Gary, you co-direct Usine IO. What is its mission?
Yes, with my partners, Agathe and Benjamin. Usine's mission is to support all physical product project leaders from design to industrialisation. We want to become the benchmark for hardware product development worldwide.
Companies are being urged to innovate faster and more agilely, but are they ready?
The tools exist and are readily available (software, hardware, intellectual and physical resources, real estate, etc.). Attitudes are also changing, and we have a front-row seat. A first step would be to release dedicated budgets for service or product prototyping, outside the internal processes, which is necessary I admit, but contrary to the agility required from the design stage onwards.
The 3D printer revolution, the fall in the price of parts (sensors, electronic cards, etc.), crowdfunding platforms, the CIR - everything is working together to promote innovation. But what are the obstacles?
These factors facilitate prototyping, R&D and access to finance, and therefore encourage new vocations. They also increase the possibilities for innovation by opening up entirely new fields of possibility. It increases the number of start-up projects, but also intrapreneurial projects. Whereas employees used to propose software-only innovations, these same innovations now increasingly include a physical component (terminals, sensors, robots, drones, electronic devices, etc.). That said, these developments in no way facilitate the transition to an industrial product, which requires a network, expertise and support. This is where new services like ours really come into their own: they allow you to think from the outset about the future industrialisation and marketing of the product, whether it's BtoB, BtoC, BtoBtoC, or internal to the company.
Another key development is Gen Y - and soon Z - How do you see the future of innovation?
It's hard to say. Innovation is a state of mind, a desire to break codes or find new, untried solutions to existing or new problems. It has always existed, but the changes are more about supporting these solutions internally within the company, the way in which they are filtered and the way in which they are implemented.
In terms of objects, we are seeing an acceleration in the very rapid adoption of new physical technologies, in particular sensors and manufacturing methods such as laser cutting and 3D printing. Lower prices and easier access to these technologies mean that they can be iterated more easily, opening up new possibilities for innovation in areas other than pure software.
