1st Edition
The Innovation Odyssey Lessons from an Impossible Project
Affordable is not typically the first adjective used to describe an electric automobile. This book traces the history of an affordable electric car, from its genesis to its marketing. This history is more than a singular adventure. It is the analysis of a project that allows us to understand the key issues of strategy and management of contemporary innovation.
The book features in lessons in:
- Strategy revealing the complexity of international product development and the conditions for its implementation in today’s fragmented world
- Project management showing what is required to succeed in the a priori impossible challenge of a design within an alliance between five partners from four different countries
- Innovation demonstrating that the electrification of mobility can be combined with affordable prices
- Industrial policy using the emblematic domain of electric vehicles to illustrate the major role of public authorities in technology, the future direction of this role, and the importance in the competition between Western and Chinese industries
- Intrapreneurship showing that a start-up is not the only context in which it is possible to attempt and experience breakthroughs.
Part 1 The Odyssey of K-ZE
Chapter 1: The Long March of the Accessible Vehicle Concept for China
Chapter 2: Preliminary Project: Exploring the Unknown
Chapter 3: An Innovative Framework for a Cooperative Design
Chapter 4: An Agile Development in an Unprecedented Context
Chapter 5: A Project in a Perfect Storm
Chapter 6: The Phoenix
Conclusion of Part 1: Evaluating Innovation Projects
Part 2: Learning from Projects
Chapter 7: Societal Innovation and Administered Darwinism
Chapter 8: The Project as a Means of Strategic and Cultural Integration
Chapter 9: Global Innovation Strategies and Lineage Management
Chapter 10: Innovation and Entrepreneurial Capability in Large Companies
Conclusion of Part 2: Reenergizing a Large Firm
Conclusion
Afterword
Biography
Christophe Midler, Emeritus Research Director and Professor of the Management Research Center, Ecole Polytechnique, Paris and member of the French Academy of Technologies. He is internationally recognized in the field of project and innovation management.
Marc Alochet is researcher at the Management Research Center, Ecole Polytechnique, Paris. Previously, he was an engineer at Renault, where he held various functions and positions in product and process engineering.
Christophe de Charentenay is CEO of M@Air, is an expert in carbon-free mobility. He was, from 2017 to 2020 the president of eGT, the operator of the K-ZE project (dacia Spring).
