Innovation Consulting
For more than 30 years, our team has been supporting everyday industrial leaders, innovative SMEs and start-ups, as well as institutional investors, in their innovation and new market development projects.
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How we support our clients in their innovation projects
Founded in 1993, Alcimed is a consulting firm specialized in innovation and new markets development in life sciences. Spread over our 8 offices in the world (in France, Europe, Singapore and the USA), our team of 220 high-level explorers supports everyday decision-makers and business departments (marketing, research, innovation, strategy, CSR, etc.) in their innovation and new market development projects.
We cover every key success factor in innovation, from highly operational issues such as running a creativity seminar or a community, to more strategic issues such as building, evaluating and improving an innovation process, leading an open innovation approach, defining eco-design strategies, modeling the impact of innovation on CSR, and much more!
The diversity of our clients (manufacturers, ETIs, innovative start-ups, institutions, etc.), the subjects we deal with, and the geographical areas we explore, enable us to master a wide range of missions and develop recognized expertise in our specialized sectors.
Our missions
Our expertise
Our missions
Strategic marketing
Clients & Patients
R&D
Commercial strategy
Innovation
New partners
Our expertise
Healthcare
Environment & Climate
Beauty & Nutrition
Energy & mobility
Sovereignty
Examples of projects carried out for our clients in innovation
Open innovation strategy definition in the pharma industry
Our client, an American pharmaceutical group, requested the support of our team to define their open innovation strategy in Europe in order to facilitate their collaboration with European start-ups and researchers.
After having studied the possible collaboration opportunities envisaged by our client (mainly focused on the search for new therapies and R&D techniques), our team carried out an initial mapping of the European hot spots and clusters in the biotech field. In a second step, we carried out a benchmark of the most innovative open innovation approaches implemented in Europe by other players, in healthcare and in other sectors.
Based on the information gathered during our investigations, we organized a workshop with our client’s team in order to co-construct together the best open innovation strategy to implement and define the main steps for its operational deployment.
Launching innovations: evaluation of an innovative hypertension management program in several countries
Our team has supported a leader in the pharmaceutical industry in the testing of an innovative hypertension management program launched in several countries.
Through an analysis of available scientific publications, international guidelines and congress reports, as well as an assessment of the receptiveness of healthcare professionals, Alcimed enabled its client to determine the likely impact of such a disease management program from a patient perspective and in terms of sales in the target countries.
Innovation process: improvement of an innovation process towards more open innovation for a leader in the agri-food industry
We supported the R&D team of a leading player in the food industry in optimizing its innovation process to accelerate the marketing of its products.
Our client had an innovation process very rich in ideas but internally focused and not very open to an external ecosystem. This constraint generated many limitations, including slow idea characterization and feasibility checks.
By conducting a benchmark of existing open innovation practices in the industry and leading a series of workshops with our client’s teams, we identified and implemented actions to use external partners at various stages of the innovation process in order to accelerate the different stages and thus the marketing of product innovations.
Culture of innovation: setting up an "innovation lab" to stimulate a culture of innovation
We assisted a leading pharmaceutical company that wanted to bring its teams together around innovation to develop new products, new services, new market access models and new ways of working; all in a special and unique place.
We decided to generate this new momentum by imagining the creation of an “innovation laboratory”, a physical place “apart”. Through an external benchmark and internal workshops with a dedicated project team, we defined its operational functioning and roadmap and then organized the first events taking place in this new laboratory with employees now ready to innovate!
Product innovation: new avenues for product innovation in infant formula
Our team explored the field of natural alternatives to cow’s milk to help a player in the food industry to innovate on its range of infant milks.
Our client wanted to inspire its R&D teams by analyzing all possible alternatives to cow’s milk in order to create a roadmap of new product innovations together. Through the identification and characterization of alternatives to cow’s milk, both animal and vegetable, then the selection and prioritization of these solutions, Alcimed enabled its client to identify new avenues for product innovation, enabling it to define a new product development plan adapted to this trend and thus meet consumer expectations.
Setting up a Living Lab for a hospital focused on health and independence (aging, preventing falls, etc.)
As part of a Living Lab project for a hospital, our team carried out a benchmark and exploratory interviews to take stock of the needs of the ecosystem in the region, as well as the key success factors and pitfalls to be avoided.
