Project development

An important step in your innovation process is immersion in the field. This phase enables you to understand your users and empathize with them, so as to visualize the opportunities available to you in your market. Market research, foresight studies and user testing are just a few of the highlights that will help you identify innovation opportunities specific to your industry.

There are a number of working methods you can use to develop your innovation projects. However, you'll need to choose a methodology with a flexible, creative approach. Design Thinking is a human-centered approach that encourages creativity and problem-solving. Key stages include empathy, definition, ideation, prototyping and testing. It's an efficient, pragmatic method that will enable you to move forward with minimum expense. By emphasizing user understanding and continually validating ideas, Design Thinking helps reduce the risk of project failure. This avoids unnecessary expenditure on solutions that may not find market acceptance.

Structuring a project is crucial to its success. To begin with, it's essential to define the project's objectives in a scoping phase. This phase will enable you to define the project's objectives, scope, stakeholders, expected deliverables and constraints. Make sure your team members understand what you're doing, so you can get them on board right from the start. Next, we suggest you apply the design thinking method, which focuses on creative and innovative problem-solving based on user needs and feedback.

To minimize the risks of a project, it's important to rapidly materialize the idea to give substance to your project. This materialization of the project will enable you to carry out the user tests that will set the tone for your project. The feedback from these tests will help your project to evolve, right up to the finished product. It's therefore important to design a functional prototype of the project as quickly as possible, so as to receive as much field feedback as possible. By carrying out field tests, you can minimize risks by identifying areas for improvement in your solution, and by assessing its desirability to your users.

Prototyping is based on a tangible, visual representation of your solution. The prototype can take various forms: mock-up, 3D printout, interactive walkthrough... The aim is to formalize it quickly and inexpensively, so that you can test it with your users. Once you've created your prototype, you need to work on your test protocol. The test protocol must include information on the objectives of the test, the evaluation criteria and methods, the data to be collected, and the steps to be followed. It ensures that tests are consistent and reproducible, so that you can obtain an objective assessment of the solution's effectiveness. Based on the feedback, you can adjust your concept for a more successful solution.