Intrapreneurship: From Selling Cans to Innovation at Thales

Discover the story of how I went from simply selling soda cans in high school to exploring intrapreneurship, along with my thoughts on innovation in this field.

First entrepreneurial experience

As far back as I can remember, my first venture into entrepreneurship dates back to my sophomore year.

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There was a vending machine for snacks and soda cans at my high school. Back then, a can cost 10 francs. Yes, I’m a “boomer,” and yes, that was cheap. I’d noticed that at the corner store, they were sold in packs of six for 5 francs each.

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So I decided to buy packs at the grocery store every day at lunchtime and sell them for 7 francs at my high school. It wasn’t exactly revolutionary—just a small-scale import-export operation. Still, I felt something inspiring inside me, and it wasn’t the money, because that venture ended quickly. It was the idea of creating value.

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Career Path and a Sense of Incompleteness

As my studies progressed, there was a significant gap in my knowledge of this subject. I followed a predetermined path that reassured my parents.

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I worked as a software development engineer and spent 12 years at THALES, a major French corporation. I held various positions, including developer, project manager, program director, and department head.

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I quickly moved through each stage of my career: at 29, I was the youngest department head to lead a 50-person project and a team of 12 engineers. Yet, I felt a void inside me.

From Thales to Entrepreneurship

After 10 years, I felt the urge to create again, to experience that exhilarating feeling. So I entered an internal competition, and in 2014, I launched a project on the “soldier of the future” using AI and deep learning—way ahead of its time. Unfortunately, I failed miserably. I later realized why.

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Then, together with three colleagues, we launched TED Talks THALES, followed by Thales’ first internal Startup Studio. Over several seasons, we’ve had more than 300 participants and projects that have been game-changers both within and outside of Thales.

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The four of us left Thales and founded CREATEROCKS, where we have mentored nearly 1,000 aspiring entrepreneurs.

Understanding Innovation

We were able to do it because we had finally understood what innovation really meant.

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I’ll be honest with you: I hated the word “innovation.” I actually loathed it. How many of you have seen ads with “innovation” plastered all over them, even on products as simple as my deodorant or toothpaste? They seemed to be taunting me with that word right there in plain sight. Yet, until proven otherwise, I still brush my teeth the same way. Obviously, not with the deodorant.

Innovation vs. Invention

Here’s the first problem: believing that innovation is the same as invention. That’s why we can’t talk about innovation without mentioning AI, blockchain, Industry 4.0, big data, LLMs, and so on.

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This is becoming unbearable, and it suggests that:

1. Innovation is solely about technology
2. and that it is reserved for a small group of people who know all these rules.

Counterintuitive Principles of Innovation

In 2013, I visited the Foire de Paris—maybe you’ve heard of it? It’s a huge trade show in Paris where you can buy all sorts of things. As for me, I went there to buy a sofa. The show also hosted a famous competition: the Lépine Competition.

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I have to admit that I hate this competition. But don’t worry—there are plenty of other things I do like! The reason for my anger toward this competition is that it celebrates ideas and inventions without even considering their practicality! That’s when I realized several counterintuitive truths about innovation. I’ll share a few of them with you here.

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Your idea is worthless!

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The winner of the 2013 Lépine competition was a classic barbecue skewer, but with a small wheel at each end. This allowed you to grab the sausage on one end and flip it without moving the skewer.

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Isn't it beautiful? Or at least practical? How many do you think they sold? I can't tell you myself, because two years later, they stopped making it. Do you know why? Because nobody needed that brooch!

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A regular fork or skewer does the job just fine: this skewer didn’t solve any real problem. But that’s where the innovation begins: for a specific segment of the population, how does your life improve because of you?

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When we helped Thales’s future intrapreneurs understand this during the first workshops we held with them—by steering them away from their technology-centric approach—we came up with much better projects!

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To create is to copy

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Have you heard that famous quote by Picasso? "Good artists copy; great artists steal."

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For a long time, I was led to believe that innovation meant creating something out of nothing—something that would suddenly appear out of nowhere one fine morning and change everything! I was terrified!!! That meant it wasn’t something everyone could do; you had to be a genius to innovate. The images in the media showing Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, or Zuckerberg didn’t help either.

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_{Then I realized: innovation means observing, drawing inspiration, adapting, combining, and adding your own personal touch!}

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Zuckerberg didn't invent social media, Elon Musk didn't invent rockets or electric cars (in fact, he bought Tesla—he didn't found it), and Jeff Bezos certainly didn't invent e-commerce.

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They elevated them to new heights. Incidentally, as the story goes, Picasso himself had borrowed that famous line from a playwright of the previous century, who had in turn borrowed it from a poet of the late Renaissance!

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Most of the time, it doesn't work!

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It was one of the hardest truths to accept: only 1% of innovations are truly successful and actually work.