Our teams provided help in defining and consolidating the Living Lab project: positioning; ambition and roadmap; legal, financial, organizational, and partnership arrangements; points of differentiation and complementarity with existing initiatives.
Finally, we supported the construction of the Living Lab offer and the animation of the ecosystem and communication to federate around the project.
Technology scouting for a medical device player
We worked with the R&D team of a leading medical device manufacturer who wanted to identify and evaluate smart sensors to develop a new connected object.
After having discussed with our client’s team to identify the state of internal knowledge and to frame our scope of investigation, we first predefined the evaluation criteria (level of maturity of the technology, technical performance, partners involved, scope of development capacities, etc.) for our investigation. Once this first step was completed, we identified and analyzed potential technologies and associated players on the market in a broad way, and then characterized a final selection of the most relevant players and technologies.
In the end, we were able to recommend 3 possible solutions to our client through this technology scouting, according to the criteria we defined together.
Strategy to improve the R&D performance of an industrial player
We helped a leading company in the space industry improve its R&D strategy. Our client’s main challenge was to build a reference framework that would enable it to assess the relevance of the projects in its R&D portfolio.
It would allow our client to objectively decide which project to pursue or discontinue, and ultimately optimize performance. We carried out an initial internal phase aimed at understanding the existing R&D process, its pain points and the key criteria to be considered in order to optimize project analysis.
We then benchmarked with comparable players (very long product cycles, substantial R&D investment, ….) to understand best practices and pitfalls to avoid in this area. All the elements gathered enabled us to build a customized reference framework (criteria, an evaluation scale for each criterion, metrics, etc.) integrating the dimensions of strategic fit, business elements, degree of innovation, human aspects, etc.
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Open Innovation process: an essential in every company?
Open innovation is not new, and companies must consider reinventing the approach and the process to take the most advantages out of it.
Founded in 1993, Alcimed is an innovation and new business consulting firm, specializing in innovation driven sectors: life sciences (healthcare, biotech, agrifood), energy, environment, mobility, chemicals, materials, cosmetics, aeronautics, space and defence.
Our purpose? Helping both private and public decision-makers explore and develop their uncharted territories: new technologies, new offers, new geographies, possible futures, and new ways to innovate.
Located across eight offices around the world (France, Europe, Singapore and the United States), our team is made up of 220 highly-qualified, multicultural and passionate explorers, with a blended science/technology and business culture.
Our dream? To build a team of 1,000 explorers, to design tomorrow’s world hand in hand with our clients.
Alcimed carries out consulting missions in a variety of fields and on topics as diverse as the uncharted territories of our clients! Our projects and the methodological approaches we develop are based on the specific needs and contexts of our clients. We for example support our clients in defining their R&D or innovation strategy, in studying their target markets, in identifying and exploring new opportunities, in investigating innovative technologies, in defining their sales and marketing strategies, in integrating CSR or data science into their practices, or in imagining the future of their activities.
We have chosen to operate without using pre-established methodologies. Our consultants always start from the context and from the specific questions of our clients and think about the best way to provide clear answers. Let’s forget methodological approaches of copy-pasting.
We’re not consultants, we’re explorers! Working with a consulting firm like Alcimed means living a different experience, with a team that always favors face-to-face meetings, goes beyond classic deliverables in favor of innovative ones (videos, data visualization tools, websites, collaborative platforms, …), that favors interactive animations in projects (escape games, quizzes, board games, role-playing games, video games, …), and that loves to make clients discover unusual places!
Too often, business innovation is a set of disorganized initiatives that are poorly or not at all aligned with the company’s strategy. Building an innovation strategy aims above all to focus people and processes on the real creation of value for the company. The type of innovation desired, the targeted competitive advantage, the involvement of internal teams, customers and external partners, the management of an innovation portfolio, the articulation of the development of innovations on a daily basis, … are all questions to be addressed.
An innovation process is a company’s innovation creation process, consisting of a series of stages from the generation of new ideas to the commercialization of these ideas on the market in the form of products or services.
An innovation process brings together several stakeholders from the same company, or even from outside the company (open innovation), who are involved in the various phases of the process according to their roles: ideation, transformation of ideas into projects, feasibility and profitability studies, prototyping, market deployment.