Can you tell us about your background?

I very quickly started out on my own in parallel with my studies at ENSCI, with a dual activity as interaction designer and sound designer. I moved back and forth between projects for R&D centers (Thomson, EDF, France Télécom) and those for fashion shows and contemporary dance companies. In design agencies, I did the same job on interaction issues. Then I joined Décathlon to help reorganize the largest design center in France at the time, in line with the new business model of business units relocated to sports venues. This meant reinventing the profession and setting up a cross-functional organization to maintain emulation between designers and the company's ability to help them grow.

"What drives designers? How can we support them to maintain their skills and creativity? I've always been driven by these concerns.

Within the PSA Group, I have favored innovation driven by new uses rather than innovation driven by technology. I developed the User Experience Innovation team , an internal laboratory-agency at the service of all PSA departments. Within this framework, we created theOpenlab design , which encourages collaboration between students from different design schools and other professions.

"In a team, it's enriching to be able to draw on profiles with distinct postures, complementary skills and the ability to work together. We absolutely must develop the collective pedagogy of design schools."

Then, little by little, I was put in charge of the "life on board" of the autonomous vehicle project, i.e. what the interior experience of a connected, intelligent and protective car looks like, when you're no longer driving it. An incredible technological and human adventure. In 2016, I was finally appointed R&D Director of Machine Interactions, reporting to the COMEX. With my R&D teams made up of engineers, developers, electronics engineers, ergonomists, designers and many other professions around the world, our challenge has been to stay one step ahead of our competitors by leading the cockpit revolution and supporting the development of clean powertrains.

In 2020, when the director of Strate asked me to take over from him, I realized that I would feel even more useful if I got involved in the higher education of creative and innovative profiles to meet the challenges of the ^21st century. For the past two years, I've been President of the ENSCI Board of Directors, and I've seen just how disoriented students are by the health crisis. Until then, I devoted 10% of my time to teaching at various schools, including Strate.

"I said to myself that it was time to reverse the balance and devote 90% of my time to the challenges of training in the design of a sustainable world.
to the challenges of training people to design a sustainable world,
and keep the remaining 10% for R&D."

What resources do you draw on to move your projects forward or exercise leadership?

Whatever the level at which I've been able to intervene - on my own account, in an agency, in front of COMEX members - the main resources I've called on to feel right are sincerity and frankness, so as never to have to question my commitments to the last detail.

Thanks to our sincerity, our teams see us not just as a captain of industry, but also as a human being with convictions who can also be convinced. By remaining accessible, attentive and benevolent, people can speak freely. Employees are more inclined to talk about problems than to keep quiet about them. To err is human. But to learn from mistakes, you need to be in a position to share them.

What are your current projects and challenges?

As part of the courses offered at the "Stratos"[1], we are developing a new area of local involvement: Strate action sociale. The aim is to infuse design into associations, town halls, départements, the Ile-de-France region...

"The public sector needs to reinvent itself, and design can serve this purpose. From the start of the new academic year, we're going to enable our student designers and all those interested in social innovation to work together."

We intend to develop this concept, adapting it to the cultural context, in Africa with the YUX Design agency, and then in India via our Bangalore campus. It's important that our students learn to design for an environment that demands frugality.

Progress is at the heart of the design approach. But progress and innovation are not synonymous. An innovation may be motivated by a market, growth or technological objective, but does not necessarily constitute social, societal or environmental progress.

"We're building a school that's open to the world, to both private and public issues,
with an awareness of the impact of design on society and the planet."

Our second challenge is to maintain skills throughout a career, so as to keep innovative profiles such as designers employable and to keep their "little creative engine" going. The world is changing, as are methods, tools and software, and environmental and health emergencies are accelerating... As a result, the continuous transformation of skills is crucial to ensure that profiles remain innovative and have a positive impact. This is part of the schools' social responsibility.

What message would you like to send to young and future innovation leaders?

We've just made a space-time leap into the ^21st century. In retrospect, I think it's very interesting for young people to have gone through this experience of telecommuting as a way of imagining a new, chosen balance. Their flexibility between face-to-face and remote work and their ability to relate to others at a distance are strengths that will stay with them for the rest of their careers, including international ones.

"At Strate, we train the makers of tomorrow. The design profession has the ability to turn the tables, reverse paradigms and change society."

What's more, the crisis we're living through is conducive to a more humanistic approach, focused on the environment, social issues, CSR... In our experience, when a company goes through a crisis, it often ends up calling on the design approach, because it allows it to operate differently, to implement new processes, new business models, new product and service offerings... History has shown that all companies that have been able to place design at the right strategic level have been rewarded and have overcome crises. At Strate, we're fond of this quote from Abraham Lincoln: "the best way to predict the future is to create it".

[1] École Strate students