Shifting scopes – The evolution of innovation management perimeters

Rémi MANIAK is a Professor at the École Polytechnique, in the Management Innovation Entrepreneurship department and a researcher at i3-Center for Management Research. He is a graduate of ESCP and a doctor of the École Polytechnique.

His work focuses on innovation management, particularly in large companies. He studies the relevant R&D structures for innovation, as well as the methods of cooperation between companies.

He has published his work in journals such as Journal of Product Innovation Management, Industrial and Corporate Change, International Journal of Project Management or Project Management Journal.

What project are you currently working on? 

I am currently preparing a Habilitation to Direct Research. It is a summary of the evolution of my work and my field of research. In particular, I show that the scope of innovation management has largely evolved compared to the traditional model of development project management.

In terms of time, a double expansion can be highlighted. On the one hand, upstream, new “ambidexterity” practices are deployed in order to articulate development projects with exploration activities (for example, research departments, advanced engineering or Innovation Labs). On the other hand, the innovation process tends to extend downstream of projects according to a “lineage program” logic, which makes it possible to best exploit the learning achieved during the first project and deploy it on other innovative products.

On the organizational level, we see a clear trend towards broadening the scope of innovation projects to more numerous and more varied contributors (startups, cities, etc.). Within these projects that we have called “proto-ecosystems”, the steering aims not only to design a common technical solution, but also to test and stabilize the interdependence relationships between the actors and the viability of the business ecosystem.

A third extension concerns the evaluation of projects. Traditionally, a project is economically evaluated on its direct results (margin). Our research on “Full Value” has shown the importance of integrating into this evaluation on the one hand the leverage effect of innovation on the sales of other products or services of the firm, and on the other hand on the way in which the project could regenerate the assets of the company (skills, brand, etc.). The value of a project is then much broader than the innovation that it has directly produced.

Beyond these changes in scope, what are the new attitudes to develop in an innovation situation?

I would like to emphasize the radical change in posture in the face of uncertainty.

Classic methods of steering innovation focus on the quality of the forecast, the reduction of risks a priori and the convergence towards an objective set ex ante. However, if these principles are adapted for incremental innovations, they are much less so for more radical innovations, where we know full well that nothing will happen as planned, given the level of uncertainty about the technology, the market or costs.

For this type of innovation, several recent theories converge to encourage us to pilot an innovation project like a sort of learning machine.

Thus, discovery driven planning is based on the prior identification of areas of uncertainty, and the steering of the project by action plans aimed at exploring these uncertainties with a minimum of resources.

The lean startup model takes this principle into the context of startups, adding the imperative of multiplying iterations with the market, and of modifying the offer quickly (“pivoting”) based on customer feedback.

Effectuation encourages us to start not from the objective, but from the resources (often meager) that we have available to launch ourselves on the market as soon as possible with what we have, gradually building an attractive offer and associated skills.

These theories and methods are the opposite of an intuitive “ballistic” view of project management.

Propos recueillis par Marie Claude Cléon