Prelims
ISBN: 978-1-83797-013-1, eISBN: 978-1-83797-012-4
Publication date: 13 December 2023
Citation
Filion, L.J. (2023), "Prelims", Agents of Innovation, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. i-xxiv. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83797-012-420231009
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2024 Louis Jacques Filion. Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited
Half Title Page
Agents of Innovation
Title Page
Agents of Innovation: Entrepreneurs, Facilitators and Intrapreneurs
By
Louis Jacques Filion
HEC Montréal, Canada
United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China
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First edition 2024
Copyright © 2024 Louis Jacques Filion.
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Dedication
To Christine, with love. Many thanks for your endless support.
About the Author
Louis Jacques Filion, MA, MBA, PhD, DHC, is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at HEC Montréal, where he managed the Rogers-J.-A.-Bombardier Chair of Entrepreneurship for more than 20 years. He is frequently invited as a guest professor by numerous universities including the Fribourg School of Management (HEG-FR) in Switzerland. He has published more than 20 books, 100 papers and 100 case studies. His research is concerned mainly with the activity systems and imaginative mindsets of entrepreneurs and other agents of innovation. He is a Fellow of the ICSB.
About the Contributors
Prof PhD Rico J. Baldegger is a Professor of Strategy, Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Dean of the Fribourg School of Management (HEG-FR), Switzerland. He studied at the Universities of St Gallen and Fribourg in Switzerland. His research focuses on innovative start-ups, the entrepreneurial behaviour of individuals and organizations, and the phenomenon of rapid-growth companies. He has published 16 books and numerous papers. Since the early 1990s, he has also managed a business development support company. He is what can be described a ‘serial entrepreneur’, having created many companies. He is a fellow of the ICSB.
Cândido Borges is a Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Universidade Federal de Goiás, Goiânia, Brazil, where he is also Director of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Research Laboratory. He obtained his PhD at HEC Montréal. His current research focuses on entrepreneurship, new ventures and entrepreneurship policy.
Fernando Dolabela is a prolific author. One of his books, ‘O segredo de Luísa’, was a best seller and is still a long seller 20 years later. Dolabela designed one of the most popular entrepreneurship teaching programs in Brazil, for universities and basic education (ages 4–17 years). He has delivered workshops to more than 5,000 university teachers, preparing them for entrepreneurship education. His experience with youth education is exceptional and his ‘Pedagogia Empreendedora’ methodology has been implemented by institutions in more than 150 cities in numerous countries including Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru and several African countries (through UNO-UNIDO).
Joëlle Hafsi earned her Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the Sorbonne in Paris and her PhD from Boston University. Specializing in case writing, she has published numerous cases in Business Policy, Leadership and Entrepreneurship.
Francine Richer, MA (Andragogy), Université de Montréal, is a specialist in andragogy and a professional writer, and was an associate member of the SME Development and Succession Chair at HEC Montreal for 20 years. She has conducted research and published several case studies as well as two books on strategies for women entrepreneurs wishing to start their own firms or take over family businesses.
Foreword
A well-known entrepreneur recently tweeted: ‘You have to be an entrepreneur to understand an entrepreneur’. At first glance, it seems like a reasonable thing to say. If you've never launched a business, how can you possibly understand the passions, the struggles, the failures, the suffering, the doubts, the successes and the satisfactions experienced by these ‘agents of innovation?’
But Louis Jacques Filion doesn't agree, and you'll quickly understand why as you read the stories of the entrepreneurs, facilitators and intrapreneurs that this specialist has presented with such finesse in his book. These six very different life histories, unfolding at different times and on different continents, gradually lift the veil on what it means to innovate in business. The author and his co-authors have clearly mastered the art of unravelling the mysteries of the entrepreneurial mindset. They do an outstanding job of telling the stories of these six inspiring people!
They uncover, recount and share their secrets:
The name of Coco Chanel evokes fashion, perfume and jewellery – but what do we really know about the tumultuous life, the creativity and the entrepreneurial qualities of one of the first women ever to build a business empire?
Quebecers are familiar with Couche-Tard, but did you know that Alain Bouchard built his Circle K empire by becoming a master of acquisitions, leveraging a single corner store into a network of nearly 15,000 stores in more than 30 countries?
The devil is in the details, or so the saying goes. It's not enough to have a vision; as with most other things in life, execution is key. Without Réal Plourde's organizational skills and his flair for staff recruitment and talent management, who knows if Alain Bouchard would have achieved the same level of success?
