Open Innovation. Pascal Latouche

PART 1

      Multiple Journeys

       Happiness is not at the top of the mountain, but in how to climb.

      – Confucius –

Introduction to Part 1

      The entrepreneur, as you will have understood, is one of the protagonists without whom the very object of this work would be meaningless. It is the entrepreneur who interests me, and it is their business development that motivates this book. Their business development is their life project, and they are trying to make a living out of it.

      First of all, it should be noted that the entrepreneur has probably existed since the dawn of time. Men and women have had to take action for themselves, their loved ones, their families or more broadly for humanity to move forward. If today we reduce the notion of the entrepreneur to the one that comes to mind spontaneously, i.e. the digital entrepreneur, we cannot say that this is a recent phenomenon either. The democratization of the Web dates back to about 1989/1990. The end of full employment was combined with this democratization, and the entrepreneur (especially the digital entrepreneur) was then carried to the skies. If you can’t get hired, you might as well create your own job. Anyone who had a good idea and the means to develop it could call themselves an entrepreneur. I say could, because this is less true today and will probably be less and less true in the future, without a proper approach on the part of the entrepreneurial CEO. This is a far cry from the jeans/sneakers that are created in a garage and become a multinational company in just a few years.

Entrepreneurship has been and still is the subject of much analysis by the web media and other entrepreneurship consultants. The latter have taken the entrepreneur by the hand to talk about their inventions or to raise money from investors. These analyses have the merit of existing, even if they can sometimes be criticized for being too popular and not allowing useful lessons to be drawn from them. Entrepreneurs are “analyzed” in substance only recently thanks to the serious studies that real authors devote to them. This is a good thing as long as these analyses can be understood by the greatest number of people. Whether it is extension work or academic work, the right tone and substance must undoubtedly be found to enable entrepreneurs or future entrepreneurs to maximize their chances of success. This should also allow the large group to better understand the start-up “thing”, by taking advantage of it and avoiding disastrous relationships. Indeed, we must recall that these are first and foremost people who, as parallel employees in large organizations, or whose sole source of income is their entrepreneurial project, are certainly reshaping the world around us, but who must also be able to make a living from it. Entrepreneurs are indispensable for tomorrow because they are ultimately a “representative of intellectual growth” for society itself, with values and jobs at stake.

      Contrary to my previous work, which was rather academic because it stemmed from my thesis on corporate open innovation, this book will be anchored in reality, palpable and audible to all, with a solid academic backdrop. Anchoring oneself in reality means observing and questioning real people without preconceived ideas. So that’s where I’m going to start to get you in the mood.

      In this section, I will profile some entrepreneurs. I know hundreds of them. Why these? I cannot answer this question only rationally, because there are not only rational reasons. I was looking for profiles with technological and non-technological solutions. I was also looking for a certain mix. I was finally looking for personalities that you don’t hear much about, or even see at all, but who, in my opinion, don’t confuse entrepreneurship with being a Hollywood star. To begin this book, let’s discover groups of life… five women and two men!

1

      Mr. José Jacques Gustave, the Global Entrepreneur!

      Mr. José Jacques Gustave (G2J) is the first entrepreneur I had the pleasure of interviewing. I say pleasure, it was more than that. We come from the same corner of the globe: the Caribbean. Needless to say, listening to him reminded me of my past, I sometimes had the scent in my nostrils and the taste in my mouth.

      In fact, when it comes to travel, with G2J, I will take you to different destinations: the Caribbean, mainland France, the USA, Africa, Asia. In my opinion, G2J is more likely to be seen as a global entrepreneur, because his favorite terrain is the world, wherever he feels there is something to be done.

      Like any story, it needs a beginning, and it starts in 1965, somewhere on an island in the Caribbean.

1.1. Context

      G2J comes from a modest family from Martinique. Martinique for those who do not know is one of the many French islands of the West Indies in the Caribbean Sea. He is the fourth child of a sibling group consisting of one brother and two sisters.

      1.1.1. Parents-warrior

With a driving license obtained during his time in the army (military service), his father started earning his money as his brother-in-law’s “apprentice”, a small plantation owner who had demonstrated Caribbean customary solidarity by hiring him. He was indeed a handyman. At that time in the West Indies, there was nothing extraordinary about hiring the youngest of the family. In short, it was an approach that we would readily describe today as a form of economic “mentoring” aimed at giving people “smaller” than ourselves the chance to earn a few pennies in exchange for a variety of services. With money in his pocket and access to credit in the West Indies, his father was able to buy his own truck. For G2J’s father, this was the beginning of an “entrepreneurial” adventure: he then became what we could call today a craftsman – a transporter. To get around these islands, you should know – and this is still true today – that there were only roads. G2J’s father answered – is there a need? I guess so. Goods, such as bananas, needed people to get them from one point to another. Note that his father was an innovator, because he was the first to have the idea of transporting racing skiffs from one side of the island to the other via his truck, as it is recounted in Mr. Castandet’s book on the history of skiffs in Martinique. G2J lost his father at the age of 9. May he rest in peace, and if it is true that there is something beyond, then no doubt he will meet mine.

      As for G2J’s mother, orphaned at 14, she trained to become a teacher. She passed on the knowledge she had acquired to the children. From G2J, I got a lot less detail about his mother’s life. I think I noticed this phrase more than once: “My mother was a fighter!”. I deliberately didn’t dig any further. The place of women in some cultures is important. It is not only her vocation to give birth to children and to be the “wife”. It is above all she who takes on a statutory role in the home, who educates, disciplines or not, keeps accounts. In short, whether you are a husband or a child, it is in your best interest to make an ally out of her, otherwise you will no longer have the affection you have longed for.

      As I was listening to G2J, I realized that a singularity was emerging. The parental couple as such. Imagine that you want to build a house, it collapses a few days before it is finished. G2J told me that rather than attacking the craftsmen, her parents simply decided to rebuild it without asking more questions than that. This seemed very strange to me, because we could have imagined this couple in a process that would have consisted at least in implementing actions against the craftsman, while rebuilding. In retrospect, is it any wonder? For months, you watched your house rise up out of the ground. A certain sympathy has inevitably developed with your craftsman. I imagine that the failure of the project (the collapse of the house) becomes a collective failure because you took part in this construction. You assume the result. It is only long after I understood this philosophy that characterizes G2J: never get lost in useless fights and take the events upon yourself