innovation in large projects
innovation is a key factor for success in today’s business
innovation: an Orange perspective
We strongly believe that innovation is much more than just producing new technical products or services. Thus we have developed a holistic approach to innovation which encompasses sociological and behavioural analysis as well as the impact on our clients’ business.
Many of our innovations are assessed, co-designed and tested in conjunction with our partners and our clients. We see this as a key requirement for joint success and the improved delivery of useful innovations in the field.
This is what Forrester calls “a unified access to a universe of high-value services”. (1)
innovating jointly with Orange Business Services
Our unique approach to innovation is entitled the joint innovation program and is made possible through the implementation of two main elements:
- First and foremost the joint innovation governance which is going to ensure that enough visibility, leeway and support is given to new projects, therefore making technology and business alignment possible,
- Secondly, the joint innovation fund which is going to fuel the process and enable the launch and successful development of new initiatives.
We have summarized our joint innovation approach in the attached whitepaper entitled ‘bringing ideas to reality: "a joint innovation perspective".
lessons learnt in large projects and outsourcing business
Over the past few years, we have witnessed dramatic changes in the large projects management and communications outsourcing landscape. Global enterprises are more than ever relying on external service providers to take over and streamline their infrastructure support organizations, but they often think that this is not enough. There is a growing and more and more universal requirement for innovation to be embedded within the service contract.
This requirement which we have witnessed from our clients is as a matter of fact twofold: on the one hand, our large project and outsourced clients wish to be updated on the capabilities of the service provider to evolve the current infrastructure to better accommodate technical changes within the framework of the contract.
The purpose is not to update the current provision of technology for modernity’s sake. It is in effect to ensure that the service provider will do everything that is possible in order to better evolve the legacy architecture and therefore also ensure that the maximum level of savings is achieved through innovation.
Such an innovative approach to complex telecom projects and outsourcing is holistic and spreads across all technical towers.
Convergence can therefore be used to its full capability. In this first instance – entitled continuous improvement – the active cooperation of all solutions architects is orchestrated within the joint innovation initiative.
On the other hand, in an ever more fiercely competing world, there is also a requirement for corporations to look ahead and see how a process of innovation could lead them to the next iteration of their business model. In effect a process they can drive which will cause disruption in their market place or take them into new markets to create new value. The disruption can be caused in a number of different ways; through the introduction of a new technology, a different commercial model or a new operating model (or indeed any combination of the three). This is what we have entitled “out-of-the-box” initiatives, which can in their turn be mapped on an innovation matrix made of 4 distinct baskets of innovations (see diagram below).
This is why we have developed the joint innovation program within our large projects management offer.
our approach to joint innovation in large projects and outsourcing contracts
high level view
A significant number of people, when innovation, is mentioned say one of two things; ‘it’s all about execution, ideas are easy, anybody can have an idea’ or ‘innovation is about creativity and only creative people can innovate’. Our experience within corporate organizations has shown us that to generate good ideas that can be managed and turned rapidly into a form that can be executed requires both good processes coupled with the organisations capability to learn. This learning process must take place internally (through a culture of knowledge sharing) and from the external environment e.g. customers, suppliers, regulators, opinion leaders, governments etc.
analyzing requirements or ‘marketing the unknown’?
As a matter of fact, wondering whether Innovation is going to emerge from pure creativity and or business requirement analysis is a spurious question. Both will be required, and only the mixing of the two is going to produce the required business benefit. Besides, it is generally accepted that when a product/service is useful, it should sell in large quantities. In this context, marketing new products or services is indeed very straightforward, i.e. that requirements can be measured and that this measure can be applied to product or service design right away.
However, in actual fact, it is very rare that things happen that way since innovation is very much about ‘marketing the unknown. (2)
In conclusion
Through our joint innovation program we partner with our large project customers to think beyond the typical boundaries of product development and consider new ways of conducting business. It can either be at the operational level or in developing new services. Joint innovation accelerates the innovation process and the time to market.
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