Foreword

This book is a fascinating reflection on the concept of innovation. Initially, it gives a very vivid account of what differentiates innovation from Research and Development by addressing both economic and historical aspects. The contribution of the history of innovation models, initiated by Schumpeter's models of innovation and subsequently studied in depth and revisited by various authors, is highly useful for engaging in reflection on richer and more robust models. This makes it possible to introduce the concept of creative rationality, an indispensable factor at the very core of the emergence of innovation.

Although innovation is the driving force of economic development and value creation, this concept, which is constantly bandied about as the solution for all our evils, sometimes conceals a lack of understanding of what it stands for by those who refer to it. Contrary to what our decision makers would have us believe, technological inventions, basic research and scientific discoveries arising thereof neither naturally lead to innovation nor to the hoped-for economic benefits. Innovation aims to develop a product or service that meets user needs and contributes to the dynamism of the economy. Basic research aims to understand the world around us. It must be borne in mind that these objectives are radically different from innovation objectives. As such they need not merge into one another, let alone be subjected to one another. Let us accept that basic research and innovation correspond to different objectives and obey their own dynamics. Although the innovation process does not come about directly from research endeavors, it often benefits from scientific advances.

How can we foster innovation, and ensure that we are really responding to market needs that are often, but not always, expressed¹? A process that takes the end user into account and places him at the center of the design process makes perfect sense. Design is an organized process that leads to the making of a product suited to the end user's need. Design is the guiding principle of the innovation process by its ability to define the challenges that the innovative product must meet. This process is different from the R&D process as it implements a process driven by the end purpose of the object, but at the same time, creativity is not absent in this approach. It is in fact a key element that opens the scope of possibilities to finally retain only the most suitable one. In her book, Joëlle Forest compels us to reflect upon all these aspects and proposes a methodology to engage this reflection.

The notion of creative rationality thus comes up: far from opposing one another, creativity and rationalism enrich one other. The role of creativity lies in the opening up and exploration of all the possibilities, it must be followed by a rational stage that will make it possible to classify, select and develop the best solutions using experimentation: choosing whatever works best. Through a number of examples that convincingly illustrate the author's thinking, we will be able to break down the innovation process and consider how creative rationality unfolds during such a process. The analysis here is very rich, and it is based on a reflection that relies on references while coming out with an original approach.

This book also paves the way for advocacy for the introduction of innovation as a course in our education system. More generally speaking, Joëlle Forest argues in favor of education that must give full scope to creativity: a less normative and more open education. Innovation can be learned only with the desire to stray off the beaten track and to implement new processes and refrain from always using the old tried and tested methods. How can we not subscribe to such a vision and how can we not support an approach that opens up exciting perspectives for our youth?

Didier ROUX
Director, Research and Innovation of the Saint-Gobain Group
Member of the Academy of Science and the Academy of Technology
Professor at the Collège de France (Liliane Bettencourt Technological Innovation Chair 2016–2017)

Introduction

It’s June 2017. Severely weakened by an unprecedented economic crisis, the Martian government is struck with full force by the Terra epidemic, the origin of which is a bacteria from the Earth of the genus Bacillus introduced by the NASA Curiosity robot that had come to explore their planet. There is discontent among the population, and the Martian government is afraid that there may be a social revolt if it does not immediately come up with concrete solutions. How can they cope with such an unprecedented situation? The Martian government decides to send Professor MacGyver junior to carry out a benchmark study of extra-Martian practices and to go and see how earthlings solve their problems.

Shortly after landing on Earth, in France more specifically, MacGyver junior noticed that the French have a miracle solution; it is called innovation. In fact, everything happens as if life on Earth were governed by innovation.

Several clues made him reach this conclusion. The importance given to innovation in France can, at the outset, be assessed based on the popularity of the concept of innovation in France. To do this, on September 23, 2016, he conducted a search on a search engine that the French call Google to see how many times the term innovation comes up in the French language. The result of this exercise is highly enlightening: 407,000,000 hits. In comparison, the terms growth and unemployment, which seem to refer to highly sensitive issues for the French government and the French people, only appear 53,200,000 and 2,860,000 times, respectively. He specifies that though it is obvious that not all of these results are pertinent, the frequency of their occurrence is nevertheless illustrative of the interest the French seem to attach to the issue of innovation.

MacGyver emphasizes that the importance given to innovation in France is closely linked to the virtues that people associate with it. Today innovation is clearly earmarked as:

– A vital necessity for companies to adapt to the requirements of their markets and to anticipate these requirements. He was privy to a narration of the story of a company called Nokia, which was the leader of the mobile telephony sector. As the said company had not thought of betting on touchscreen technology, it was overtaken by new entrants. Adapting to market requirements appears to be all the more necessary when we consider the market share of the turnovers made with newly marketed products. As an example, the turnover made with products marketed for less than two years on the small electrical household appliances market in France rose from 17% to 58% between 1997 and 2007.
– The means to revive the economy and get back to the path leading to prosperity. As highlighted by the Nobel laureate for economics, E. Phelphs, in 2006, speaking about the unprecedented economic development that took place from 1820 to 1870 in Great Britain, the Americas and subsequently in France and Germany [PHE 13], this development cannot be attributed solely to the increase in capital stock, productivity or even to the expansion of trade. This unprecedented economic development was due to innovation, and it is precisely because innovation has been going through a crisis since the 1960s that we are witness to the decline of Western countries.
– A way of meeting the major challenges of the contemporary world, as we can read in the introduction of the reference text presenting the ambitions of the European initiative “the union of innovation”:

