It starts from the human; and it creates more competitiveness and growth than technology.

Recent developments in the economic world have brought a new paradigm of innovation based on the Experience. Behind this statement lies a very simple imperative: the need to put people at the heart of the creation process of business models.

Attentive to innovation trends, the Public Investment Bank (BPI) recently announced its intention to fund non-technological innovation. Although all companies have not yet adopted that approach, I was pleased to note that a larger number of entrepreneurs get interest in new methods of innovation focused on the usages and needs of individuals. Good news, because the analysis shows they create more value for businesses.

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More than half of the world population does not live in decent housing. How can Lafarge, which traditionally addresses key accounts, find a growth opportunity there?

Simply by an approach of innovation by the usages. Lafarge noted that millions of people around the world are working and are solvent, but live in houses (in hard) that they do not own. And therefore they do not renovate them, since without a property title they do not have access to credit. Lafarge's teams therefore built their affordable housing solutions in 2010.

What is it exactly? Buckets of retarded ready-mix concrete, designed for individuals and to be delivered by rickshaw directly at the heart of Indian slums, inaccessible to concrete mixers. Earth-cement, a new cement that mixes with raw earth to make an ecological adobe and avoids the cooking, responsible of the deforestation. Or programs of microfinance to sustain the afforable housing.

Lafarge has therefore built a new business model that creates value by the usages for the residents of favelas and slums, and economic value for the corporation.

Photo (c) Lafarge

Mumbai, the city of Bollywood and of its famous movie stars. But it's also the city where more than 60% of the population lives in slums. Traditionally, municipalities destroy them and relocate their inhabitants in new structures. Even if that ruins the existing social bonds and the economy in these areas.

The urban planners from Urbz intend to give the people a voice on the future of their home and on the rebuilding of their neighborhood. And of course, when you put the users at the heart of the discussions, you discover that they do not over invest in the rehabilitation of their homes simply because they fear to be dislodged at any time. When Urbz launches its Homegrown Cities project, they invite the inhabitants to a participative urban upgrading approach. And it works! Pilot experiments, new infrastructures of urban development: hand in hand, residents, architects and entrepreneurs invent their city of tomorrow.

Photo: Urbz

I already mentioned here the importance of observation to understand what is the real life of people. It is related to the fact that out of context, no one is ever conscious of his actions, and that the awareness of the daily life is precisely activated by the context.

Do not listen to what I say: my memories are wrong!

New discoveries in neuroscience have confirmed this. First we learn that our memories are not perfect recordings of our experiences, but now we discover that we change them each and every time we recall them to the consciousness.

Memory is not reliable.

The psychologist Elizabeth Loftus had done a famous experiment a long time ago on what she called the false memory syndrome. She had submitted to two dozen people a paper detailing four events that had occurred in their infancy. Three facts were real. The fourth one was purely fictitious. It described how, at the age of five, the children had been lost in a shopping center and saved by a stranger. When she interviewed the subjects, a quarter of them remembered having been lost, and remembered even with a remarkable attention to detail. "I was crying and I remember that day… I thought I’d never see my family again." "An older man approached me... He had a flannel shirt on… I remember my mom told me never to do that again". Except that there had never been a man in flannel shirt or a warning from the mother.
The discovery of the unreliability of memories has changed the turn of number of trials in the United States.
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