Digitalizing Innovation and R&D Practices
The KEPLER Answer to the Challenges of Innovation and R&D Teams, four main fields of action
When it comes to «Inventing the business of tomorrow» and «Engaging the R&D community in future projects», one question keeps coming up:
How to boost the sources of internal or external innovation and promote the emergence of meaningful concepts offering added value?
Regarding the «Optimizing the return on investment of activities» and «Reducing the Time-To-Market for products/services» challenges, the question of efficiency is crucial. It can be considered at two levels:
- overall management of R&D and innovation projects
- operational product development
The Digitization of Means of Collaboration and Ideas Generation
Business organizations are increasingly complex and dense in expertise. Sources of innovation exist but lack of visibility. Promoting the activation of internal innovation sources, collaborative and idea generation platforms such as Qmarket* or Planbox* enable to capitalize on the expertise and creativity of resources. These solutions provide a trusted environment favoring innovation by offering a simple and transparent ideation process. Similar to a social network, all the collaborators can share their ideas in a spontaneous way or through challenges, and can also vote and comment on the ideas they deem the most promising. Employees thus become drivers in the ideation process, which is a key factor of commitment for future projects. While some platforms are dedicated to the facilitation of internal communities within the company, others offer to build a real innovation ecosystem with external partners also favoring the activation of external innovation sources. These are all the most useful in the context of a start-up / large group or supplier / customer relationship.
These Concepts on Everyone’s Lips
AI or Artificial Intelligence
Used more or less wisely and haloed by the flattering term «Intelligence», this technology promises to simulate human reasoning to the point of surpassing it with its unparalleled computing power. However, between the Hollywood vision and the state of the art of this technology in today’s businesses, it is necessary to distinguish «strong AI» from «weak AI». To this day, this technology is still very dependent on human intelligence, both in the collection of usable data, and in the design of algorithms able to implement such computing power.
Blockchain
The Blockchain is a frightening technology in the country of these concepts that we need to summarize in thirty seconds. Initially associated with currencies of a new kind, the blockchain is summarized as follows: a growing list of records, called blocks, that are cryptographically linked. If that is not clear enough, blockchain is a technology offering a holistic reading of various events, a sort of super ledger, permanently accessible, and that you can associate with any type of data source as long as it can be quantified and modified between multiple parties. It can be movements of goods around the world, of bytes within a computer network, or document flows, whether they relate to the construction of complex contracts or the filing of high-level technical patents. For organizations seeking transparency and overview over a complex universe, the blockchain is a research path filled with potentials.
RPA or Robotic Process Automation
RPA is a technology that automates or process in batches repetitive and time-consuming tasks. RPA combines speed of execution and a high degree of security by eluding traditional human errors. Operational actors benefiting from this assistance can thus focus their efforts on singular tasks with greater added value, which is the main argument in favor of this technology
MDM or Master Data Management
Master Data Management is a technological discipline where business lines and information technology (“IT”) work together to ensure uniformity, accuracy, semantic consistency and real-time analysis of businesses’ official data assets. Data being considered as the new fuel or the new gold of the 21st century business lines, it is easy to understand why a good data management has became a strategic axis for most organizations. Facing the amount of information available within R&D teams (referred to as “Data Lakes”), business lines data (products or formulas) or data from patents, algorithms (and therefore Artificial Intelligence) are a strong potential lever. The new functions associated with the management of this data, such as «Data Scientists» or «Data Analysts», are a coveted keystone and therefore highly sought after.
Open Innovation ou l’innovation “libérée”
Open Innovation is not a technology, but rather a mode of innovation based on sharing and collaboration. The level of maturity of large companies in terms of open innovation in connection with young companies are constantly increasing and these collaborations have a strong impact for the vast majority of them. Open Innovation allows to innovate collectively and to create privileged relationships with start-ups.
