Christian Auriach
My expertise The mechanisms of hypergrowth
My job To teach and advise
My past experiences Partner at Accenture, banking (Europe and Asia), aerospace & defense engineer
My skills Strategic agility, Innovation Management, AI planning
The universities where I teach ESCP Business School and Celsa Sorbonne
The clients I advise Any organization wishing to adapt its strategic approach to a rapidly changing environment, professionalize its innovation approach, improve its ROI while stimulating the creativity of its internal and external ecosystem. Current customers workforce : from a few hundred to 200 000 employees.
The clients I coach SME and ScaleUp leaders with a hypergrowth and AI-leverage challenge
My hobbies Literature, art, sport, chess
My current research theme How AI democratizes the use of methods and techniques previously reserved for very large companies and very high stakes. Examples include: AI-powered Trend Management and Scenario Planning; TRIZ (from products to services: a powerful alternative to design thinking); IPM (Innovation Portfolio Management); Real Options (a powerful alternative to the business case logic in uncertain contexts).
Mobility : countries I worked in​
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Europe : France, UK, Belgium, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Hungary, Czech Republic
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Saudi Arabia
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Guinea
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China
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US
Some numbers
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Set-up and developed a 100 M€ consulting practice
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Advised 50+ bluechips, 150+ SMEs, StartUps and ScaleUps
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Trained 1000+ professionals at executive, director and manager levels
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Teached 250+ university students
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Coached 50+ SME, StartUp and ScaleUp leaders
Publications (extract - see also )
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Pro en consulting (Vuibert)
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Le Mondialitron (Infimes & Scenent)
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Logistikos (Infimes & Scenent)
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AimSee (Infirmes & Scenent)
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Avocats 2020 (Scenent)
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Cinema 2020 (Scenent)
Methods, techniques, tools (extract)
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Blue ocean strategy, Open innovation, ISO 56002
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Strategic system thinking, TRIZ
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SAFe for business executives
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Real Options valuation, Lean, Lean Startup, Lean for service​
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Trend Management, Scenario planning, Strategic Group Analysis
Languages
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French : native (spoken, read, written)
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English : fluent (spoken, read, written)
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Spanish : read
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German : notions
Diplomas
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Aerospace engineer (Sup'aéro, ISAE, Toulouse, France)
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Master in Business Consulting (ESCP Business School, Paris, France)
A few lessons learned from experience​
Combining AI (not just any AI) and strategic analysis tools, even and especially complex ones, gives rapid and effective results
Spotting a contradiction is good news : it is a reservoir of innovation
A good strategy poorly executed is better than a bad strategy well executed (ask WeWork, Kodak, Blockbuster, Nokia, and a bunch of StartUps and ScaleUps that make-up the unsuccessful part of innovation portfolios)
The average success rate of innovation project portfolios improves dramatically over the years, globally
Neither top-down nor bottom-up strategies are virtuous. Only strategies that are widely shared and aligned with both sustainable trends and the organization's key assets prove effective.
The most successful innovators are BOTH agile AND planners (ask Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn)
Business plan have never been suitable for innovative projects. They destroy value.
They are really suitable, however, for modernization projects.
Decision trees and real options valuation are suited to uncertain contexts, in particular innovation projects. They fit perfectly into agile methods deployments.
You do not manage an innovative project the way you manage a modernization project. And you do not manage a project leveraging AI the way you manage other projects.
ISO 56002 does not tell you how you can improve your innovation portfolio success rate and your innovation ROI. A state-of-the-art IPM process (Innovation Portfolio Management) does.
An AI-powered project begins with a data mastery challenge. It ends with the challenge of getting the right people on board to train and fine-tune the AI ​​agents. Well, actually it should be the other way around.
No less than 6 types of AI can be mobilized in an organization. And 2 of these types of AI have been working perfectly for decades: inference engines (medical diagnosis in oncology for example) and fuzzy logic systems (example : anti-skid systems for cars).
At least a dozen generic AI use cases are deployable in most organizations. They need to be made known and accepted by a critical number of contributors to prime the pump.
Accessibility awareness​
When I was a child, I believed that my many friends in wheelchairs represented the norm, and that I, being able-bodied, was a kind of exception. I grew up in Lamalou-les-bains, a small town in Hérault (south of France) that specialized at the time in welcoming and rehabilitating people with motor disabilities through a dense network of adapted centers. My father, a doctor - the town was populated by caregivers, patients and their families - was an activist for the inclined plane, throwing a black rage every time he passed a public building in front of which a monumental staircase seemed to say: people with motor disabilities, move on.
Times have changed a little, but there is still a long way to go. This is evidenced by the difficulties encountered in simply equipping the entrance to an office with an inclined plane, even a removable one. To achieve this modest objective, it is necessary to convince people of the relevance of a pragmatic solution that does not harm anyone, neither the neighborhood, nor visitors, nor employees. But for this to happen, at least three different official services must agree! On this subject, we believe that we must constantly progress, in particular by training architects from their first years of study, by making them aware that this is not a detail, but a necessity. Too many of them still consider that they must play the derogation game.
So I team up with my interlocutors to carefully select the places where I am required to teach, train, advise, coach, give conferences, lead meetings and workshops, as well as their access. I take into account not only the motor disability that I know better than others, but also visual, hearing, psychological, intellectual disabilities, or those resulting from a disabling disease.
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