Hello, my name is Sihem Jouini, Associate Professor in HEC, Head of the Master's degree in Management of Big Projects and Main Innovation and Conception Projects in "Grande Ecole" and Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Executive MBA. I will talk about the management of an innovating project. How to manage an innovating project? Before answering this question, let's start with the definition of project and the principles and methods required in project management to study the validity of these notions in the case of an innovative project. Let's take an example for this definition. A project is a combination of human and non-human material and immaterial ressources used for a temporary organisation with a specific goal. So, I distinguished three elements in this definition: temporary dimension, specific goal and ressources. Let's start with time. By convention, members of an innovating entrepreneurship can fix an event or a period to mark the end of a project. Launch on the market, validation of the technology if it is a big technological change, the first introductions, etc. Now, let's take a look at the other elements. A specific goal. An innovative project is characterised by a big uncertainity on technology, its use, the features which have value for the users, the buyers what value will they give? So, it is difficult to specify the starting object. On the contrary, the whole project will consist in progressively specifying these elements. And now, the ressources. In project management, there are managing tools for stakeholders. We identify the primary and secondary stakeholders, the ones contributing directly or indirectly to the project. So it will be the case of an innovating entrepreneurship project, for example the future users, buyers, the purchasing advisors, distributors, financiers, incubators. In the case of an innovative project, all these elements and actors will be gradually identified and moreover, this list will progress. A part of the project will contribute to clarifying it progressively. Thus, the definition of a project must be considered with caution in the case of an innovative project. Let's take a look at the principles and the managing tools of the project. To manage a project is simply to design it and execute it. Design requires the identification of the scope, of the ressources, constraints and risks. Identifying the scope consists, for example, in identifying all the components of a product, result of a project, this is what we call a Product Breakdown Structure. Then, you must identify all the tasks required for the different components; organise the tasks in hierarchy: mother tasks and daughter tasks. This is called WBS: Work Breakdown Structure which is the heart of the project design. Finally, you need the necessary ressources to execute these tasks. Who is responsible for which task? This is generally chosen by the Organisation Breakdown Structure. In the case of an innovative project, it is also hard to identify components, tasks and ressources from the start of the project as the project will consist in progressively identifying them. So in project management, you need the risk management to deal with the unknown. A risk is an event with a certain occurence probability and a certain impact and to manage risks is to anticipate these events and prepare mitigation plans for those risks. In the case of an innovative project, we are facing unpredictable and unknown events. It is very hard to anticipate the occurence and the impact. This is what Christopher Loch refers to with his colleagues as Unknown Unknown. We are in a situation of incertitude and unknown. You don't manage risks anymore, you manage incertitude. Christopher Loch has two methods for this. Either to be selectionnist: you lead several approaches in parallel in several projects and the best will win. Or to try and make mistakes: so a progressive approach of readjustment, a learning process. In the case of a creating innovative company, the second approach will obviously be the adopted one - the learning process with tries and mistakes. Let's explain this approach more clearly with the modelling of Christophe Midler's project. A project is a progress through time. In the x-axis is the time. In the y-axis, on the left of the screen, the flexibility or the actions and adopted decisions. Through time, the head of the project and his team lose flexibility as they make decisions about fonctionnality, technology, partners, suppliers, etc. In parallel, the knowledge increases as you can see represented here on the y-axis on the right of the screen, as time goes on, the project team will aquire more and more knowledge of these elements. So the aim is to increase this curve of knowledge as much as possible to make decisions in a situation of knowledge. This is very important in the case of a situation of incertitude where there is a lot of unknown things on the previous elements. The cure of knowledge must rise to take actions, but actions must also be started to increase the curve of knowledge. To summarise, an innovative project is a process of discovery and exploration. It is a learning process. We think that we can use a structured approach to manage this project. The traditional project management approach consists in designing a project, executing it, measuring the gaps, analyze them, trying to get the project as it was first planned or redisigning it if it isn't possible. But according to Peter Drucker, one of the main authors in entrepreneurship and innovation, when a startup gets succesfully into the market, it is rarely with the intended product neither for the anticipated costumers nor the intended use. Thus, there will be gaps but the analysis of the gaps will be different. The project will not be brought back, it is said that when a plan is fiction, its progress is a mirage. The project must always be re-designed. Each gap will bring knowledge. The gaps are therefore structural and the initial plan is just an idea. They are hypotheses on importance and incertitude. Let's take the example of Stanton from Pixar who made several successful movies. He tells us that he agrees that at the beginning of an innovative project the team makes mistakes several times and, to manage this, they create plenty of storyboards. And you can see the great number of storyboards, for example for WALL-E there were around 100 000 storyboards. Each time the different reactions to it are noted and the next soryboard is suggested. To summarise, the project management methodology is important for its systematic and thourough dimension. But the situation and the treatment will change. Managing an innovative projects means to reduce the incertitude, so to make hypotheses, start actions to confirm them, disconfirm them and change them into valid knwowledge. This process of discovery is very well described in McGrath's book entitled "Discovery-driven Growth". How to plan this discovery? The first step is the formulation of hypotheses. Internal and external hypotheses will be formulated on the business model, technology or competition or partners. Thes hypotheses will be certificated and qualified in a full and thourough way. Each hypothesis will be numbered. On what was it formulated? What is its estimation? Who is responsible for it? How is it on this date? How will critical hypotheses be identified from the tasks? A critical hypothesis affects several elements, has an important effet on performances, defines the feasibility of the project, implies important investments or is very sensitive. Milestones will also be identified, they are meetings where the main hypotheses will be raised. Here again we will have a steering tool. For each milstone there will be a precise description, the hypotheses, the costs, for example. These milestones will be planned through time as for a classical project. Each milestone is used to validate at least one hypothesis, each hypothesis must be validated at least with one milestone, e.g. a critical milestone is used to validate a critical hypothesis. So all this is thourough and very equip. We will simultaneously identify and prepare the actions needed to unconfirm or confirm these hypotheses. For each hypothesis the action or the experimentation that will generate the required knowledge must be identified. For each hypothesis these questions are needed: What is the origin of the incertitude? What is the need for knowledge? According to which method of acquisition? What support is needed to acquire knowledge? How will the knowledge, once acquired, be integrated into the project? This is what Eric Ries describes in his book. So, from an hypothesis, we must design an experimentation, measure the gaps, learn and rephrase the hypothesis or move on to the next one. Eric Ries insists on the multiplication of these learning loops and the reduction of their cost. These experimentations require a demonstrator, generally, or what Eric Ries refers to as minimum viable product. It isn't a prototype, it must be very simple. The idea is to experiment the foncionnalities as soon as possible. With early adopters accepting faults and actively participating to improve the product. You musn't specify it precisely, but, on the contrary, let the the missing features be underlined by negative remarks, if I may say so. So you must organise these experimentations, experiment early, experiment often, reduce the cost, set back the commitment of important and irreversible costs and multiply the methods to acquire knowledge. To recapitulate, managing an innovative project consists in using the traditionnal definition of project management but taking this strong dimension of incertitude into account. Speaking of hypotheses, experimentation, milestones that raise hypotheses, manage the project by changing the hypotheses by confirming or unconfirming them. Financing can be managed progressively as the incertitude is being reduced. It is therfore important to follow a stuctured and systematic approach. It is even more necessary in the case of an innovative project as cognitive bias have been identified by psychologists working on creators of innovative businesses and innovative project managers. Indeed, those often keep in mind information reinforcing the chosen hypotheses, reject information challenging these hypotheses, forget the hypothetical nature and the fragile baselines, overestimate success and undervalue risks. They are optimistic and it is a good point. The role of managing tools of innovative projects is to go along with this optimism through very strucutured and thourough tools. To conclude, mananing an innovative project means to work on three elements The first one - we talked about it - is to manage learning and reduce incertitude as multpile experimentations go on. In parallel, it is important to insure cohesion within the team and to organise solidarity, especially as the team may change as the project grows. And finally, as innovative companies depend on ressources, you must communicate, be transparent towards stakeholders so they get involved in the project. Now, it's your turn. Thank you.
