ABSTRACT
How does breakthrough innovation actually work? How is it organized? This chapter will examine Creaholic, a company specialized in breakthrough innovation that is also a creative laboratory specialized in the design and the development of new products and of new technologies and their industrialization. The company works on its own projects as well as on those of its clients. The innovation services for multinationals or SME’s comprise roughly 80% of Creaholic’s activity. The company has roughly 60 main clients. Since it was founded in 1986, it has produced over 750 innovations, filed 180 different families of patents, and created 8 start-ups. The company employs 30 people from different backgrounds and cultures and has forged its own unique specializations. Over the last 30 years, less than 10 colleagues have left this company, which has grown in a progressive and organic manner. The company employs experts from many creative fields: physics, materials (in particular, plastics and wood) in electronics, chemistry, mathematics, law or intellectual property, design,
interior design, architecture, economics, and commercial development. Creaholic works from the moment of conception to pre-production, integrating along the way aesthetic values, rules of engineering, construction, research, filing of patents, prototyping, and analysis, as well as the use of materials and appropriate forms. Creaholic comprises a team of people who ignore the boundaries between disciplines, services, and sectors thanks to their transversal manner of working on new subjects. Its work culture is: leave the main roads, propose extraordinary concepts, and feed your creative thought. Because they completely integrate technique and aesthetics and work in small groups with specific tasks, the company is able to help its clients innovate, by developing new concepts and new knowledge.
