the construction of a road map and led dozens of workshops addressing a variety of topics: urban air mobility, smart city, energy efficiency, urban rhythms, regional presence, etc.

Each workshop afforded an opportunity to generate new ideas, some of which are already being implemented. In addition, the sessions helped further disseminate a culture of innovation at the company by presenting new working methods and approaches to look at complex challenges in a fresh light with unusual perspectives.

Support intrapreneurs in testing their ideas

A major player in social housing organised a series of hackathons that generated numerous innovative concepts related to the housing of the future. After the hackathons, six concepts were prioritised – one per region – with two-person teams appointed to lead the projects.

Throughout this initiative, Bartle supported the design and coordination of a six-month programme aimed at quickly testing all the concepts in the field to confirm or disprove their potential. The programme included inspiration meetings with intrapreneurs at other enterprises, a simple methodological framework to help each team ask the right questions, weekly coaching sessions, mentoring with start-up professionals and sharing seminars to provide constructive criticism on the progress of all the projects.

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