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.

Let’s enter a new era! Read more

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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If disruption is real for innovative industrial companies that are changing their models, this is not necessarily the case for their users. Think about it: can you provide one example of innovation that emerged truly from nowhere and radically altered peoples’ habits?

When Gutenberg invented the printing press in the fifteenth century, he aggregated three elements: paper, which came from China two centuries before; the press of winemakers and artisans, which he perfected; and lead typefaces, the alloy of which he, as a goldsmith, improved. Gutenberg revolutionized the production of the written word. In so doing, he accelerated the dissemination of ideas, and yet, he did not break the behavior of reading. The invention of the printing press was a disruptive innovation for the monks but not for the faithful readers of the Bible.

From the point of view of a company, innovation can be disruptive. When a business model no longer works, it is obviously strategic to change it. Though beneficial over the long term, this transformation can be tumultuous. The implementation of innovation can be a painful process, for employees and managers alike. The disruption is imposed by the evolution of the competitive, social, economic or environmental environment. It is not chosen. Who would consciously decide to experience a rupture?

From the point of view of users, customers, and citizens, evolution is only ever chosen, Read more

Let’s observe! And build a new world of client surveys.

Qualitative studies based on statements are unsuitable for understanding the lives of consumers. They are based on what they say they do but not on what they actually do. Why? Simply because they are carried out of the contexts of real life, and out of context, no one is aware of his behaviors.

But to innovate, it is crucial to rely on the truth of today usages before designing new worlds. If declarative studies are unreliable, where will we find the raw material for innovation?

Only the observation can activate the awareness-raising on the daily life.

If you ask me to describe you the way I prepare the family breakfast with my children, there is a good chance that I’m telling you nonsense. Not because I would want to cheat you, but because I am not aware of all these micro gestures, these habits, these reflexes that I show only when I am standing in my kitchen, with my kids heckling around me.

But if you shot me in my kitchen and then you showed me that video, Read more