Innovation workshop

According to PwC's 2013 global survey of 246 decision-makers, 93% believe that innovation has strong revenue-generating potential. Over the previous three years, PwC highlighted a gap of 66 billion euros between the most innovative companies and the 20% least innovative.

While it's widely accepted that innovation is a source of economic growth, it's less clear how less tangible forms of innovation can be. Let's not forget that innovation is often understood to mean the development of new technologies, leading to the creation of new products and/or the implementation of new processes. This biased vision, highly oriented towards the technological dimension, is no doubt due to the fact that this is the most visible dimension, and implies major changes in production practices and tools/processes. However, innovations resulting from research and development represent only a small part of innovation. The introduction of new concepts for a company/structure, the introduction of new services for a market/sector and the adaptation of products/services to a new clientele are also forms of innovation. For this reason, the OECD adopts an inclusive definition of innovation, which identifies 4 main types of innovation:

• Product innovation, 
• Process innovation, 
• Marketing innovation, 
• Organizational innovation.

Unlike other types of innovation, which are highly focused on innovation output, individuals and their interactions are at the heart of organizational innovation. The implementation of a new organizational method in practices, the organization of the workplace and/or relations with stakeholders and the company's environment, all depend closely on the human dimension. They make more room for individual initiative and collective work. Examples include the following initiatives:

• "The Seven-Day Weekend" by Ricardo Semler, CEO of SEMCO, who preaches taking breaks to better solve problems;
• The liberated company by Jean-François Zobrist, the former director of FAVI, where the hierarchical structure has been erased to encourage teams to listen fully, in an approach that is fully refocused on the customer;
• Some companies have even broken down the boundaries separating them from their customers, such as MorningStar, which offers investment information in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia, and whose customers are investors, financial advisors, asset managers...

These companies, far from being unique cases, have adopted a logic of strategic alignment, increasingly crushing vertical structures and thus favoring agile, flexible and rapid interactions. As innovation can come from the lowest levels of the hierarchy, reducing the response time between the top and the bottom of the hierarchical structure has become essential to developing opportunities for innovation. Today, multiple hierarchical levels make it impossible to respond in time to stakeholders' expectations and to take advantage of opportunities present in the environment. "Crushing" the structure is a strategic challenge that is more restrictive in large groups that suffer from communication problems, preventing exchanges and the appropriation of innovative projects by teams. De-hierarchization is an organizational innovation that calls into question the company's structure, its boundaries and even its role. The aim is to create an inclusive environment conducive to ideas and initiatives, especially innovative ones.

To boost their innovative potential, companies are increasingly allowing employees to develop "personal" projects during paid working hours. In 1948, 3M invented the Post-it. The practice has since been adopted and adapted by many companies, even giants like Google, Renault and Air France-Sodeci. These companies devote part of their budgets to funding, training and even career development schemes to encourage their employees' creativity.

The aim of this seminar is to gain a better understanding of organizational innovations and their impact on other forms of innovation, on company structure and boundaries, and on financial and social performance, through exchanges between researchers and professionals.

The first round table will analyze the mechanisms deployed to implement organizational innovations. In the second panel, we'll look at the impact of these innovations on the company's potential, and in particular on other types of innovation.

This seminar is organized in partnership with the RRI and AIREPME networks.

The (provisional) seminar program is as follows:

8:30: Seminar opens 

09:00 - 12:00: First round table: Talking about organizational innovation, moderated by Sophie Boutillier, Université du Littoral.

• Laure Morel, Lorraine University.
• Caroline Diard, EDC Paris Business School.
• Dante I. Levya-de la Hiz, Montpellier Business School.
• Daniel Bonnet, I.P&M and ISEOR Université de Jean-Moulin Lyon 3.

12:00-14:00: Lunch 

14:00 - 17:00: Second round table: What if organizational innovation were the new lever for innovation? moderated by Ouidad Yousfi , University of Montpellier.

• Agnès Beligond, Unité Innovation Transfo Inno Lab, Agence Régionale de Développement Economique.
• Fabien Mieyeville, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1.
• Sandra Fagbohoum, Université de Lorraine.
• Florence Loose, Claude Fabre, and Maryline Bourdil, MRM-Université de Montpellier.

5:30 pm: Closing of the seminar.

Organizers:

• Ouidad Yousfi: MCF-HDR in Finance (University of Montpellier - Montpellier Research in Management)
• Zied Ftiti: Professeur (EDC Paris Business School Observatoire et Centre de Recherche en Entrepreneuriat)
• Annie Bellier Delienne: MCF-HDR in Finance (University of Cergy- Pontoise Laboratoire Thema Chaire Gestion des risques et financement des PME)