Unconference 2022

A major root cause of failure for innovation projects is the lack of market validation and answers to non-technical questions. We have adopted an approach bringing discipline to value assessments of innovation projects and ensuring we have a clear definition of WHAT will be the new offering even if we are still at a stage where HOW it will be developed is still unclear. It includes key elements like defining the value proposition, analyzing the value chain and who is truly influential in or around it, identifying potential trade-offs, identifying potential partners and alternative business models, ... Besides improving the quality of our innovation portfolio, we also found that another major benefit of this methodology is a step change in the quality of collaboration and communication between R&D and Marketing teams. Join this session to learn from our findings and discuss your own experiences.

Nicolas Cudré-Mauroux is the Chief Research & Innovation Officer of Solvay, in charge of R&D at this science and innovation company investing more than 300M€/yr in R&D. Nicolas spent the first part of his career with DuPont, starting in 1988 as a researcher at the Experimental Station, DuPont's central research facility in Wilmington, Delaware (USA). Until 2006, he held a range of R&D, marketing and new business development leadership roles in the United States, Canada and Europe. In 2006, Nicolas was named Regional Business Director for the Advanced Fibers Systems and Nonwovens businesses in EMEA. In 2011, he joined the DuPont-Danisco integration team and, in 2012, moved to Denmark to become the Technology & Innovation Director for the food ingredient business that DuPont formed following this acquisition. In 2015, Nicolas joined Solvay where he focuses on maximizing the impact of Research & Innovation investments. In addition to his CTO role at Group level, he recently also took over the R&I leadership of the Materials segment, Solvay's main growth engine. He is based at the corporate headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of CNRS, the largest French research organization, and of the Board of Governors of the Argonne National Lab in Chicago. He was also elected to the Royal Academy of Belgium. Nicolas is Swiss and was born in Luxembourg. He has a MS and a PhD in Materials Science from the Swiss Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland.