Swarming through the launch of a young girl grows

Master word of the speech on the company, sometimes used ad nauseam, innovation appears today as the key to survival and prosperity of companies subject to the tensions of the "hyper". But what is it exactly Innovation covers amount of different realities in the business daily, and we must be careful to assimilate the concept of scientific progress. In fact, many innovations have nothing to do with the progression of technology, or even with the development of new products. Peter Drucker, in his book "Innovation and entrepreneurship", already defined innovation as "the design and the realization of something new, yet unknown and non-existent, to establish new economic contributions from the combination of old, already known and existing elements giving them a new economic dimension". In this sense, innovation is the link that transforms a set of elements, each has a marginal efficiency, a powerful integrated system. Some do not hesitate to defend that innovate, this means reinventing the whole of the value of the business process, including to create new markets by responding to expectations not yet collected. Also, the identification of the most relevant ideas as well as the deployment of the means to meet the markets more quickly than competitors are essential parts of the dynamics of innovation. It likes to recall that Dell, hardware, or Toyota, in the car, were especially innovated in the production process; the issue is here considerable.

Innovate in economic models

Fundamental engine of industrial development, innovation has also won the services. Already, in the 1950s, is had the introduction of the self-service she not revolutionized distribution In fact, the great achievements in services are based precisely on the operation of deep innovations. Visionary in the distribution of Interior products, Ikea adopted the posture of the "dominant innovator", that of the actor that completely redefines the rules of the game in its area of intervention. By building a radically new production of the service economy, Southwest Airlines has revolutionized air transport of passengers and quickly eliminated competition in many destinations. Twenty years later, Ryanair or EasyJet followed suit by introducing the concept of the "low cost" service in Europe. From an original idea providing municipalities with street furniture financed by advertising , Jean-Claude Decaux has built a company soon copied by powerful Anglo-Saxon actors, which controls the display and signage more of 1.200 cities in the world. Thus, innovation materializes in the form that takes the service offering or transaction space in which consumption is. It is also involved at the level of the production process. Finally, it is often reformulation of a full economic model.

Thus in international comparisons for innovation such as the recent survey "Business Week" - BCG (1), there are providers who have established their success on economic logics without precedent, such as Starbuck, Virgin, eBay, Amazon or Target. Google, at the top of the rankings, is now much more than a search engine; It represents a "Web system", understood as a set of services designed to work together and enriched each other. In addition, Google plays completely open innovation card now providing public its technological mapping allowing everyone to express his creativity by building a very custom engine. But there while rest technology is allowing the production of a value without which the new economic model cannot emerge.

Most often, innovation materializes in the form of a new product technology content is high. This does not preclude the company to articulate several forms of innovation to take the best advantage of a breakthrough. Apple was able to create an exceptional level of customer experience through the combination of a remarkably designed product: iPod, an original management of the "ecosystem" of the editors of content, easily accessible software platform: iTunes, and creativity on the mark. When, in 2003, Microsoft is addressing the growing market of video game, the objective is to reach a wide audience, which grows to innovate in marketing for the launch of the Xbox 360 system. But it is a technical design very top of the console that the success was made possible. Successful commercial success, "technical" innovation offers the most powerful way to create wealth and jobs. Thus, the research and development (R & D) occupies a central position in the innovation process.

The different types of R & D

One commonly distinguishes basic research and applied research. However, when Hitachi manipulating matter at the atomic scale, this is a search database, but in the goal very applied to develop a new chip. It seems therefore useful to distinguish between the types of R & D according to their motivation.

Research motivated by curiosity is carried out on public funding. It involves risks, has applications in the medium or long term and can sometimes give rise to the award of Nobel Prize. Conducted in centres academic or public such as CNRS established in France in 1948 or the CSIR created in the same time in India or even international organizations such as CERN (Organisation European for nuclear research) in Geneva, it irrigates, timely R & D downstream. CERN indeed invented the architecture of the Internet World Wide Web to facilitate communication between researchers participating in a same experience on one of its accelerators. The name of "big science" is then used for these activities, because they require large infrastructure. This form of research is one of the best investments a country can make. It makes crucial contributions to industrial developments downstream, maintains a pool of scientists, and places the country in a position to credible actor in fruitful international exchange for the future.

