How to take innovation by the horns?

Faced with pressure from GAFA/BATX and various startups, most CAC40 companies have multiplied initiatives around innovation: innovation lab, incubators, intrapreneurship programs, participation in startups, investments in startups, investments in funds, internal structure investment (Corporate Venture Capital), etc... This period of launching initiatives is coming to an end, now companies are rationalizing their innovation strategy with a double will:

1. Do less but better: concentration of resources on levers that impact both business and corporate culture (examples: direct investment activities vs investment via funds, creation of internal incubation structures, etc.)
2. Take back control: Innovation must be done by associating the heart of the company, namely its teams. It is difficult/impossible to entrust your innovation strategy and execution to third parties.

Change Paradigm

The difficulty of any innovation process for these large groups is to accept new rules, novelty and the unknown:

• Accept to invest/lose money in the short term, while the pressure is on the turnover in the short term
• Agree to do things (IT, Compliance, Governance) that we usually forbid ourselves
• Agree to surround oneself, even associate with non-consanguineous profiles
• Agree to Decide Otherwise
• Accept Failure

CAC40, an under-exploited gold mine

We created 321founded with a simple conviction: our French and European companies have tremendous assets, often under-exploited for lack of creative daring and a framework favorable to innovation. The United States, South Korea or even Israel know how to conquer the world either because they are dominant (US), or because they are small (Korea/Israel) and have no other choice but to conquer the world. Ambition or constraint are great engines.

However, our French flagships are monopolized by short-term pressure, oh so legitimate, but which deprives the company of planting seeds for the future. These companies have treasures that many entrepreneurs dream of:

• A huge customer base & data
• Talents, sometimes under-requested
• A Brand with Strong Notoriety
• A distribution network
• Money

And now

We have built a launchpad to allow CAC40 companies to innovate with a 100% entrepreneurial DNA while associating all the strengths of the company at each stage. The objective is to give the company the means to acquire and disseminate this DNA, a source of innovation, and not to outsource its innovation. Innovation of an industrializable nature must be born with the lifeblood of the company.

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