“At a time marked by restriction in public expenditure, significant demographic changes and strengthening of global competition, the competitiveness of Europe, our ability to create millions of new jobs to replace those destroyed by the crisis and, more generally, our future living standards depend on our ability to encourage innovation in products, services, business and social processes and models. This is the reason why innovation was placed at the very core of the Europe 2020 strategy. Innovation is also the best means we have at our disposal to solve the main problems faced by our society, which become increasingly pronounced by the day, be it climate change, shortage of energy or the increasing scarcity of resources, health issues or the aging of the population” [COM 10, p. 2].
– Or even a means to give back a positive dynamic to societies lacking in progress and afraid that they will no longer be able to advance.

This way of looking at innovation is not neutral because it leads to concrete actions. In France, this representation of innovation gave rise to the creation of dedicated ministerial institutions, such as the bureau for innovation, and technology policies at the Direction générale de la compétitivité, de l’industrie et des services (DGCIS – Directorate General for competitiveness, industry and services); the creation of innovation ecosystems such as the pôles de compétitivité (competitiveness clusters) with the stated objective of stimulating the dissemination of knowledge at the root of innovation: “The bringing together of industrial, scientific and training stakeholders from the same territory (…) constitutes in itself a source of innovation” [CIA 07]; and this representation of innovation also led to the definition of priorities in 2009 within the framework of the National Research and Innovation Strategy; the formulation of dedicated plans such as Une nouvelle donne pour l’innovation (A game changer for innovation) in 2013; the production of a number of reports such as the Morand–Manceau report in 2009 [MOR 09], the Godet–Durance–Mousli report in 2010 [GOD 10], the Birraux, Le Déaut report in 2010 [BIR 10], the Beylat–Tambourin report in 2013 [BEY 13], or the Pisani-Ferry report [PIS 16]; and finally the creation of tax incentives such as the Research tax Credit (CIR – Crédit d’impôt recherche) which today amounts to around €6.5 billion.

The importance of innovation in society is at last perceptible in view of the number of scientific articles, reviews and books devoted to this topic, and the existence of communities of dedicated researchers such as the Innovation Research Network.

Armed with these observations, Professor MacGyver junior returns home and submits his report to the Martian government. His conclusion is just one sentence long: if we wish to get out of the crisis and defeat the Terra epidemic, we must innovate! The world is not immobile but constantly changing. We must therefore draft an innovation policy which will allow us to not only face contemporary challenges but also to invent our future. Highly enthused, the government hastens to pass on the conclusions of Professor MacGyver junior: let us innovate, everyone innovate! Yes but how do we go about it?

The reader would have understood that we have used the parable of Professor MacGyver junior as a revelatory tactic, in the photographic sense of the term, to depict the situation in which we find ourselves in France.

Over the last 15 years, financial assistance given to innovation by public authorities, estimated today at ten billion euros, has in fact doubled. This assistance is intended to serve a national ambition whose aim is to transform our old “economy of imitation” into an “economy of innovation” [AGH 04]. Despite this, we must mention that the increased number of mechanisms (we have apparently gone from around 30 assistance mechanisms in the 2000’s to 62 today) [PIS 16] is not producing the expected results:

“A number of initiatives, quite often pertinent ones, have been taken to foster the development of innovation (…). This has resulted in a barely comprehensible accumulation and diversity of mechanisms and structures, both at the national and the regional or local level, the overall, economic, industrial and social effectiveness of which remains to be demonstrated (in terms of job creation)” [BEY 13, p. 1].

What is worse is that the speed at which these mechanisms are being renewed could even favor “bounty hunters” [PIS 16, p. 33].

The question that arises is: what should be done to go beyond the stage of demanding innovation¹ and garner an effective capability to innovate?

According to Pisani-Ferry, a response to this issue would entail decreasing the number of mechanisms because it is “difficult to believe that the State has the wherewithal to supervise a set of 62 mechanisms in a consistent manner and guarantee proper coordination with those initiated by local authorities” [PIS 16, p. 31].

In this book, we will defend the thesis according to which innovation has to be thought about differently. From this viewpoint, the report of the national commission for evaluation of innovation policies Quinze ans de politiques d’innovation en France (Fifteen years of innovation policies in France), steered by J. Pisani-Ferry, is edifying. He shows that, in 2014, 70.2% of the allocated resources were related to the growth of private R & D capabilities. As we will see, this conception of public policy is founded on the innovation model inherited from J. Schumpeter. However, we will show that if we consider innovation from its central process, namely the design process itself, we will feel compelled to consider other possible means of action. By adopting an artificialistic perspective, this book lays emphasis on creative rationality. It considers the implications of this point of view for teaching. And while we are at it, this book will dispel a number of myths surrounding innovation.