Innovation: the Heart of our Ambition
Innovation is a key pillar to our Ambition. It is a pillar that has continuously evolved over the last decade and allowed us today to look to promising new prospects. With collaborations and experiments, innovation is not just a driver in the transformation of our products and solutions, it is an adventure into the human experience.
The culture of innovation has always been a part of who Haulotte is.
For a long time it was linked to technology but, after 2010, it took on a new dimension with the creation of an Innovation Department. “Coming out of the crisis, the Group decided to set up a dedicated structure with a strong vision: anticipate changes to aerial work by focusing on uses, so that our ecosystem can value products and solutions that are different from the rest,” Philippe Luminet, Innovation Manager, explained to us.
It is indeed essential to understand what the users of our products do. Among our customers and the customers of our customers, there are many parties who use and recommend our machines. According to Philippe Luminet, “it is this entire ecosystem that we have to study to find out what is lacking or not good enough.”
This approach has facilitated the mapping of possible experiments where there could be room for innovation. It was all condensed into Vision, our concept platform (like a concept car), introduced in 2017 at a preview for our customers. This was the precursor to our electric platforms under the PULSEO brand.
Today, with the launch of Ambition 2025, Philippe Luminet noted that “we are coming full circle, not only with 75% of Vision’s innovations being or soon to be available to our customers, but with methods, processes and tools that are shared with other departments of the Group.”
Innovate, Experiment
The 2022-2025 plan puts innovation at the heart of our strategy with the goal of multiplying the market viability of our innovations.
“In this context, we have been, for a year, trying out an intrapreneurial approach that should add value: smart anchor points,” Philippe added. (See our article on Intrapreneurship)
It is a pilot program that could be replicated and firmly established as a means to bring together the approaches the help transform the Group.
For Philippe, “this will supplement the Innovation Department, as it would be more flexible, responsive, and adapted to exploring new disruptive platform business.”
New Collaborations
To better support Ambition 2025, Haulotte commenced a collaboration with Spark Lab, a firm of experts in strategy and innovation management.
This partnership will define the roles, governance methods, and funding relating to innovation activities, especially funding for intrapreneurship.
In the end, this guidance should give us the means to be more robust and flexible, promote a culture and spirit of innovation, identify good practices, and be more receptive of opportunities and of employees who seek to work outside the box.
At the same time, a collaboration initiated with Impulse Partners, a Paris-based start-up incubator, allows us to find start-ups that have found solutions that can supplement our innovation portfolio.
In this regard, a first initiative is underway involving a German start-up and BillJax, our scaffolding business in the United States.
Philippe concluded in telling us, “all this also goes hand-in-hand with the ‘Totem’ events like the roundtable meetings and hackathons to transmit and instill the culture and spirit of innovation. I’m very optimistic in our shared ability to make Ambition 2025 a success because, at all levels and in all departments, there is a strong desire to make it so.”
Further reading
e-Lab: collective intelligence working for digital innovation
In February, Haulotte launched its e-Lab, a digital incubator located at H3 where everyone can go and share their good...
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1 year old already!
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Visit by the French engineering school, the Ecole des Mines
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