Danielle Attias

Food for thought: which organisation and ecosystem governance to boost radical innovation in the electromobility 2.0 industry?

Today, at the beginning of the 21st century, it is widely accepted by all that the traditional automotive industry has entered a phase of disruptive changes: the disruption of markets and consumers, the disruption of technologies and of business models. In this context, prospective studies offer possible scenarios for the development of a new industry called the electromobility 2.0 industry. Their findings shed light on the myriad issues that have to be taken into account, and in particular whether the variety of stakeholders involved have the ability to create the necessary radical innovations. Following a systems approach in order to better grasp the complexity of the situation, this paper aims to contribute conceptual considerations to these studies. It explores how appropriate decentralised and open industrial ecosystems organisational structures are for creating the conditions which would foster the emergence of radical innovations for the electromobility 2.0 industry. It also highlights the importance of having adequate inter–organisational governance modes to foster the inter–implication of the numerous complementary stakeholders in this process.

A Categorization of Innovation Funnels of Companies as a Way to Better Make Conscious Agility and Permeability of Innovation Processes

It is common in the Management Science and Design Engineering communities to represent the processes contributing to innovation in companies as a funnel or similar variants. It is assumed it is possible to represent an analogy to the stages of planning and idea generation (the so-called fuzzy front-end), conception generation, as well as idea and concept selection to end up with the very few emerging developed and launched products and services on the market. First, this analogy may feature different innovation process layers, each of them independently as well as the entire set of these innovation process layers. After a review of literature on this funnel representation, we show that this analogy may be meaningful to globally represent and discuss about some properties of the innovation capability of a company at different locations: the R&D process as well as a given NPD process. We further describe a survey carried out within 28 large European technological companies through 48 detailed face-to-face interviews. Our questionnaire has allowed us to observe some characteristic patterns in the innovation funnels. We finally propose a model of five innovation funnels varying by their shape, permeability of emerging ideas and agility in terms of innovation management. We also hypothesize that these 5 funnels evolve in a sequential and cyclic way and that our cyclic model may be used as a questioning tool for the continuous improvement of the innovation management.

Designing a Sustainable Recycling Network for Batteries from Electric Vehicles. Development and Optimization of Scenarios

Since the 2008 crisis, the automotive industry is shifting towards a new paradigm and repositioning around the green mobility, using mainly lithium battery technology. Given this new development, the issue of recycling batteries arises for ecological, economic and geostrategic reasons. Our work consists in formalizing a methodology to help design a sustainable recycling network applied to batteries, under uncertainty. The proposed approach involves two steps. The first step is about modeling the recycling network and the characterization of the problem’s elements, using systemic analysis. The second step consists in developing scenarios about the configurations of this value chain, and then optimizing their functioning. We’ll choose different positioning for the actors and make assumptions about logistic data. In this paper, we will try to summarize the issues of recycling lithium battery, explain in detail this approach and present the first results of application.

From the management of innovative projects to the innovative management of innovative projects: An analysis within the automotive industry

Embedded in technological, economic, and social transformations, project management has had to cope with a palpable extension of its perimeter. Until recently, project management was centralized within a single organization. It is now, however, opening towards a moving business ecosystem framed with more or less successful partnerships linking cooperative and competing companies. Consequently, project management needs to be renewed. Our research aims at explaining some of the mutations of project management by considering current practices in the automotive industry. The automotive industry is facing the most challenging technological and strategic changes ever experienced since Ford, which leads us to believe that understanding the nature of project management in this industry may be a great asset for other sectors as well.