Innovations from all over the world – RNDI 2014 (2/2)

Radical and outstanding innovations was the focus of the 7th  National Meeting of Innovation Directors hold in Paris last June.

The summit split into two parts, the Hermes award winners ceremony, and a series of thematic panels and lectures.

Thematic panels

My friend Yann Cramer and I had the chance to moderate thematic sessions. They are the opportunity to listen to brief presentations, followed by a debate between panelists. Below are a few take-aways.

Health, Fitness, Beauty, and Well-being

• Taking temperature without contact with an optical point, and reading it on the wall or on the forehead of your child, is now possible with Tecnimed;

• Makeup Genius by Loreal is a mobile app, a make-up simulator to test make-up products on your face with your mobile phone;

Some insights from the panel:

• ‘For an innovation to work, it requires meaning; innovation needs time to incubate, it nurtures in an environment of goodwill;’
• ‘One shall not remain stubborn, and know when put things on hold: an idea can make a come back 20 years later, some ideas are persistent!’
• ‘Innovation doesn’t fit into boxes: we did not limit ourselves, and they thought we were crazy.’

Handicap and dependance

• Essilor holds innovation in its DNA thanks to 25% of his employees being shareholders, and a strong policy of partnership (over 200 since 2005). It focuses now on low cost glasses at $2, and wishes to address a 50 millions people market;
• Tobii provides an eye tracker for every device;
• With Nao, Aldebarran designs a cute robot which wants to be accepted by human beings, ‘for what it is more than for what it does’. It interacts with voice and eyes, and initiates an emotional relationship. Aldebarran has created a specific Ask Nao line for autism, and also works on embedded robotics in cars.

Education, culture, and knowledge

• Share my lesson believes tablet is a fabulous opportunity for teaching: ‘we are digital, always open, we plan to build upon tablets, it’s non conflict at all, even more, 100% complementary. Tablets are an incredibly disruptive tech for the class room, to meet the children with a collaborative tool, design adaptative learning, put every kid in front of the tablet and feed where they are, and move at various spaces’;
• Senai adds a comment: ‘let’s not give all the responsabilities to digital, we’ll always need the touch of the machine’.

Industry, systemes, and networks

• SolideXpress opens a new era of 3D manufacturing, printing bricks for houses, 50% lighter, prosthesis that can be frequently replaced, unbelievable parts in sugar or chocolate or without shape, for nano tech, and via biomimetism.
• Fives brings flexibility in manufacturing: by enabling instant-settings in the manufacturing line, it delivers mass-customisation. Factories are heading toward smaller sites, producing sophisticated and lighter materials, and getting smart (connected factories) for maintenance, and quality monitoring;
• BA Systemes is a leader in automated handling and storage, and especially Automated Guided Vehicles, and a pioneer in open innovation since 2007. It has recently designed a robot able to drill 11000 holes for a swimming pool, a robot used in radiography, a Cobot (Mobile Collaborative Service Robots), and a robot for reeducation;
• Enovasense measures thickness without any contact, through laser and infrared sensor: no more probe whose contact with a part can spoil it, Enovasense heats up the workpiece with laser, and detects the thermal flow, brilliant! Applications in the industry are endless;

[vimeo=https://vimeo.com/100647155]

• Sigfox is the low-cost operator for Internet of Things: below 1 yearly euro to connect your object, and soon without battery, with self-powered objects through future Sigfox radio chips; at the opposite of high throughput, Sigfox promotes low bandwidth for electricity meters, alarms, tensiometers, glucometers, city sensors, in a frugal innovation move. Sigfox uses a radio network with antennas covering dozen of kilometers, so you can bring your connected object with you within this surface.
• PSA Head of Research and Advanced Engineering Jean-Marc Finot presents an Hybrid Air car, on the path toward fuel consumption of 2 l/100 km, which is the amazing result of a fast-track entrepreneurial innovation process: a small team with a commando state of mind, acting in a start-up mode, with a sense of urgency and a feeling of pride;

• We were bluffed by Patrice Reilhac, Innovation & Collaborative Research director at Valeo, presenting the car that parks itself in; intuitive driving combines connected car,  embedded sensors, cameras and a laser scanner, with partial automation, and offers you a valet in your pocket: the car can even get out of its parking place to fetch you.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5eK1dCuSk4]

Food and Agriculture

• Terrena, is a new type of agriculture: the ‘watchkeepers of the earth’ as they call themselves, are testers who experiment, infocasters who spread and convince, passionates who talk to consumers, and share their love for ‘their’ agriculture. It entices accuracy (the unit is a parcel, sowing is precise to 1 cm to do without weedkillers), and several technologies to coinnovate to map the soil, use SMS to monitor fungal disease, or measure himidity and physcal stress with probes;
• PAT is a companys which seems coming out Encounters of the Third Kind: it develops carnivorous plants which produce rare compounds like liquid proteins similar to human genes;

City life and Public services

• 27eme region is headed by Stephane Vincent. It is an amazing task force which impulses, and coaches innovations in the public sector. Public sector is adopting modern innovation methods, like immersion (among users), observation, participation, design, and prototypage. 27eme region supports various kind of challenges: 1) re-thinking a regional policy within 5 days, helping public servants to redesign their organization; 2) connecting high-schools to digital, more than a new equipment, revisiting behaviours with ‘inverse class’ (students viewing lesson on video at home, and raising questions at school), and Q&A or QCM executed on mobile handsets; 3) simplifying social administrative request from a user point of view, and testing the new process with 2000 people; 4) imagining himself in the shoes of a start-up, and retracing the entrepreneurial path in the administration labyrinth.