When Pierre Nelis first joined Softimage, who would have guessed that he would play such a major role in the firm's spectacular success, and go on to create the Inno-Centre network as a way of putting his facilitation skills to work for other entrepreneurs?
Do you remember the slogan ‘You don't wear the same tie every day, so why wear the same watch?’ And do you know who really invented the Swatch? You might be surprised to learn that it was the same person who later went on to launch Creaholic, a veritable nursery of Swiss innovation, with its own innovative organizational model, ‘capitalist kholkhoz’. The riveting story of Elmar Mock illustrates his many facets as an inventor, intrapreneur and entrepreneur and reveals his love of metaphors as vehicles for his ideas, dreams and passions.
If ever there was an archetypal uninventive environment, it would be the business school (well, perhaps I'm exaggerating a bit here). It's difficult to imagine how someone could shake up the academic world and revolutionize its teaching methods sufficiently to create one of the most innovative institutions in the world, and then transform it into a global phenomenon in just a few short years. Emerson De Almeida, with his tremendous powers of persuasion, energy and organizational strength, did all this and more!
Louis Jacques and his co-authors look at these stories from different angles and answer many questions in the process.
The life histories of these six people who changed the world will move you, stir you to dream and – who knows – may even ignite your own innovative or entrepreneurial fire. I encourage you to immerse yourself in their stories, enjoy their adventures and appreciate the many subtleties presented so skillfully by Louis Jacques and his team.
Yves Pigneur
Professor, University of Lausanne
Inventor, with Alex Osterwalder, of the ‘Business Model Canvas’
Preface
We live in a world of innovation, where new elements add value and help to improve our lives. As a result, the subject of innovation is becoming increasingly popular as time goes by. People are keener than ever before to understand innovation and the innovative process. Of course, not all of them will become innovators. Many will go on to work with people involved in the practice of innovation, such as entrepreneurs. But even in a supporting role, they will need to understand who these people are, how they think, what they do and how they do it.
Because of their genuine interest in innovation, they all earn the title of innovationist. Their understanding of innovation makes their relationships with people who practice it much easier. It also helps them to understand the world they live in. Others may use this first step to build their own culture of innovation and become more creative in what they do. Those who take this additional step are called agents of innovation.
The case histories in this book are outstanding examples that will inspire anyone who wants to become an innovationist or an agent of innovation. Practical exercises have also been included to help structure their innovative potential and prepare to become involved in innovation-related activities. Innovation requires a particular pattern of thinking that includes a mix of imagination and learning about specific subjects, along with continuous learning.
As a reader, whether you are an artist or an engineer, or anything in between, you will find something in these cases to interest you and make you learn. The stories chosen for this book illustrate some of the many different configurations that exist in the world of innovation. They will help you to understand the progression of different types of agents of innovation and the processes they design in order to generate and implement innovations. Combined with the exercises suggested at the end of the book, they form a learning tool that is both structural and practical.
The stories in this book focus on six agents of innovation: two entrepreneurs, two entrepreneurial facilitators and two intrapreneurs. 1 Regardless of whether you decide to become an innovationist or an agent of innovation, by working as an entrepreneur, a facilitator or an intrapreneur, you will at least be aware and have a better understanding of what is involved in the practice of innovation. This is something that you can apply in your personal and professional life, whatever your job and whatever the context.
This book was designed to provide a proactive learning experience. It transmits knowledge through stories of real-life experience and will encourage you as a reader to think creatively about what it means to build your own culture of innovation.
I hope you enjoy the stories and are inspired by them. The suggested exercises at the end should sharpen your desire to become more creative and help you to feel more comfortable in our world of innovation.
Louis Jacques Filion
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to the subjects of these cases. They were generous with their time and patient enough to answer questions during numerous interviews over a period of many years: Alain Bouchard and his assistant Martine Coutu, Réal Plourde, Pierre Nelis, Elmar Mock and his wife Helene and Emerson de Almeida. Additional materials were added regularly, until the final versions of the cases were produced. These case studies have been used extensively in MBA programs in Asia, Europe and North America. They are very popular among students.
Many thanks also to my co-authors, especially to Joëlle Hafsi, a case writing specialist who co-wrote three of the case studies in this book (Alain Bouchard, Réal Plourde and Pierre Nelis). Special appreciation goes to Francine Richer who undertook the gigantic task of reviewing the available documentation on Coco Chanel. She and I read and analyzed more than a dozen books and countless other documents, including films, over a period of several years. I am grateful to Rico Baldegger for his contributions and thank him sincerely for organizing numerous meetings with Elmar Mock. I also thank Candido Borges and Fernando Dolabela who were involved in arranging and attending my interviews and meetings with Emerson de Almeida, and in co-writing the case.
