Pascal Latouche - Open Innovation

In sales, I had never held a sales position (too shy and unassuming, a lack of chatter, as we would commonly say, the person you don’t notice). I don’t know how to sell and I never knew how to sell myself (it’s still true today)! My tasks have always concerned product argumentation. In short, writing down for salespeople what they needed to say to sell the product well. But you can well imagine that a salesperson sells more as they are rewarded for the sales in question. Not all products are rewarded. My sales arguments and other commercial tools were therefore sales aids and did not in any way presume the success of the sale itself. I rather like to consider my tasks in sales as a natural extension of my marketing expertise.

With the innovation coming out of R&D, my job in essence was to identify solutions not used to date (tucked away in drawers) and to evaluate what the company could do with them in consultation with the marketing and sales teams. This task was very interesting. I hadn’t worked with pure engineering profiles until then. I admit that it took me some time to adapt to understanding what they were saying. By understanding, I mean knowing how to ask the right questions so that the expression of their technical discourse could become audible to the non-engineer that I am. It was also during this period that the scope of my tasks broadened, because technical products often require development. For those who experienced the 2010–2013 period, I think they would recall the emergence of the start-up weekend-type events. The latter were very badly labeled “start-up weekends”, since they were mostly developers who were in between pitching sessions, eating pizza and drinking cola! During these weekends, I really appreciated supporting, with my marketing and sales expertise, developers who on Friday evenings proposed their ideas and had the weekend to develop it. Developing an application in a weekend to hope to be the winner on Sunday night was very challenging. Modestly, I was making my contribution to these “techy” weekend warriors who have my total respect!

So, as I was saying, in terms of the profile for taking responsibility for a corporate start-up accelerator, I wasn’t quite in the picture, as some would say. I’ve never created a start-up, and I’ve always been an employee. Thanks to my diplomas and a strong work ethic, I enjoyed working in relatively stable comfort. I say relatively stable because the sociology of large organizations sometimes imposes a balancing act on employees and we must avoid falling off. Finally, if you do it well, if you work well and avoid expressing too many sincere opinions, you receive your salary and finally, unless you have a social plan, you have peace of mind.

There is one point I will discuss, because it will be important for what follows. None of the positions I had held in the companies in which I had worked, or in which I work, existed before I was entrusted with them. In short, I have always systematically forged my own job using the company as a kind of resource provider (a “business angel” in a way…). At the time, I was not aware of the importance of this point, which turned out to be an essential asset with hindsight. In any case, at the time I took over responsibility for this corporate start-up accelerator, I was not aware of this asset, so it was a bit like I didn’t consciously have it. Moreover, those who appointed me responsible for the corporate start-up accelerator to be created, knew nothing about it. Not being aware of an asset, or that your environment is not aware of an asset, can be problematic if you want to capitalize on it….

Here I was, in charge of a corporate accelerator to be created in three months, from a blank sheet of paper in terms of objectives and implementation. I was not alone in this adventure; a long-term colleague was once again at my side to help me move forward with this new challenge. I say again because we’d been working together for a while and we really enjoyed doing it.

I had vaguely understood from this new challenge that the company was keen to support the world of young innovative companies and benefit from it at least from a brand image point of view. It was the time when the major brands in France (CAC 40 stock market index) wanted to show themselves, politicians and citizens their commitment to the times: digital technology.

What I learned from the school of life and from the school of the professional world is that when you spend money, you have to make money. I don’t know if I knew how to create a business for myself. But I knew how to do business with a product or service. In more elaborate terms, I would say that managing things could only be business to me. We had to do business with the start-ups. Moreover, communication is not my field (and I have a lot of respect for the many corporate communicators). It is on this unique “Business” conviction that I developed the objectives and implementation of the corporate start-up accelerator.

I can’t help but reiterate the reasoning that many who have heard me since in speeches are familiar with. Let’s go! In the digital world, there is a bloody war. Furthermore, digital technology has broken down the barriers between sectors of activity. In short, everything is in everything, because of or thanks to digital technology. An established company, in order to avoid losing its position on its markets, must therefore quickly provide innovative solutions to its clients to build loyalty, or even bring new solutions to market in an attempt to acquire new ones. We both know that producing innovation within an established company can take a long time…. Therefore, being able to capitalize on start-ups, their velocity, their innovations, can represent a significant competitive advantage for the established company. At the same time, start-ups looking for clients are well advised to deal with established companies that have large customer bases. It is not over until the fat lady sings. This was to be the main objective of the corporate start-up accelerator: to make commercial partnerships between internal business units and start-ups. In short, it was necessary to “marry” start-ups and business units.

It is difficult to claim that this choice, which I can clearly state as having been an individual choice for the corporate accelerator at the time (with the consent of my company), is a choice of objective that can be generalized to all start-up corporate accelerators. It would be wrong to claim this, and I believe that many start-ups would certainly be able to confirm that there is a gulf between the promises of objectives made by corporate structures supporting start-ups and the reality. The constant is the communication about the relationship between the established company and the start-ups. Some corporate start-up accelerators go further in the sense that the objective is primarily business, communication being only the representative that aims to speak about the results obtained. This was my conviction from the first second of my mandate.

As for the corporate accelerator that I was responsible for launching with my employee, things were very clear. This choice would become the decision that would change the course of my life in a lasting way. It was easier said than done, and I’m weighing up my words, because that’s what’s making me write these ones….

I then asked myself and my colleague the question of how to do it. I met a lot of people, first and foremost external people working in the start-up ecosystem. My assistant did the same, and we debriefed each other quite regularly.

From all these interactions, and debriefings, I retained the following points from the outsiders (the people involved may recognize themselves). Here’s a small sample (because I kept countless notes of my appointments and debriefings from my colleague). This book could have been called “Journal of a numb person” (I’ll explain later).