A second type of research is motivated by the potential of commercial applications. It is normally conducted in the laboratories of the firms and private credits. Public centres are however involved

the bias of projects under contract, and assistance is often sought for the funding of R & D of industrial efforts. Thus, the American taxpayers support research "private" Science of life for about $ 1 billion per year. Beneficiaries, such as Pfizer or Merck, often receive these grants provided that involve external laboratories, public or academic. The State then contributing half the cost of the project in the logic of the "matching fund", also popular to Singapore or Taiwan. It should be recalled that the French effort in R & D, in particular the private sector on national soil, investment appears always insufficient next to its competitors, Japan, USA and Germany primarily.

R & D in the innovation process

Increased global competition, new products should be introduced at a faster rate. Therefore shorten development times, using the best made developments previously: this is what is called the logic of the platforms. In the case of automobiles, it is use for new parts as possible models already developed for previous updates. This of course also applies to much less complex systems, such as electric toothbrushes or players.

In the pharmaceutical industry, the innovation process is closely governed by regulations issued by the regulatory authorities, such as the EMEA (European Agency for the evaluation of the drugs) or FDA (Federal Drug Administration) in Washington. These agencies require more extensive clinical trials, which largely explains the increase in the cost of drug development. Which are currently of the order of 900 million per molecule introduced on the market. These costs include some of the developments that do not lead. It takes on average 11 years between the discovery of a molecule and its launch on the market. As a result, major players, such as GlaxoSmithKline or Eli Lilly, experimenting with the outsourcing of part of their research biotechnology laboratories located in Asia to reduce by half the cost of placing on the market of new drugs.

To increase the effectiveness of the innovation process, it becomes imperative to integrate the various stages of the process from the formulation of the idea until the introduction of the product on the market it is more then simply to manage the R & D function in its relationship with the rest of the company. The objective is no longer carry out of the R & D projects, followed by stages of industrialization, but rather to articulate and conduct of real innovation projects.

The multifunctional innovation project

As any separation tasks introduced risk of misunderstandings and less understanding of the constraints imposed by the "endorsement", the result of the above is that it must manage the process of innovation in the more continuous manner. The managerial jargon speaks of "seamless process", or process seamless. This posture requires that the innovation project is multi-functional. This means that, under the authority of a head of project engineers are working alongside specialists in the production or marketing, ergonomics or patent. This integration of skills is designed to anticipate what happens downstream and to upstream knowledge of markets and the desiderata customers, and the constraints imposed by the production and service purchases.

Such multifunctional projects need different skills: they must be able to manage personnel, technology, the business relation in the broad sense, "cultural differences" between the functions of the same firm, as well as those that exist between the participating firms, because the projects very often involve several companies. In addition, an innovation project generally includes contributors located on sites geographically very varied; a sophisticated use of electronic means of communication is therefore naturally necessary. It is therefore much asked for such project leaders. Many technology companies in which it denounces a real shortage of well trained project managers. Such training takes time and requires very proactive educational models.

An innovation deliberately oriented markets

With the increase in competitive pressure and the end of the 30 glorieuses in Europe, opened a new era, in which relevance, quality and efficiency of innovation become decisive for the company's profitable growth. The young shoots, where innovation is a reason to be, small and medium-sized enterprises and multinationals all have an urgent need to innovate. Need them to do an excellent knowledge of the market, which they must anticipate, and not follow the needs. Also different than BMW, Electronic Art, Staples or GE firms go farther (2). They do not hesitate to directly engage the creativity of the most committed clients, and this through the provision by Internet design tools assisted by easy to use computer and animation of open sites dedicated to the development of new products (3).

Thus, the R & D function has changed dramatically in the sense of a greater proximity to the market. It acquired a "business sense" that allows it to better interact with marketing or sales. It is clear the difficulty of this task in the case of firms in the consumer electronics or in the automotive sector, which must struggle constantly to innovate significantly, while reducing production costs and development times.

This essential opening the markets also applies to public laboratories, now driven by Governments to market their services to the industry. Therefore, research organizations, such as Harwell, in Britain, CSIR, South Africa, or Csiro, Australia, had to be transformed into commercial laboratories. An such metamorphosis is often long, and is often experienced as painful.

Return on investment in research

Valorisation of R & D until here considered is to develop new products to market. To align projects of innovation strategy of the company, it is necessary to use an analysis of the portfolio of projects. Simple and robust as management tool

should it be the instruments of management of technology, this analysis allows the players in the R & D, marketing and strategy to exchange their views on ongoing projects, for example, in dialogue on the benefit-difficulty reports, has held the knowledge of markets and competitors, they enrich significantly the collective business judgment.