Thanks to the HEC Montréal Case Centre (http://www.hec.ca/en/case_centre). The catalogue includes more than 2,000 case studies and other teaching aids (mostly in French) for management courses. To see other case studies on the same topic and order them for use in the classroom, please visit www.evalorix.com.
My heartfelt thanks go to my colleagues Franck Bares, Luis Cisneros and Mai Thai, and to Brigitte Campeau and Rachel Bonnier, from HEC Montréal's Department of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, for their unflagging support over the years. Leo-Paul Dana, Ayman ElTarabishy, Mark Freel, Dafna Kariv, Ken O'Neil and George Solomon were also kind enough to offer comments and support, and I am grateful to them.
Note: In the case studies, references may not be provided for some of the quotes. These quotes are excerpts from interviews conducted by the author with the subject of the case.
Louis Jacques Filion
Introduction
The Age of Innovation and the Emergence of Innovationism
Thousands of products and services are created every year throughout the world, but many of them fail. Why? There are many reasons for this. For example, the people who create and launch an innovation may never have had contact with or learnt from someone who has innovated successfully. It is useful to start by understanding how innovations are generated and learning about the people who generate them: why and how do they go about doing this? Whatever you do in life, whatever your craft or profession, the basic process is always the same: learn gradually, step by step. The same applies to innovation. The good news is that it can be learnt.
As a teacher of entrepreneurship and innovation, I am often asked about how to deal with agents of innovation or how to become more innovative. My students, at all levels including experienced MBAs, want to know how they should prepare and what they need to learn. ‘Would it help to work for an entrepreneur or other agent of innovation? What do I need to know about innovative thinking and practice? What if I simply want to be more creative in my own personal life? Where can I find examples on which to model my own future self and activities?’ And what if they do not want to become agents of innovation themselves, but prefer to work in a service sector with entrepreneurs or small business owner-managers as their customers or subcontractors? The life stories in this book will provide some answers to many of their questions. They show that each person involved in innovation has to find their own way.
We live in an ever-changing world where we often need to innovate in order to survive.
Colleges, universities and business schools have traditionally focused on preparing people to become managers. Nowadays, however, managers and others who work in organizations need to learn not only how to adapt to change, but also how to generate it. This is a process known as innovation: the contribution of new products, services and/or processes that add value. The number of people wanting to become agents of innovation is growing steadily. Entrepreneurs are seen as the ultimate examples, but facilitators and intrapreneurs, many of whom are inventors of new processes, add value to the enterprises that employ them. And people who work with agents of innovation in all kinds of service sectors, including lawyers, consultants, psychologists, subcontractors and so on, need to understand how these agents of innovation think and how they work.
‘An image is worth a thousand words’, or so the saying goes. Conventional wisdom suggests that real-life examples are worth dozens of theories. This book presents the life stories of six agents of innovation who had to overcome difficulties and be highly creative and tenacious in their respective fields of activity. Becoming a successful agent of innovation, whether as an entrepreneur, a facilitator or an intrapreneur, involves facing the challenges that often stand in the way of the creative process. The people whose life stories you will read in this book were able to do that. They serve as powerful role models for anyone who wants to improve their understanding of the fascinating world of self-actualization through innovation.
The Terms Used in This Book
The terms used in this book are known but have sometimes been defined differently by different authors, depending on the context in which they are used. The following paragraphs explain their meanings as they are used in this book.
The main theme of this book is innovation. An innovation is something new that adds value. An innovator is the person who designs and/or creates it. Entrepreneurs not only design innovations but also create and implement them, usually in the form of new products or services, and set up an enterprise to produce and sell them. The innovations they generate will occupy new spaces in the market. Facilitators devise process innovations that help entrepreneurs to succeed and realize their visions and projects. They are commonly seen in finance, technology, law, marketing and other support sectors. Their role is to help the products or services created by entrepreneurs to win a space in the market. Intrapreneurs play a similar role to entrepreneurs or facilitators, but as creative employees within the organizations that employ them.
There are two terms that are used extensively in this book. The first, innovationist, is used to refer to people who develop an interest in innovation. The second, agent of innovation, is used to refer to entrepreneurs, facilitators and intrapreneurs. Many entrepreneurs maintain their interest in innovation and their creative ability to generate innovations throughout their lives. Innovation becomes part of their way of thinking. It is what motivates and energizes them.
