Management of Extreme Situations

3Exploration, the Common Theme of a Training System on Innovation

This is the story of an adventure of more than 3 years experienced within the Michelin group; an experience of a co-development approach based on a mode of exploration in search of innovative behaviors. This collective intelligence work has given rise to a training system on innovation for the group’s managers.

3.1. The initial context at the origin of the adventure

The Michelin Group has built a large part of its development on a strategy of technical innovation that has enabled it to be recognized for a long time as one of the leaders in its field.

In 2013, the group faced various challenges to move on:

• – from the proposal of the best tire product to the best response and customer service distributor or consumer;
• – from market analysis to optimize the value chain and production process to digital strategy to optimize the B2B or B2C market customer experience;
• – from the primacy of expertise in exploitation processes to the primacy of customer experience to ensure long-term loyalty;
• – from the standardized innovation process to the agile short-loop mode.

The company then worked hard to optimize and streamline the various processes in order to achieve exploitation excellence. These actions have brought significant gains in economic performance, but have sometimes limited the company’s ability to adapt through excessive rationalization.

The group became aware of this and made the link with the new market situation ...