At 10, rue Emile Bian, in the Cloche d'Or, on the right as you enter, a tunnel lit by blue and white LEDs leads to an immense white room--like a blank sheet of paper, its promoters say--where concrete competes with wood and bean bags and other seats.
As in an incubator, an accelerator or even a coworking space, tables are used to configure and reconfigure work groups. On panels, yellow post-it notes already provide evidence that the initiative launched by the CEO, Claude Strasser, and his chief strategist officer, Pierre Zimmer, has been well received internally with more than 60 ideas having already been registered.
“If we were to do a survey,” says Strasser, who has just returned from the economic mission to Dubai Fayot (LSAP), “I am not sure that Post would be in the top 10 of companies cited by respondents as a hotbed of innovation.” Yet the operator with a history of 180-years, has seen Post embrace change on many occasions and in very different forms.
“Today,” he says, “our activities, whether in telecoms, ICT or IT, force us to look at innovation, in order to better serve our customers or, internally, to accelerate digitalisation. We have decided that innovation should not be something that is decided at board level but that it should be based on the expertise of our employees.”
Under the name "Next", the innovation hub is meant to solidify ideas, but it is not quite where they will be born. As Pierre Zimmer explains, "the 'Kickbox' allows people to come with their ideas. A team must examine the idea and, if it is selected, the employee receives a 'Red Box' to guide them in the development of their idea, in the way they present it, until they are able to present a prototype or a 'proof of concept' to clients.”
The method, which has the merit of mobilising all energies, solves a problem often encountered by startups, that of market validation. Symbolically, at the back of the main room, next to a space for quiet reflection, is the "ring", symbolised by white ropes on one side. This is where the first potential customers of the new product or service will be able to see it and give feedback.
To get to the pitch, the employees whose idea is validated will have 80 hours of their working time available. Once the first customers have validated the idea, they will be able to use 20% of their time to turn it into a “fit to market” product. And if the company considers the idea to be a “Gold Box”, Post’s management committee is not stopping at anything. Especially not to market it, as is the case with the mobile telecommunications network monitoring system devised by Post's Cyberforce and now sold in Malaysia, Norway, Iceland and Algeria. Or as it could soon be in the field of quantum cryptography, where Post could enable the exchange of quantum keys via light thanks to the Eagle One satellite.
But internal mobilisation does not necessarily mean expertise in disruptive technologies. The project could be very effective in improving existing services or internal processes, but not necessarily in meeting the needs of the future. This is why Zimmer and the team that runs the structure on a daily basis (Patrick Reisdorff, Corinne Pinon and François Erasmy) have added a double component: the integration, through constant dialogue, of the needs or desires of existing clients and the call for experts or researchers at regular intervals. They may come from the civilian world or from research institutes with which Post already has partnerships, such as the SnT at the University of Luxembourg or the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology.
The intellectual property of these new products or services will remain in the hands of Post, Strasser pointed out, recalling how the incumbent operator has reoriented its investment policy from direct investments to investments in specialised funds--as is the case, for example, with the space fund.
This new internal laboratory--if one considers that Post's customers are already inside the circle--is largely inspired by . The latter has produced more than 300 well thought-out projects, ranging from , a blockchain-powered platform for digital art exchange, to , a chat application for Swisscom TV, to , a connected motion detector for the elderly.
This story was first published in French on . It has been translated and edited for Delano.