Innovation From Different Perspectives
Organizations today need innovationists with the potential to become agents of innovation. Societies need entrepreneurs to improve living conditions and facilitators who understand innovation, innovation processes and their entrepreneur's vision, and can support its application. Organizations need intrapreneurs, not only to support, improve, develop and implement value-added projects but also to redefine and re-energize those that already exist. All these agents of innovation must be able to think outside the box and constantly improve or renew what already exists. Agents of innovation make a difference in the quality of life of the societies in which they live.
There are steps in whatever we do. Many people start out as innovationists, developing an interest in the process of innovation. Innovationists are much more likely to support change in an organization and become instrumental in making it happen. They tend to become part of the forward movement instead of a weight that pulls the organization to a standstill or even backwards.
There are, of course, many different levels of innovation, from the ‘incremental’ innovations that help to improve and facilitate a company's operations, to the more ‘radical’ innovations that revolutionize entire sectors, such as Elmar Mock's invention of the Swatch and Pierre Nelis' transformation of Softimage's marketing approach. In some cases, an innovation can be a creative adaptation of something that already exists.
To understand the activity systems of organizational actors, it is useful to study not only the main actor but also the supporting cast. If we take the technological or manufacturing field as an example, it is impossible to understand how an enterprise works unless we consider not only its engineers and technology experts, but also the people who support them, in every area of the enterprise's activity.
The same applies to most other fields: architecture, information systems, law, accounting, consulting and the different areas of management, such as marketing, finance, operations and so on. Organizations in all these fields rely on trained technicians to carry out the support activities that are essential to their operations. People specialized in other areas such as human behaviour, technology and law are also often required.
There are currently not enough people who are educated to become innovationists. Innovation and entrepreneurial activity require inputs from a variety of people, each with their own complementary expertise, in both the technology sector and in other aspects of organizational life. Organizations benefit greatly from people who have become innovationists and can understand how agents of innovation think and act.
Entrepreneurs may create the groundswell and lead the process of designing and implementing innovations, but they need to be surrounded by people who understand what designing and implementing innovation is all about. Entrepreneurship involves living with the uncertainty of creating something that does not exist. By understanding and becoming familiar with the specifics of innovation and entrepreneurship, the entrepreneur's supporting cast becomes more creative and more efficient in their own spheres and lives.
Cultivating an Attitude Conducive to Innovation
The life stories that follow provide answers to many of the questions asked not only by would-be agents of innovation, but also by would-be innovationists, people who are curious about innovation and/or the entrepreneurial world or who simply want to become more innovative in what they do.
Twenty or 30 years ago, entrepreneurship education was aimed at people who wanted to create a business. They were a minority. If 15 people enroled in an optional venture creation course, it was a good year. Nowadays, thousands of students in colleges, universities and business schools enrol in dozens of optional courses on entrepreneurship, venture creation, innovation, small business development, creativity, intrapreneurship and so on, every year. Innovation is becoming increasingly popular across most sectors, and more people than ever before are interested in the different aspects of venture creation. More than 75% of firms are created by teams in which several partners act as facilitators. They come from many different specialties, such as finance, law, technology, marketing and others. A basic knowledge of innovation and entrepreneurial activity helps them to become more effective in supporting the entrepreneur who leads the innovation process. This is now a concern for almost all students, regardless of their fields of study.
Many entrepreneurs and some intrapreneurs are also inventors of products. Sometimes they not only invent the products, they also contribute creatively to some or all the steps needed to take those products to the market. Sometimes, facilitators are needed to design imaginative marketing processes that will make the product or service more successful. Amazon was created to sell books online. However, the ingenuity of the entrepreneur and his facilitators made it possible to expand the service to all kinds of additional products. Facilitators have become extremely creative and instrumental in all kinds of activities, such as finance, especially for new venture creation, development and acquisition processes, technology use, human resource expertise, creative approaches to international markets and so on.
Inspiring Life Stories
The six chapters that follow present two life stories from each of the three main categories of agents of innovation mentioned above. The stories show how these agents of innovation grew and evolved from their early interest in innovation. They describe the circumstances, steps and contexts that led these protagonists to become creative and innovative, and to build or help build successful enterprises. They will certainly serve as inspiration to readers who are thinking of becoming innovationists and would like to improve their understanding of how the innovative process works.
