Develop a strategic approach to managing innovation

What is your research about?

My research topics relate to innovation management and entrepreneurship. For example, I study how digital technologies can support innovation and organisational change. In this regard, I am looking into how an increasingly digital workplace is changing our work environments and our jobs. Together with the French digital council, we have explored how our interactions with technology changes our workplace (see our report here).

Factory workers, office workers, managers, public servants... we are all affected by digital transformation. We, therefore, examined how to incorporate these changes and redesign the workplace in the best way for individuals, teams and organisations. We published an article on this topic in the California Management Review, entitled The digital workplace: navigating in a jungle of paradoxical tensions. It looks into the opportunities and tensions that technology creates for us as workers, for example, having too many Zoom calls, causing Zoom fatigue and information overload, but at the same time, helping us to gain autonomy and work from anywhere.

You are co-author of an open-access book about the future of learning: Envisioning the Future of Learning for Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship. What is your teaching philosophy?

I aim to continuously improve my teaching  by incorporating the most pressing challenges, by co-designing classes with industry, and incorporating a flipped classroom, whereby students are active in their approach to learning. I bring in external voices, because I think it is important and makes the course more playful.

You have launched a company, Ninti. What is it? Do you share your entrepreneurial experience with your students? 

Ninti is an employee benefits platform that provides services related to sexual and reproductive healthcare. The platform brings together healthcare professionals ‒ gynaecologists, midwives, mental-health professionals, nutritionists, and those specialised in different conditions affecting women’s health or particular times in life, from endometriosis to hormone imbalances, menopause and postpartum depression, to provide the best care possible. For example, one in six couples struggles with infertility. Ninety percent of women who go through IVF cycles in France and Europe will have mental health issues.

Most of these women are working professionals and many remain silent when dealing with issues related to their sexual and reproductive health. This stems from both a lack of support from the medical community and the corporate space and a fear of being judged, of talking about topics that are sometimes too personal or even taboo. Yet, we all spend so much time at work. Companies cannot ignore reproductive health in the pursuit of gender equality and talent retention and attraction. We cannot just pretend that these issues are outside the workplace. At Ninti, we aim to bring these issues to the workplace and help companies become women’s health friendly.

During the course, I share my experience at Ninti with students and invite other founders to share their entrepreneurial journeys.

What key concepts do you address in your course? Is the class just theoretical?

There is a lot to cover when it comes to strategic foresight and innovation. During the class, we cover  different tools and methods that support organizations in strategic foresight and innovation management, discuss how these methods can be used in different situations and be adjusted to specific organizational contexts. Then, there are organisations and processes. In this course, we connect both. We discuss open innovation, design thinking, lean start-ups, concept-knowledge theory, agile scrum methodologies ... There are so many things start-ups and corporations can use. We look into different types of organisation. All of these concepts will only work if you create organisational conditions suited to exploring them. The second part of the course really focuses on innovation culture, such as organisational adaptation, agility, the importance of innovation strategy and so on. We don’t just look at the process of managing innovation strategy, we also look where it works and where it does not. We reflect on the conditions, and on the role of technologies in supporting innovation strategy.

What tools do the students learn to use?

We always try to experiment! We use tools to collaborate online, such as Miro boards and Mural. We use large language models, such as ChatGPT, to reflect how they change our working practices, how we can better leverage them in our work, and what the consequences of using them will be in different settings.

We also do a lot of group work, peer-to-peer learning. Students can share their own expertise and practices. I also encourage students to read academic works and discuss in class how  these articles relate to the material covered in class, what the limitations of these works are in my own practice… The goal is to analyse critically how a prior body of work can be used in different contexts and to encourage critical thinking.

How does this course benefit students who want to launch their own business?

Strategic foresight really helps students identify what tools corporations and start-ups use to structure their innovation processes, when they go through the different stages (from ideation to acceleration to business launch). We cover the different stages and see what other organisational structures and processes need to be put in place to make those things accessible. It is all about finding problems, testing your ideas, identifying partners to collaborate with, creating assumptions in the corporate settings, but also in the start-up world, and discussing how these things can apply to them. It is relevant for anyone who is thinking about creating a venture or aiming for a corporate job in innovation management or strategy.

What do you expect our students to have mastered on completion of your course?

I expect them to have a sound knowledge of the good practices in strategic foresight and innovation that are out there, what different stakeholders use today. I want to make them reflect on the tools and methods, not just copy and paste them, but adjust these methods and tools to their own context. I really want them to understand that there are numerous tools they can use. But these tools will only work if they are adapted to their organisation, their context, their culture, the stage their company is at. To put it differently, when we deal with any innovative process, or when we start new ventures, we face multiple uncertainties. In this course, we discuss technical and market uncertainties and how to tackle organisational and resource uncertainties. We aim to help our students develop an antifragility mindset, whereby they will constantly learn and challenge things and be comfortable navigating the world of uncertainty.