Editor: Pom Bessot

Editorial coordination: Constance Arhanchiague and Claire Blanchaud

English translation: Eileen Powis

© le cherche midi, 2018

30, place d’Italie

75 013 Paris

Layout by Soft Office

Copyright: October 2018

ISBN 978-2-7491-5923-2

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FOREWORD

Once upon a time there was an industrial group that was very powerful for all sorts of reasons that no one questioned: the (very large) number of men and women who worked there, the even greater number of customers that it had and above all the products it offered, which no one could do without: gas and electricity.

The group’s strength was based on two pillars that compelled respect: its principal shareholder was no less than the French State, whose soundness no one would call into question; and, with regards to the gas market, the group we are talking about held the most secure position imaginable, that of a monopoly.

“Under these conditions, why change?” many people in the group asked. “Let’s continue to rake in revenue from our dominant position. While civilizations are mortal, as the poet Paul Valéry warned us, this vulnerability doesn’t concern us; we work in a public company, or a nearly public one.”

The policy of putting your head in the sand or “after me, the flood” wasn’t (at all) the same one held by the managers of the group we’re talking about.

This is how Gérard Mestrallet, then Isabelle Kocher, opened this group to change. This is how one of the directors, a member of ENGIE’s Executive Committee, Jean-Louis Blanc, was tasked with spotting upheavals within these companies, finding their most dynamic players and how to help them.

This is how the “matinales de l’innovation” came into being. Meeting regularly at the Village du Crédit Agricole on the rue de la Boétie in Paris, they have featured over 150 speakers who are as diverse as can be but who resemble each other in a single way: their involvement, on a hierarchical or other level, in the most striking innovations in our societies, whatever the sector.

Entrepreneurs (small or large, public or private), French or foreign, elected officials, scholars, artists, philosophers, architects, union leaders, and NGO directors, all discussing the themes of our modernity, from “the new age of renewables” to “cities that reinvent themselves,” from “the century of gas” to “reinventing our daily lives” and “carbon-free mobility” or “tomorrow, everyone will be a producer”. You will find a list of these strolls through the land of the future in the annex.

So many areas of exploration were opened during these morning sessions, so many exchanges launched, so many debates begun, so many prospects proposed but also so many warnings made, so many dangers denounced…

We felt it was a shame to not leave a trace of these “matinales.”

Hence this little book, a modest echo of those impassioned conversations.

Of course, a lot more was said during our encounters.

Of course, one or another of the participants in these sessions will find his or her thoughts stunted, poorly understood, or even worse, forgotten.

But for the others, all those who didn’t attend the Village events, this is a contribution, perhaps a useful one, to the portrait of the world that is being born. An elusive world, because everything is being turned upside down quickly, depriving us of our former reference points without the rules that are to come seeming clear.

This is a gift from the “matinales”, some of the major movements in the process of modeling another society. And for which winners, which losers?

Here as well is another gift from these “matinales”, a few propitious innovation principles: the ecosystems that are being built to allow it to come into being, stifling factors to be avoided, the financial needs to be met at the right moment, the waste that can’t be tolerated.

Have a good trip!

You might find yourself no longer knowing where to look, where to listen.

To quote Montaigne: in this “eternal turning around” that characterizes our planet today, what path should a company or person follow to find their place and contribute to laying their stone in the edifice of so-called “sustainable” development?

Making something new, big deal!

Change, but why?

And first of all, what is changing?

Change, alright, but how?

To whose benefit, to whose detriment?

I

WHY CHANGE?

From the new applications on our cellphones to car-sharing, from the invasion of drones to the reorganization of production lines, from tweets to digital tablets and procreation methods, from genetic manipulations to nanotechnologies, innovation is everywhere. It runs through and drastically changes every economic, social, cultural and political sector. Nothing escapes it. Nothing can survive without it. Permanent innovation, that frantic search for the new, is our period’s originality.

How can we find our way in such a profusion of change? How can we evaluate the meaning and usefulness of this widespread and growing agitation within our societies?

To imitate life

Change is life itself. Let’s think about it for a minute. What is life if not a startup that has succeeded?

Life constantly innovates. And for this reason and this reason alone it has been able to continue for so long on its tremendous itinerary: an epic story that has lasted over 3.5 billion years! To continue and keep continuing, to go from one stage of development to another, to clear each of the innumerable obstacles encountered, it had to find solutions, solutions that we humans can profitably take inspiration from. This is the credo of biomimicry, an approach developed by the American scientist Janine Benyus in the late 1990s. MIT researchers copied the Namibian scarab beetle to produce water from fog. In Japan, the racket caused by the Shinkansen high-speed trains was reduced by simply imitating the beak of the kingfisher for the design of the locomotives mimicking how it dives into the water without disturbing its prey…

There are innumerable examples of this kind. In Senlis, the Centre Européen d’Excellence en Biomimétisme was asked to draw up an inventory of all these potentialities. It is led by Gilles Bœuf, for years the president of the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle.

The bicycle, Jeff Koons, Luc Ferry and Daniel Cohen

Go forward or fall: that is the destiny of the bicycle!

The same is true for our companies, doomed to innovate or perish.

Innovate to decrease costs and maintain competitiveness.

Innovate to propose new offerings, the only way to maintain or increase revenue.