Innovation and co-innovation: what's the difference?
Innovation is a very broad concept that encompasses any new idea or approach based on technological advances or new ways of doing things that can create value for the organization and its stakeholders.
Co-innovation is a new paradigm of innovation that can help organizations create value through convergence, collaboration and co-creation. New insights from internal and external sources are exploited differently to create new value or experience for all stakeholders, including customers.
The Informatique CDC - Orange partnership: a successful co-innovation
The innovation partnership between Informatique - Caisse des Dépôts and Orange was created in June 2016. Its objective is to develop an accelerator for the transformation of Caisse des Dépôts Group's business. The partnership is based on four pillars:
1. Establish an appropriate governance
The success of this partnership can be explained first by the strong sponsorship of the Management Committee, convinced of the benefits that this initiative will bring. It stimulates a dynamic (horizontal organization, pitching sessions, learning expeditions, events) that is perceived as a major objective by all of I-CDC's business lines.
The adopted governance makes it possible to orient in a pragmatic way the themes of the partnership according to the business needs and to validate the experimentations to launch.
2. Disseminate a culture of innovation
One of the partnership's priorities is to spread a culture of innovation within the business teams. This acculturation takes various forms:
- Learning expeditions in innovative places
- A business intelligence activity
- Prospective studies
- Attendance at trade shows: Orange Gardens Research Show, Viva Technology, Big Data Paris, etc.
To achieve this goal, Orange provides access to its entire innovation ecosystem:
- 1,000 start-ups from Orange Fabs and the partners network
- Global monitoring network, including Silicon Valley trend analysis
- Partnership with the Institut Mines-Télécom
- 5,000 researchers
- Spaces of creativity
3. Foster innovation
Ideation workshops allow the emergence of innovative use cases that meet business needs. To work with business and IT teams, Orange uses Design Thinking, a mindset combining creative and analytical thinking in a problem solving approach. At the end of these workshops, ideas for detailed experimentation are prioritized and then presented to the Steering Committee.
4. Develop experimentation
Once validated in the Steering Committee, the experiments are implemented by adopting an Agile approach. The goal is to quickly prototype new innovative solutions to validate their relevance.
Orange supports the business teams in piloting the experiments – from the selection of the best technology partner to the presentation of the results and the preparation of an eventual scaling up.
I am a Principal Consultant at Orange Consulting, supporting the digital transformation and innovation of my customers. My skills include implementation of innovative approaches, Design Thinking, consumer-centric design and Lean Startup practices. In my free time, I enjoy playing tennis and attending music festivals.