Your advisor on innovation strategy

I have decided to share what I have learned, in 15 thematic carousels. Each time, a concrete topic: leading an R&D function, driving innovation at the executive committee level, creating an international joint venture, setting up a Corporate Venture fund, transforming an organisation, and so on.

We start today with the 7 decisions an R&D Director must make in their first 100 days.

I have led R&D teams at L'Oréal, Kao, Essilor Group and Nikon, Groupe SEB, Maison MGA and Thuasne. With every new role, the same 7 decisions kept coming back. They are not in the textbooks, but they make all the difference.

If you are an R&D Director or about to become one, this carousel is for you. These are the choices I wish someone had explained to me before I took my first leadership role.

Comment and share if this resonates.

The 5 dimensions of a Chief Innovation Officer.

The role of Chief Innovation Officer doesn't appear in any management textbook. When I created this role on the Executive Committee of Groupe SEB, everything had to be invented.

Eight years later, I have come to understand that this role rests on five dimensions. None is sufficient on its own. The five, taken together, change a company's trajectory.

If you hold this role or are considering creating it, here is what experience has taught me.

What if your biggest constraint hides your next innovation lever?

In 2014, Air New Zealand turned a duty no one listens to, the safety video, into a global phenomenon. Directed by Taika Waititi, with Elijah Wood and Peter Jackson, themed around The Hobbit: 16 million views in a week.

What makes this case fascinating, in my view, is the convergence of three dimensions:

→ Turning a forced constraint into a memorable customer experience → Creating value by crossing the worlds of aviation, cinema and tourism → Making regulatory content into a viral brand vehicle

Innovation here is born from a different look at an everyday constraint.

What about you? Which day-to-day obligation in your business deserves to be rethought?

It's not always the discoverer we remember. It's the one who convinces.

In 1927, Georges Lemaître, a Belgian priest and physicist, mathematically demonstrated that the universe is expanding.

Two years later, Edwin Hubble published his observations and the famous relation between the velocity and distance of galaxies.

The result: for decades, people would speak of Hubble's law… and Lemaître would remain in the shadows.

It's not always the one with the idea who reaps the benefits, but the one who can formulate it, make it credible and spread it.

In business, the same logic sometimes applies: the one who articulates clearly often leaves a stronger mark than the one who finds.

Isn't true leadership about valuing intuition as much as demonstration?