Gamma: Ecosystems
The Gamma prototype focused on reaching out to similar external initiatives and innovation ecosystems.
Leveraging the connections we built over time, we actively promoted Open Innovation to expand our company’s innovation playground and strengthen its positioning and visibility.
“… le groupe, qui espère voir émerger des « graines de startups » et encourager le dialogue hors des silos organisationnels, « Le Garage est la première implémentation de la nouvelle façon d’innover…”
“… des airs de campus américain. Fontaines, espaces de détente en plein air, cafétéria aux allures de café branché, vastes espaces verts, quelques start-up, et même un «Garage»! …”
” … Le Garage crée des ponts avec d’autres labs d’Ile-de-France, comme l’Electrolab, le Carrefour Numérique de la Cité des Sciences, l’UsineIO, le Petit Fablab de Paris…”
“… Le Garage is a place for innovation, open and accessible to all staff. Collective intelligence, promoted by favoring the cross-fertilization of groups with different specializations …”
Excerpt from article published on Alcatel-Lucent external website, site closed now.
” …Attentifs à designer le parcours que peuvent avoir leurs collègues venant des différentes filiales du groupe pour réaliser leurs projets, ils sensibilisent et impulsent une motivation …”
Excerpt from article published on atelier.rfi.fr, removed after site redesign.
“…Inspiré des grands groupes tels que Google et Microsoft, où les fablabs pour la co-création sont courants, trois ingénieurs des Bell Labs d’Alcatel-Lucent ont décidé de créer leur propre structure…”
Experience Sharing with peers
We reached out and exchanged with other Garage initiatives.
We had the opportunity to exchange with Samsung and compare our programs and spaces. Beyond the differences in the design, operation, and cultural dimensions of our respective innovation spaces, our experiences concurred on the necessity to appoint a dedicated team of animators.
The proximity of Renault’s Creative People Lab with our Garage initiative spans well beyond our geographical locations. Comparable in their respective position in the company, operating models, missions and ambitions, our corporate garage initiatives have evolved in the same directions and at a similar pace. This is no wonder we ended-up co-founding the FAB&CO association to unlock a common innovation playground.
Saint-Gobain is a corporation founded in 1665 specialized in the production of a variety of construction and high-performance materials. Occupying a leading position for decades, the company decided to prepare the next stage of its evolution by creating a Corporate Garage where employees invent a new way of working together in autonomy and across silos.
SEBLab is an inspiring example of a corporate Garage bootstrapped by well defined processes allowing a smooth integration into the company’s traditional way of innovating. Following the sharing of our experience on using maker activities towards team building, the team added to their innovation portfolio a new type of workshop, allowing them to embark more employees and better spread innovation throughout the company.
We closely witnessed the early stages and growth of Usine IO, a makerspace and accelerator for hardware engineers and designers, and used their network to explore the prototyping of 4G connected objects. Sharing similar challenges and requirements in logistics and safety, we use the FAB&CO meetings to gain experience from each other.
Located in Paris, the “Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie” is the biggest Science museum in Europe. When its president – french astronaut and former minister of Research Claudie Haigneré – read about our Nokia Garage initiative promoting Innovation by all, the science center’s FabLab, the “Carrefour Numérique²”, reached out to us to discuss about the potential and challenges of engaging inside tinkerers of all kinds.
Councelling of other initiatives
They came visit the Garage, looking for experience sharing, advices and inspirations, to delineate their own Garage or creativity spaces.
We met with Kingfisher shortly after a conference talk we made.
Intrigued and inspired by what we presented, their product development director and his team decided to discover the Corporate Garage from the inside. We had the pleasure to welcome them and exchange with them on their intention to build a similar space on their future site.
We helped Airbus Space & Defense set up their “PlayLab”.
The “Playlab” is an initiative from a group of Airbus employees wanting to build a creative space. We shared our Corporate Garage experience and worked on the challenges forseen in the communication and employees’ engagement areas.
With about 500 customers in the industrial consumption, power generation, distribution, and railways, RTE is a major actor of the energy transmission in France, whose mission is to ensure at all times that there is a balance between supply and demand of electricity. We had the pleasure of sharing our Corporate Garage experience with a team from RTE looking for ways to innovate in new directions with agility.
The information we shared about our Garage initiative caught the attention of several key people at Valrhona – a famous quality chocolate manufacturer – seeing in the program the tool they were looking for to innovate in all directions, using their collaborative power to create new products. We had the pleasure of exchanging with them, energized by the delicacy of their most amazing products.
“Groupe Banque Populaire” is a French group of cooperative banks who sent, in the context of a learning expedition, a delegation of employees to learn more about Open Innovation and the Corporate Garage approach.
We explained them the benefits of allowing employees to reconcile personal passions with professional ambitions, and why we considered space as a significant tool to invest in.
After having launched a successful internal innovation contest, the Sanofi Pasteur group is looking for ways to accelerate its winning projects and sustain their cultural change.
Particularly interested in creating an internal incubator and fablab, they reached out to us to learn more about our startup in residence and Corporate Garage programs.
After having explained to Orange the ambitions, first steps, attempts, failures and successes of our Corporate Garage initiative, we helped them set up their own Garage program, replicating this agile and open structure on 10 of their main locations.
The team in charge of Open Innovation at Legrand visited us to understand how the processes and spaces were designed.
Soon after, they launched an ambitious project in “garage mode” and started considering the creation of their own dedicated Garage space later in the year.
Partnering with actors of the startup ecosystem
We reached out to incubators to scout for new technologies and services, and recruit startups for our residence program.
