We have a thriving innovation process within our company. This is based on the open innovation model. Our past achievements section identifies some of our most innovative ideas and how they resulted in benefit to our customers.
We manage our innovation through an intranet based innovation portal.
Staff are encouraged to submit ideas to the portal. These ideas can relate to Thales issues, customer posed problems, topical problems or unrelated ideas. The ideas can be technology or process based.
An Innovation Committee meets on a regular basis to consider all ideas. These ideas are reviewed against a scorecard and feedback is provided to all contributors.
The down selected ideas feed a technology challenge program. The aim is to identify feasibility of the idea. This would normally be funded internally.
Successful feasibility will generate potential new project work in collaboration with a customer. This would generally be done through demonstration work and may involve us working with Universities and other partners.
Successful demonstration projects may lead to new product or services.
During the process ideas may be dropped or be enhanced with new ones. We also use a number of tools to evaluate them and to develop the required business case.
