Author: Philippe

Philippe has been training 200-300 startups a year since 2007, consulted for dozens of multinationals on rupture innovation or corporate incubation, and was directly involved in more than 150 startups building their market fit and scaling up their business. He also teaches business model innovation in key MBA programs whether they are in Paris or Shanghai. And since 2017, Philippe is now living in Amsterdam, one of the best European business hub around.

How to deal with startup fever in your company, part 1

Startup fever - innovation copilots

While the first wave of the digital revolution is now well over, most corporations are victims of some level of rude awakening. Surprisingly enough for me, the sovereign cure for their lack of strategic vision and their risk-aversion has been isolated: startups. The common belief is if you look well enough, a six-month-old post-internet company in dire lack of funding is already building what will replace your multi billion global business. Even if you might be very lucid about the sheer foolishness of this trend, there are probably already many senior members of your executive committees who are victims of this startup fever. Let me offer one of the many ways to deal with that issue (and then maybe, have good reasons to work with startups). Continue reading “How to deal with startup fever in your company, part 1”

Building corporate incubation with Monty Hall

Trading Risk - Merkapt

A few days ago, I was discussing how wrapping your head around the Monty Hall problem could help you better understand the importance of failure in innovation. If you take it a step further today, we could argue that most corporate incubation programs should be build around this probabilistic calculation.

Continue reading “Building corporate incubation with Monty Hall”

35 Ways self-driving vehicles are happening before 2020

35 ways self-driving vehicles will go live before 2020

The key argument of doubters on how fast the self-driving vehicles will go live is risk and the social acceptability (or the lack thereof) of deaths from vehicles making choices on their own. Truth to be told, yes, social acceptability is a steep barrier to entry for adopting technologies at large scale. You should nonetheless remember that innovation is not a clean decisive strike either, its death of the status quo by a thousand cuts. Continue reading “35 Ways self-driving vehicles are happening before 2020”

Dealing with failure in innovation and the Monty Hall problem

Innovation literature is flooded with various arguments on why and how you should take risk as a company. As someone who’s depending on the success of the companies I work with (sometimes I even presume much more than their own management), I can’t avoid being one of these risk evangelist. The problem essentially is always the same. Risk is waved on principles as a good thing supported by plethoras of well-thinking weak sauce arguments. Inevitably, all these arguments are swiftly shelved when real work needs to be done. Continue reading “Dealing with failure in innovation and the Monty Hall problem”

Understanding the new network effects

Understanding network effects has been the underlying driver of the software revolution sparked less than a decade ago. And as always with innovation, as soon as we think we start to grasp it, it already morphes into something new. In our case, new network effects appear and we barely start to grasp them.  Continue reading “Understanding the new network effects”

Trading risks keynote

If you’re in Darmstadt on May 17th, you can join me and the wonderful team of the Merck Innovation Center at 5:30pm for a keynote on Trading Risks. We’ll discuss how startups and multinationals should recalibrate their relationships after years of fumbling around, and why building no-bullshit synergies matters more than ever.

Follow this link for further details.

Let’s grab a sake in Tokyo

sake in tokyo

I’ll be in Tokyo from May 22 to 26.

As usual, I’ll be working with customers, but if you’re around this is also a good time to grab a coffee or a bite and exchange on business, innovation or other things. Just connect with me on Twitter or through the ‘Contact us’ menu above.

I might also have spare time for a keynote or an event in case you’d be interested. : )

How to explain your business

We tend to use overly complex or simplistic tools to design or assess businesses. The middle-road of simple to understand, yet weaponized tools is always hard to get to. Ask any any executive or entrepreneur to explain his company and you usually get a mess.

Two weeks in Shanghai working with dozens of MBA students holding managerial and executive positions in various industries always ground me back to the basics of business. One of the most basic questioning that managers, innovators, or would-be entrepreneurs are asked is: can you explain your business? The answer is always a mess.

Continue reading “How to explain your business”

The book on ‘La Fabrique des Mobilités’ is out

La Fabrique des Mobilités is a European acceleration program dedicated to transportation and mobility projects.

A large part of my work in 2016 was helping the French Environment and Energy Management Agency to develop a better, more effective action on the tremendously complex mobility market. There is now a digital book that explains how this collective endeavor has been achieved and where the ‘FabMob’ collective is in 2017.

Hopefully, there will be an English version at some points (especially given the fact that there are more and more international partners on this platform), but for now, it’s 80% in French.