What should a CEO do about innovation ? Should he care and why ? What should be his priorities and how should he do it ? Starting from my career experiences as MD, CEO, ... - which I illustrate with a couple of examples - I summarise the lessons I learned in a couple take aways

1. Innovation and the CEO
- Jean Muls -

2. Why w/should Innovation be on
our CEO agenda :
1. USP, competitive advantage
2. Radical game changer
3. Boosts growth & profit.
Dynamic atmosphere.
Change.

3. The thinking outside the box
anecdote (General Electric, 1995)
In 1995 when Welch told me “your ideas
are great, but you need to think more
outside of the box”, I had no idea what
he was talking about ...

4. # 1 : Innovation as USP at Flightcare – A
business about competing for a licence

6. …
FlightCare Belgium poursuit ses
activités actuelles dans les quatre
catégories pour lesquelles sa licence a
été attribuée jusqu'en 2018.
Les activités de Aviapartner dans les
catégories limitées d'assistance en
escale prennent fin au 31 octobre
2011.
…

7. # 2 : Innovation as radical game
changer at Bombardier Transportation

8. When Richard Branson wanted a train, he didn’t gave
us the technical spec’s but only what the train needed
to do : To transport X people from A to B in Y hours. …
and we ended up building a tilting train !

9. AGC tender : Instead of proposing a product similar to
Alstom's train – in that case we would have had no
chance to win the SNCF tender – we took our German
“Talent” design, with its Jacobs bogie, which we
adapted to the French norms.
• Reaction of my German engineers : !
• Reaction of my French engineers : !!!
But ultimately …

11. # 3 : Growth & profit booster.
Atmosphere of dynamism & change

12. When I started, AIB-Vincotte Board told me I had to cut costs.
The CMO told me the employees were resistant to any form of
change.
I discovered a company with a lot of highly competent
employees, but widely underutilized. I started up an innovation
management program meant to find new market applications for
the company’s knowledge.
We knew how to inspect large
circuit breakers for industrial
applications, we did the same for
google’s new data center in Ghlin.

13. Gate Terminal in Rotterdam went
for our new Non-Destructive-
Testing technology, a result of of
long R&D efforts.
We also ended up inspecting 500
kms of pipeline in India for GAIL.
… but the ITER project (www.iter.org),
was our biggest victory Next slide
Inspection of LNG storage - Gate Terminal, Rotterdam Harbour (NL)

15. The lessons I learned as CEO
• Status quo is bad. Reject it.
• Put yourself regularly in question.
The rest of the company will follow.
• Cultivate openness. Listen. Be
curious. Look outside (the box).
• Put innovation on the agenda,
including yours.