Section 1: Entrepreneurs
The stories begin with two outstanding entrepreneurs. Coco Chanel is generally considered to be the first female global entrepreneur. Her story is colourful and provides information about many aspects of the creative process. Alain Bouchard began with a single convenience store and grew it into an empire of more than 15,000 stores employing more than 125,000 people in 30 countries.
Section 2: Facilitators
The two facilitators both made major contributions to the firms that employed them. Réal Plourde and Pierre Nelis spent their lives facilitating the success of the entrepreneurs who were wise enough to hire them. Réal Plourde played a major role as Alain Bouchard's partner in the development of Couche-Tard/Circle K. As for Pierre Nelis, he was a key player in the development of Softimage and continued in his role as a facilitator after Microsoft took over the business. As an intrapreneur, he eventually went on to develop an impressive network of entrepreneurs, CEOs and top managers who act as part-time small business consultants and external facilitators at Inno-Centre, a non-profit organization that supports new venture creators and small business owner-managers focused on growth.
Section 3: Intrapreneurs
The two intrapreneurs, Elmar Mock and Emerson de Almeida, each created movements that ultimately transformed the firms that employed them, by inventing, re-energizing and innovating. Like many intrapreneurs, they also went through periods in which they became entrepreneurs launching their own firms. Later in their lives, they both became external facilitators, supporting innovative initiatives in a wide range of organizations.
Being Innovative: Learning, Succeeding and Excelling Continually
The stories presented in this book suggest that the field of entrepreneurship may benefit from being broadened to include innovationists and agents of innovation: not just entrepreneurs, but also facilitators and intrapreneurs, and eventually other categories of organizational actors who contribute different forms of innovations or provide support for innovation. They all serve as learning models for aspiring innovationists and agents of innovation.
The six life stories were written to be read by anyone with an interest in organizational life, regardless of their background and context. There are no specific analysis grids because these cases can be used in many fields of study. Instead, readers are invited to develop their own grids relevant to their own fields and subjects of interest, whatever they may be.
If you want to be innovative, you need to learn how to understand and approach contexts. This is clear from the stories of the imaginative, tenacious people described in this book. Choosing to be innovative is an important step on the path to self-transformation and self-fulfilment – in other words, to becoming better users of ourselves and our potential.
A list of questions is proposed at the end of each case study. There are no absolute answers to these questions; it all depends on your perspective as an individual. For example, if you are a student of psychology, you may not have the same perspective as a student of law, marketing or engineering. The same applies to the exercises suggested at the end of this book. They were designed, as far as possible, to be relevant to readers from different specialty areas.
Section 4: Lessons for Innovationists and Aspiring Agents of Innovation
This section discusses similarities and differences of the three categories of agents of innovation whose examples are presented in this book. A table shows characteristics of each category. Reflections suggest some food for thought about which category could suit better the reader.
Appendix: The Seven Exercises
From Innovationist to Agent of Innovation
Exercise 1 Preliminary Self-Assessment
Exercise 2 Defining your Own Creative Model for Innovation
Exercise 3 Identifying a Need, Creating an Opportunity, Contributing an Innovation
Exercise 4 Defining a Vision
Exercise 5 Internal Ecosystem – Building an Internal Relations System to Support Innovation
Exercise 6 External Ecosystem – Building an External Relations System to Support Innovation
Exercise 7 Becoming Innovative – Acting as an Agent of Innovation
For the sake of simplicity, ‘entrepreneurial facilitators’ will be referred to as ‘facilitators’.
- Prelims
- Section 1 Life Stories of Entrepreneurs
- Chapter 1 Coco Chanel: Building an Empire – Chanel in Three Acts
- Chapter 2 Alain Bouchard, Couche-Tard/Circle K: Conquering the World of Convenience Stores
- Section 2 Life Stories of Facilitators
- Chapter 3 Réal Plourde, Couche-Tard/Circle K and Entrepreneurial Facilitation
- Chapter 4 From Softimage to Microsoft and Then to Inno-Centre: Pierre Nelis and Entrepreneurial Facilitation
- Section 3 Life Stories of Intrapreneurs
- Chapter 5 Elmar Mock, From the Swatch to Creaholic: Inventor, Intrapreneur and Entrepreneur
- Chapter 6 Emerson de Almeida and the Creation of Fundação Dom Cabral: Leading a Brazilian Revolution in Executive Education
- Section 4
- Chapter 7 Lessons for Innovationists and Aspiring Agents of Innovation
- Appendix From Innovationist to Agent of Innovation
- Index