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When the mission statement of your company itself says “strengthening of technological progress”, the role of the Chief Innovation Officer (CIO) becomes all the more vital for the organisation.
As part of our SimpliLeader series, SimpliFlying had an insightful conversation with Yann Barbaux, CIO Airbus SAS, to discuss the innovation philosophy of the group; the role of innovation within Airbus; some of their recent successes, as well as challenges, and the opportunities the group sees in the future. Here are edited excerpts from our interaction:
SimpliFlying: Yann, let’s start with the innovation philosophy of Airbus. What is it according to you?
Yann: There are many facets to it. Agility and Speed are two primary features of our philosophy. We are always looking at new solutions to existing processes of our company, while focusing on the core business of selling aircraft and being profitable. We are continuously fighting against silos and being more agile as part of our innovation mix.
Our innovation is focusing on reducing time to market for our products, contributing to the development of the A350 programme, and improving availability of existing platforms, instead of launching new ones — getting the best out of these platforms according to the needs of our customers is our priority.
SimpliFlying: The last time we met, you told us that your aim is to drive 10x innovation: 10 fold improvement in efficiency and product. Which has been the biggest success for you since then?
Yann: We are working on three main ideas:
1) 10X Impact — This is basically focusing resources on a limited number of projects, to get the maximum impact
2) We are looking to deliver a completely new business line for Airbus, in services this year. The aim is to capture 50% of the market share, starting from scratch. We are planning to launch this in the second half of 2015.
3) We are globally trying to fast track things, and trying to make the organisation more agile, whether it’s the finance department or HR or procurement or any other department. All the support functions are important. We are also aiming to change the way we work internally, to simplify the organisation even if doesn’t impact customer facing innovations.
SimpliFlying: What are some of your biggest successes till date?
Yann: There has been a tremendous change in our way of working. We have introduced beta testing of solutions with airline partners, resulting in quicker adoption. This is done through the sprint methodology, where we build a prototype too. By April will see the result of this test for the new service we are launching, and if everything goes well, it will go live by the end of the year. I can share with you that the service is for exploiting aircraft data.
Our deployment of the innovation network has over 100 individual catalysts across the world in multiple business units. Our aim is to reach 200 by end of 2015. These people are the point-persons in charge of pushing their divisions to innovate further.
Another initiative is our Biz Lab – it is a physical space where Airbus welcomes start-up projects. Airbus teams share this space, which also enables rapid prototyping by taking them out of the system, coaching and providing methodologies as an accelerator.
Airbus Ventures is part of the initiative to evaluate startups . Over 70 startups have been vetted by now and 8 are running across US, Bangalore, Canada and Europe.
SimpliFlying: What are some of the challenges you have faced in building a culture of innovation?
Yann: It has been a fight against the existing processes of the large company that is Airbus. The new programs require a certain way of working and our main challenge is to convince our 60,000 people to understand the new processes. The old processes are not relevant to innovation anymore. Our aim is to develop simpler processes for innovation, in parallel.
SimpliFlying: That’s great and we wish you all the best for tackling the challenges ahead. Tell us, how do you define the ROI from innovation?
Yann: Everything we do is driven by our business needs. It is about imagining the right business model around an idea. We recognise there’s a certain amount of risk and we need to balance it. Two remarkable recent deliverables have been the runway over-run protection system and the reduction of insurance fees for airlines. These ultimately help in introducing innovation and driving adoption at the same time.
SimpliFlying: Where do you see the big opportunities for your group in 2015 and beyond?
Yann: We are making tools to support and spur innovation, which we are very excited about. The development of our network and accelerating the production rate of some of our aircraft — these are some of the big opportunities for us in the coming period.