Immersive Technologies to Accelerate Innovation. Simon Richir

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form of open innovation, but rather thought at the level of a department, which we call collaborative innovation and which consists of making the circulation of ideas throughout the company more fluid by mobilizing the expertise of other departments.

      1.3.4. Crowdsourcing

      Crowdsourcing is one of the classic tools of outside-in open innovation. The significant development of crowdsourcing in recent years is due to the rise of social networks that make it possible to create and manage communities around specific topics (Whitla 2009). The crowdsourcing process has been described by Trompette et al. (2008) as follows: the organization identifies an activity that it does not want to perform internally. Rather than outsource it in the traditional way, that is, have it performed by a service provider, the company chooses to crowdsource. In this case, it posts the specifications on the Internet (on a platform or on its own Website) and sets the terms of participation (schedule, remuneration, etc.). This allows a large number of individuals to work on the activity. The company then validates the contribution of each person, according to the specifications established in advance, and allocates the expected rewards.

      1.3.5. The lead user

      The lead user concept was developed by Von Hippel, an economist at the MIT Sloan School of Management. To understand who the lead users are, we need to go back to the mechanics of innovation diffusion described by Everett Roger. According to this approach, we consider that when a product is launched, we will first have a few users called “innovators” who are few in number, but interested enough in innovations that they are very easy to convince to buy an innovative product. Then come the “early adopters”, who are a little more numerous and a little more resistant, although they are very interested in innovation, and so on, with the early majority, the late majority and finally the late adopters, who are only likely to be interested in an innovation when it is very widely diffused and established in society. In Von Hippel’s conception, the lead users are the few individuals who are even further upstream than the innovators described by Everett Roger, that is even before the commercial release of the product.

      Lead users have two important characteristics:

       – they are ahead of the major trends in the evolution of uses and they recognize the needs before the others;

       – they have an advantage and skills that lead them to innovate by themselves by developing the solution to their need.

      Thus, lead users use prototypes to satisfy their needs before a commercial product can do so. In this sense, they are considered sources of innovation.

      In theory, one might think that it is very easy to create radical innovations and always be one step ahead of the market by integrating lead users into the innovation process. In practice, we only know for sure that someone was ahead of the curve later on. Survivor syndrome, which is very common in the world of innovation, comes into play, giving us the opportunity to see the success of genius visionaries who “feel” the future and the evolutions to come. After the fact, it is safe to say that the founder of Oculus is a lead user and that the purchase of his company by Facebook to integrate it into its strategy is an illustrative success. It is a success, but let us not forget that it is because it was a success that this case is famous. In any case, lead users are often opinion leaders in their field because of their very strong expertise.

      To identify lead users in a given field of activity, Von Hippel described a method called “pyramid”. It involves asking experts who they think are the best experts in the field, then going to them and asking the same question, and so on until you have a workable list of five or six names of people to interview who will be at the top. You have potentially got your hands on some lead users in your field! The next step is to analyze the usage of these few specialists and identify the types of technologies they use to meet the needs you want to address. If their usage leads you to other areas of expertise, you can then repeat the process of identifying lead users in these other areas of expertise.

1.4. Technical and human issues from ideation to design

      The innovation process not only is based on methods but also relies on tools that can vary according to the type of project, its progress or the habits of the company.

      Technology is the natural partner of the designer, especially when it comes to representing previously identified concepts. Indeed, most of the time, the digital representation tools are not mobilized during the ideation. The generation of ideas is classically carried out in textual form on Post-it notes or a paperboard, in the form of sketches, or by creating physical models with materials that are malleable or can be assembled such as modeling clay, cardboard or Lego (Dorta 2004). Computer-based 3D tools are usually reserved for later stages. In the design process, they are actually used to represent ideas that have already been selected and developed.

      1.4.1. The sketch as a reflective process

      After the very first phases of divergent ideation, the designer will use two types of “conversation”: a conversation with self and a conversation with co-designers and clients. Both types of conversation will require both visual representations and fluidity in the execution of the representation of the designer’s ideas.

The designer’s conversation with self refers to what Dorta (2004) calls reflection-in-action, which could be called a “reflective” conversation. In this process, the designer externalizes mental images, represents and represents again, producing new discoveries at each iteration that will lead to new ideas. They need external representations that are rather imprecise, focused on the important concepts, in order to interact with their own mental representations. They will be in continuous interaction with their representations to make design decisions (Visser 2006). The process thus consists of alternating actions and judgments. The designer’s actions can produce unexpected results; the feedback is likely to suggest concepts. Tools that encourage spontaneity, that is, natural gestures and letting go, are the most likely to generate feedback and will then tend to stimulate reflection, reflective conversation, and thus improve ideation (Schön 1983). An external representation constructed in a design process is considered to be a cognitive artifact of designing (Visser 2006) in the sense that this artifact contains knowledge, or at least information that is intended to be re-mobilized by the designer or their partners. When the designer does not have the experience to mentally visualize and solve design problems, or when the problem is too complex, these cognitive artifacts are essential to the ideation process.

      1.4.2. Types of representation

      Reflective conversation will generally be more important in the early stages of design. Goel (1995) describes the design process as an evolution of different types of representations. For each stage, a particular type of representation is used for specific tasks. During the ideation stage, a first type of representation consisting of freehand sketches or physical models is mobilized to externalize and visualize design intentions or to communicate them with others. These first representations are what Goldschmidt (1992) calls idea-sketches. Later in the process, presentation sketches appear, in the form of digital 3D models, drawings or images, to improve communicating asynchronously with colleagues and clients about the proposals. At the end of the process appear the representations composed of detailed technical drawings and rapid prototyping models to communicate the exact and definitive information to build the product. During these three successive steps, the representations are likely to be mobilized during synchronous, but especially asynchronous collaborations with other designers or customers.

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