Related post (1/1)

image credits : Pierre Metivier RNDI Album,

Radical and outstanding innovations was the focus of the 7th National Meeting of Innovation Directors hold in Paris last June.

‘Radical innovations mark a new era linked to performance far greater than at previous times. They are unusual, hence their “extraordinary” dimension. They appear at the end of a great wave of innovations, after the purely scientific and technical phase.’ explains master of ceremony Marc Giget.

Radical and extraordinary also involve social: are there access to key services (health, education, travel, housing, fulfilling jobs….) for those people who have in the past always been excluded? The 7th National meeting of chief Innovation Officers explores the world of innovations which improve life in an extraordinary way.’

The summit split into two parts, the Hermes award winners ceremony, and a series of thematic panels and lectures.

Hermes Award Ceremony

1. Haier

Haier is headed by his CEO, Zhang Ruilin, toward user-centric innovation for consumer electronics and home appliances: he set-up the washing machine that one can visit! Innovation starts from people’s needs, Haier believes in grassroot innovation, or inverted pyramid where innovation moves bottom-up. Haier runs user-centric platforms for design (‘690 platform’), a network of innovators for R&D, and develops social initiatives (Hope project for education : “sincerely giving back to society”);

2 Fraunhofer

Fraunhofer Institutes are bridging the gap between research institutes and industry & startups in Germany with a network of 67 institutes and research units.

3 Interface

Interface is an ‘all green’ leader, aiming at ‘mission Zero’:

• Interface is the inventor of carpet tile which provides flexibility, and lets you reorganize space over time;
• Its French factory manufactures 13 m2 of carpet tile module per hour, with a fully carbon-neutral footprint:
• Carpet raw material represents 65% of the polluting impact; therefore Interface uses vegetal fiber, and carpet standard set-up is performed without any glue;
• Interface commits to coinnovation to invent future solutions, with new technologies, and develops networks to refine supply chain and build inclusive business.

4 Sharemylesson

Sharemylesson is a sharing platform for teaching resources, designed by, and for professors. It comes near 300 000 online resources, and 3 m teachers are using it: “they want to improve their teaching, be helped to be more effective in their classroom with their students. Suppport is based on what students need, many resources are explicitely for students, for example practice sheets for students. Creativity comes from the teachers. It covers all grade levels. Peer review makes best supports emerge. The resources are owned by the teachers, they get credit, and they have followers. Sharemylesson does not sell, it is public domain: we do not control who uses it. Freedom of speech. Free to share to any teacher”.

5 Rewalk, Argo’s exoskelet

Rewalk is an exskeleton technology that aims at making the user independant. It’s globally easy to use, you just click and start to walk: “ReWalk controls movement using subtle changes in center of gravity, mimics the natural gait pattern of the legs, and provides functional walking speed. A forward tilt of the upper body is sensed by the system, which triggers the first step”.

We had a very impressive and moving demo on stage.

Paralysed athlete Claire Lomas finished the London Marathon in her bionic Rewalk suit, 16 days after she set off.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Xd27c-pz4Y]

6 Siel bleu

Siel bleu promotes physical activity as a therapy for health acre and wellness, with specific programs targeted to freshly retired, senior citizen at home or in residence, and disabled persons.

They completed a perfect demo of their concept on stage, drawing the audience into simple and relaxing moves as shows the picture below!

7 Senai Sao Paolo

Senai is a training institute handled and funded by industry representatives: it includes 538 training centers, over 27 Brazilian states, 20 technological domains (bio, nano, and materials research), and delivers free lessons in technology and applied research. It has worked on nano application for water filtering, lab on chip technology to detect disease, simulation programmes and manufacturing control for factories, aerospace with France, and railway with Deutsche Bahn. Senai programs are designed in partnership with industries.

8 Curitiba

Curitiba is a pioneer city in sustainable development: “innovation is for us the way forward to sustainability, and a better quality of life” shares Gina Paladino. Curitiba metropole has a population of 3 millions, a 34 billion US$ GDP (80% of which are services), a 3% unemployment rate, and a 97,87 alphabetisation rate. Population diversity is at the basis of multiple creative projects. Gina stresses the continuity of the urban vision and planning, and the educational strenghth: 5 universities, and 80 institutes.

Cutibita is also the birthpace of the famous quiet and fuel efficient Hibribus, with subway-akin door system to get in and out of the bus. Check it out here.

Related post

image credits: Pierre Metivier RNDI Album, Montage_de_Curitiba CC BY SA 3.0 Mr.Jhosimar

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Nicolas is a senior VP at Orange Innovation Group. Serial innovator, he set-up creative BU with an international challenge, and a focus on new TV experiences. Forward thinker, he completed a thesis on “Rapid Innovation”, implemented successfully at Orange, further developed in his writings. He tweets @nicobry