Insights from the Silicon Valley

Home to many of the world’s largest high-tech corporations and thousands of startup companies, the Silicon Valley is considered to be the most vibrant ecosystem for high-tech innovation and development.

We exchanged with major players and influencers of the Valley – hacker/maker spaces, high-tech companies, incubators – discussing about collaboration, agility and bottom-up initiatives, to validate or discover novel practices in the management of collaborative innovation.

Here is a list of the companies that opened their doors and generously shared their insights:

X is a semi-secret research and development facility created by Google and operated as a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.

The company undertakes ambitious projects called “moonshots” – proposals that address a huge problem, suggest a radical solution that could work, and use some form of breakthrough technology to make it happen.

• Aiming at changing people’s lives for good, notably through:
• Self-driving Cars
• Wing (drone-based service enabling the delivery of everything from consumer goods to emergency medicin)
• Loon (Baloon-powered internet for everyone)
• Makani (Harvesting of untapped clean wind resources at higher altitudes)

The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, commonly known as the d.school, is a design school based in Stanford University, intending to become the best school of Design.

• Preparing future innovators to become breakthrough thinkers and doers
• Using Design Thinking to inspire multidisciplinary teams
• Fostering radical collaboration between students, faculty and industry
• Tackling big projects and using prototyping to discover new solutions

Noisebridge is San Francisco emblematic hackerspace for technical-creative projects, doocratically run by its members. Located in the heart of San Francisco, Noisebridge is committed to providing a safe space to work, learn and play.

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

The company specializes in Internet-related services and products, including online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, and software.

One of its collaborative workspace project, the Google Garage, is an example showing how employees can take an active part in the Innovation strategy of their company.

Silicon Valley-based Nissan Research Center develops vehicle intelligence technologies, as represented by autonomous driving and connected cars.

A³ is Airbus group’s outpost in the Silicon Valley. Its mission is to build the future of flight now, by disrupting Airbus Group and its competitors before someone else does.

Employing world-class experts and developing fertile partnerships they build their projects on rigorous analysis, novel insights, and commitment to unreasonable goals.

In its own words, Facebook’s mission is “to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected”.

People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them.

TechShop is a community-based DIY workshop and fabrication studio where entrepreneurs, artists, makers, teachers and students come together to learn and work together.

Having an open access to over $1 million worth of professional equipment and software and expert staff, TechShop members can get inspiration, coaching and support to make virtually anything.

Parisoma is one of the first startup incubator established in San Francisco.

Its experimental environment emphasizes openness and collaboration.

For over 6 years, over 500 founders, designers and developers were hosted there as they made their “big idea” a reality.