{"id":12299,"date":"2019-09-27T07:00:01","date_gmt":"2019-09-27T05:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluenove.com\/?p=12299"},"modified":"2020-08-24T22:11:55","modified_gmt":"2020-08-24T20:11:55","slug":"innovation-collective-intelligence-african","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bluenove.com\/en\/blog\/innovation-collective-intelligence-african\/","title":{"rendered":"The irresistible ascension of African innovation and collective innovation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Or how Societe Generale in Africa went from a community of managers with less than 80 persons to collective intelligence at a whole continent\u2019s scale\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

The first experiments, the premises for a culture of open innovation<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The pan-African Valley Community: the beginning<\/h4>\n

It all started in 2014 from the strong intuition that transversally, digital transformation and the pooling of skills to meet strategic challenges are the essential levers to give a pan-African dimension to Societe Generale\u2019s various subsidiaries in Africa.<\/p>\n

This intuition resulted in the launch of the first pan-African community of managers, the PAVC<\/strong> (Pan-African Valley Community).<\/p>\n

When it was created, the PAVC\u2019s ambition is to \u00ab\u00a0co-create the future of Societe Generale in Africa\u00a0<\/strong>\u00bb. The community aims at favoring synergies between countries and to actively contribute to the development of business on the continent through projects consisting in producing strategic recommendations on a given subject.<\/p>\n

These projects thereby allow to address complex issues in a short amount of time, collectively and online on the group\u2019s intranet. These characteristics already hint to the premises of the collective intelligence which would become massive three years later.<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the projects on which the members of the community worked since 2015 is the design and future of the pan-African innovation LAB\u2019s value proposal<\/strong>. They needed to answer the following question: \u00ab\u00a0How do we tool up to construct tomorrow\u2019s African bank?\u00a0\u00bb. This had to go through the acculturation of the collaborators internally and externally by a stronger connection with the ecosystem. Otherwise, the choice was made to create a LAB in total immersion in the local ecosystem localizing it in JokkoLabs\u2019<\/a> offices, one of the largest independent catalyzers of entrepreneurship and innovation at the scale of the continent.<\/p>\n

The Dakar LAB: the birth of an ecosystem<\/h4>\n

The Dakar innovation LAB<\/strong> achieved to, in a couple of years, become the masterpiece in innovation for Societe Generale in Africa. This, through the organization of external Challenges (Hackathons) by African startups since 2016, and many internal innovation challenges with the groups\u2019 entrepreneurs, on subjects going from the clients\u2019 satisfaction to the transformation of banking agencies.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Pitch in the Innov’Days of Lab, February 2016<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Meanwhile, the PAVC created a larger and stronger network between pan-African talents, managing executives from different subsidiaries and representatives from the bank in France. Since 2016, the PAVC seminar has taken place in Casablanca, Dakar, Accra, Alger, and, lastly, Abidjan. It is intended to continue touring<\/em> between different countries to build even stronger bridges in a community which today counts over 200 talents, more than double the amount at launch.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The common destiny idea<\/h4>\n

It is during a PAVC seminar in Accra in 2017, seeing how far the communities had come, their growing maturity on the new digital tools and their expressed desire for more transparency and transversally that the idea of launching a massive consultation, on the scale of all the continent\u2019s collaborators, was born.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The beginnings of massive collective intelligence and the acceleration of innovation<\/strong><\/h3>\n

This Big Bang (because yes, that\u2019s what it is about when an international bank decides to open up the definition of its strategy to all its collaborators) is called SAFARI. A page is turned.<\/p>\n

SAFARI: a new dimension<\/h4>\n

For three months, from December 2017 to February 2018, Societe Generale\u2019s 11 500 collaborators were invited to participate on SAFARI, through bluenove\u2019s platform Assembl.<\/a> The ambition is huge: \u00ab\u00a0Be 11 500 to co-write the 10-year strategy for the new Africa Business Unit\u00a0\u00bb. This internal strategic debate by eliciting extraordinary commitment (more than 5000 participants contributed to the platform), has given Societe Generale the reflex to use collective intelligence to solve complex problems.<\/p>\n

At the same time, innovation is embodied. Val\u00e9rie-No\u00eblle Kodjo Diop joins Societe Generale as Innovation Director for the Africa Overseas zone (AFMO). She launches an 18-month “Innovation Program”<\/strong> with the aim of building an end-to-end path to support start-ups inside and outside the company.<\/p>\n

“The Innovation Program is a transformation of our software for the support of our start-ups; at the level of our own devices that we are building: Labs, Digital factory, Plateau, but also through partnerships.” Val\u00e9rie-No\u00eblle Kodjo Diop<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Discovery, Design, Delivery: time for rationalization<\/h4>\n

The Innovation Program allows the creation of a methodological repository, dedicated to structuring innovation at Societe Generale in Africa: the 3Ds corresponding to the three main stages in the evolution of an innovative project, from ideation to industrialization.<\/strong> Thanks to the program, Societe Generale’s 18 subsidiaries are equipping themselves to strengthen their support systems for start-ups on this continuum.<\/p>\n

Within this framework, the innovation team works to identify needs by opening up dialogue directly with clients, with, among others:<\/p>\n