Naval Innovation Hub Launched

France's Naval Group has announced the creation of its Naval Innovation Hub to promote disruptive innovation to adapt to the acceleration of innovation cycles and to the need for increased research responsiveness.

"Staying at the forefront of innovation is essential for competitiveness. The creation of the Naval Innovation Hub at the end of 2018 made it possible to develop new growth drivers by exploring new markets and new methods of work organisation," said a press release from the French industrial group specialised in naval defence and marine renewable energy.

Its mission is to help imagine and develop the future of naval defense by rapidly transforming high-potential concepts and technologies into innovative and concrete solutions with high added value for customers, but also for the competitiveness of Naval Group.

Entirely autonomous in the management of its projects and imbued with an entrepreneurial culture, the Naval Innovation Hub brings together a multidisciplinary team from a variety of backgrounds. It’s an opportunity to attract atypical intelligences. They support ideas at all stages of their development: project formulation, customer desirability analysis, study of the viability of the business model… The idea is then transmitted to the innovation entities of the Naval Group ecosystem.

According to Simon Payet, Disruptive Innovation Manager at the Naval Innovation Hub, “In 4 months, 3 projects have been supported. For example, we have accelerated a “Proof of Concept” project on an innovative technology for guiding drones to land on surface vessels in operation. The challenge was to build a first demonstrator in 2 months.”

Located in the start-up accelerator Village by CA-Paris, the Naval Innovation Hub is also fully integrated in the group, providing employees with coaching tools and methods and gathering the best ideas.

Partnerships enrich internal R&D. Naval Group has thus created an active community around its ecosystem. These academics, training centers, innovative SMEs, start-ups and incubators accelerate the group’s operations and gather around unifying events such as the Naval Innovation Days.

Based on an agile operating mode, the Naval Innovation Hub enables Naval Group to acquire and implement good reflexes and effective practices on disruptive innovation, without forgetting the right to failure or “Test & Fail”, an essential step in any ambitious approach to disruptive research. With a squad team approach and a mobilized external ecosystem, it is positioned as an innovation facilitator.

Simon Payet explains: “The collaboration with a Parisian start-up helped a Naval Group team design digital models to significantly improve the user experience. The models were presented to the customer within a few weeks.”