Innovation performance
Consultant, speaker at Celsa Sorbonne University and affiliated professor at ESCP Business School, Christian Auriach draws on his field experience as much as his research work to offer targeted seminars adaptable to the context and expectations of the participants. Founder of Scenent, he previously held management positions at Accenture (Process & Innovation Performance lead), Matra Cap Systèmes (now part of Airbus) and Crédit Lyonnais (International Management - Europe & Asia). A graduate of ISAE - Sup’aéro, he also holds a specialized Master’s degree in Business Consulting from ESCP Business School. He is co-author of the book Pro en consulting published by Vuibert.
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Field connexion Involvement in the field transformation of 10 to 15 client organizations at any given time.
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Attentive Continuous monitoring function, advanced documentary research methods and tools.
Innovation performance: challenges and advances
Out of 10 innovative initiatives, 1 to 2 are successful. The others fail within three years, or eke out a living without managing to find sustainable development paths. This statistic applies to both microstructures being created and established multinationals. However, some players stand out and manage innovation portfolios with an average success rate that can exceed 50%, without sacrificing the necessary boldness and acceptance of the concomitant level of uncertainty. They are as diverse as online cultural media, bold industrialists, software publishers, or citizen science ecosystems. It's easy to measure the impact that a simple 5-point gain in success rate can have on an organization operating at the national or global level.
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But success rates aren't everything. Stimulating creativity, protecting the spirit of initiative, equipping oneself, distinguishing between different innovation cultures and adapting to them, developing an innovative strategy itself, prioritizing the right business models, training and mobilizing the right people, working on one's ecosystem, identifying assets with potential, focusing investment in time and communication, implementing the right decision-making and arbitration processes, comparing oneself to benchmark unicorns, all this can be summed up as "managing innovation." And innovation cannot be managed like any other subject.
Advances in innovation management
The discipline of innovation management has progressed enormously in recent years. The world has more than a quarter of a century of experience with the explosion of agile approaches (the manifesto of the same name dates back to 2001), initially applied to digital agendas, then rolled out across a wide range of professions, from the most advanced R&D, mobilizing scientific profiles, to sales functions, including the back office, factories, and the supply chain. Design thinking, TRIZ, C-K—these are just some of the names of methods that have been deployed in both services and industry, until those responsible for investing in innovation began to become concerned. How can we gain a minimum level of visibility into the performance of innovation approaches, without settling for the catch-all answer of "innovation performance is an oxymoron," "the two concepts are antithetical," etc.?
There is good news on this front. Just look at the unicorn statistics: the conversion rate of venture-backed innovation initiatives into unicorns has increased tenfold in 10 years. Academics and practitioners have taken a closer look at these topics, and it turns out that there are best practices and proven methods for following in the footsteps of leaders in innovation performance.