Similarly, to ensure the monitoring of the actions and verify that they have the right level of priority, almost two thirds of technology companies have implemented what is called an "innovation Council". This Council, usually consisting of 4 to 6 leaders of diverse origins, meets regularly, every two months for example, to review the innovation projects critical for the future of the company. The Council ensures that the company is positioned in the best in its competitive environment and that the priority projects receive the support and resources.

The innovation Council also works on the effectiveness of the day before "techno-business", to identify emerging technologies that could in the future compromise or strengthen the position of the company. It is always difficult for a firm technological assimilate new technology that challenges its achievements. The inertia of knowledge is that the firm believes invulnerable. It is thus that lamp radio manufacturers have not adapted to the transistor or the Swiss watch industry has not seen fit to invest in the future of the electronic watch. Later, the Swatch offered to the Switzerland a brilliant contrast. Similarly, Kodak barely pass the analog film to digital.

Three routes to enhance R & D with external actors

In addition to mobilizing R & D to develop new products, the firm can use its expertise in research to strengthen by putting them in common with those of other companies. Thus formed alliances are mostly motivated by the desire to develop the business volume.

Three natural pathways of recovery are then exploited:

The sale of licenses based on the exploitation of patents, possibly in relation to the Lesi (Licensing Executives Society International) Organization. Indeed, the holder of a patent has a monopoly of manufacturing, distribution and sale of the products covered by the patent during its period of validity of twenty years. It may therefore assign licenses on the basis of his patent or sell his patent rights.

The commercialization of research projects under contract, activity that often faces the difficulty and cost of identifying the good external speaker interested in the proposed innovation.

Swarming through the launch of a young girl grows. Process full of hazards, success rates remain low, because of the combination of risk technical, commercial and managerial.

These three methods of recovery are also available for public research. Organizations involving then as service providers and must carefully choose the most appropriate way. In all cases, marketing innovation, research units sell in reality of competitiveness.

The firm opened its innovation process to the outside

Under the pressure of competition and the need to move quickly, while innovative effectively, technology companies seek to strengthen their innovation processes by partnerships or acquisitions of innovations. Firms such as Generics, of British origin, Batelle or Cellon in the United States, and HTC, Flextronics, Quanta, Prime, Wipro or Compal, mainly implemented Taiwan and Singapore, provide solutions relevant to the concern of delegation of the innovation process.

Is that recently that large enterprises are passed to the action in this field, with increasing activity in the areas of pharmacy, consumer electronics, telephony and networking equipment. Talking and "open innovation" or "distributed innovation" (4).

In short, the argument is as follows. The technology company naturally seeks efficiency in its innovation process. The goal is to seduce consumers by an offer for a higher sale price. This efficiency is to delay the erosion of prices as a result of global competition. To increase the scope of opportunities, must be largely open to external inputs of competence centres: academics and public or research under contract, young shoots, etc. Acquire and integrate such external flows is neither easy nor really cheap. On the other hand, outsourcing development presents risks in the medium term. However, commercial success experienced by certain groups are precisely based on innovations acquired outside. These include Johnson & Johnson or Cisco among other companies recognized for their ability to build commercial success from ideas "assimilated" from the outside.

Sources of technology to combine to effectively develop the new offering are "distributed innovation". To benefit, the technology company must be an effective watchman of the external technological scene. It must also be an architect of innovation, at the same time as manufacturer of innovation. It must demonstrate a capacity to absorb external inputs and merge them with internal know-how. This again reinforces the importance of mobilizing successful innovation projects leaders.

Under the combined effect of the technical evolution of the focus on profitable growth of the firm to generate a high "value to the shareholder" and the intensity of international competition, the technology company must overhaul its system of innovation to more open to external contributions. This is not only to manage the internal process of innovation, but also to lead innovation multi-stakeholder projects to ensure the best chance to be in the optimal competitive position.

In this context, the R & D must have a clear idea as to its specific areas of excellence, to contribute to the competitiveness of the firm to which it belongs or the client to which it sells its innovation capacity. Technology must maintain the skills that go hand in hand with its culture. It must add a supplement of soul of commercial gasoline: it has never been as vital for a firm to be excellent on the technical plan; but this was never as insufficient