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I love the story behind Angry Birds: you all know that game where you fling birds at green pigs on your smartphone, right? It’s a massive hit!! Who hasn’t thought, “Unbelievable—yesterday this game didn’t even exist, and now it’s the number one download! I wish I’d invented it!” How many games did they have to create before they came up with this one? ... 51... 51 games that failed.

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The founding team found themselves so broke that they could no longer afford to release a game, so they sketched out the designs that would become Angry Birds on paper and showed them to friends and family. Could they have discovered the secret formula for Angry Birds without those first 51 games? Never. My point isn’t to become obsessed, but to understand just how much we learn from our mistakes, even when it comes to innovation.

My definition of innovation

I have about ten more counterintuitive principles, but we'll talk about them next time, okay?

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What I’ve finally come to understand from all this is summed up in a definition of innovation that I find very clear: “Innovation is the social implementation of an invention.” Most of the time, we start with something technical or technological, yes, but the real ingenuity lies in the project’s adoption, its target audience, and its market. And that is something everyone can access; it’s a matter of method and mindset.

The Role of Middle Managers in Corporate Innovation

This last point—the so-called "right to fail"—brings us to the most complex aspect of corporate innovation: middle managers. Often caught between a rock and a hard place, executive committees (COMEX/CODIR) clearly need to innovate. Similarly, employees on the ground are well aware of the many problems that need to be solved.

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Then there’s the middle manager, who has to keep everyone happy while staying within budget, meeting deadlines, and ensuring quality on their traditional projects. I’m very familiar with this role, having held it myself. However, it’s impossible to innovate in a company without the commitment of managers.

The Complexity of Managerial Roles in Innovation

Here are a few management principles I’ve gathered over the years that have helped me identify the leaders who best harness their employees’ potential while also building their own value.

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The Model Manager

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This is the kind of manager who takes a personal interest in innovation, by learning the counterintuitive methods and principles I mentioned, and who always sets aside time during team meetings to discuss them. At Thales, we worked with a department head who gave a presentation on how he managed his teams to foster their creativity. Needless to say, everyone wanted to join his team after that!

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The Leader-Manager

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He’s the kind of person who puts his team first, builds a community of “makers” within his group, encourages action, and then recognizes his employees’ contributions. That was exactly the kind of manager I had when I launched my first intrapreneurial projects. After several setbacks, he was rewarded when one of my projects generated 7 million.

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The sponsor manager

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This is the manager who doesn’t hesitate to secure funding to co-finance a project or find the right people to help. He also opens doors at levels that the intrapreneur on the ground cannot access and promotes the intrapreneur’s project. For my friends at THALES and me, it was André, the marketing director of one of Thales’ business units, who used his appearances at the Executive Committee and Management Committee meetings to talk about our activities, which allowed us to gain visibility and take action.

In summary

Managers play a key role in shaping and disseminating internal innovation. There are many roles that managers can take on without negatively impacting their bottom line. However, the first link in the chain is the intrapreneur.

The Journey and Value of Intrapreneurship

People often ask me, “But why become an intrapreneur? It’s risky, it requires a significant investment, and in the end, the project has only a 10% chance of succeeding and a 1% chance of becoming a huge success.”

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So, let’s be honest: yes, it’s difficult. The best intrapreneurs I’ve known are the ones who don’t wait for a budget or allocated time before taking action. It’s always better to showcase what you’ve accomplished with limited resources to demonstrate what you can achieve with a budget, rather than talking about what you’d like to do if you had the money.

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But the outcome of the project isn't everything! There are significant benefits to becoming an intrapreneur.

The experience

As Morpheus says in *The Matrix*, “There’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.” The same is true of intrapreneurship. Going through the experience of starting, failing, starting over, redoing, undoing, losing motivation, finding solutions, and turning risks into opportunities is like an accelerated MBA.

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This experience helps you grasp the challenges much more quickly. Julie, an intrapreneur I mentored, didn’t succeed with her project, but thanks to that experience, she moved to a role in innovation management and helped launch several successful projects.

Apprenticeship

In this experience, your learning curve increases tenfold, because reality catches up with you quickly. I’m a big fan of “Frozen 2,” which I love watching with my daughter. People often think Elsa is the heroine, but in reality, it’s Anna, her sister. She’s the one who solves problems, learns to drive a sled, hunt stone giants, and escape from a cave.

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Maurice, whom I mentored, benefited from this approach: his project didn’t work out, but he applied everything he had learned in his field. Before, he had trouble selling a product. Thanks to our discussions, he sold it three times in three weeks.

The value

Have you heard of the Japanese art of kintsugi, which involves repairing broken objects with gold? This art form restores immense value to an object marked by scars. Intrapreneurs, with their scars from both successful and unsuccessful projects, are invaluable to the company.

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I ran into Zulfukar: his project was going very well with his co-founder, so much so that the project spun off from the group with an investment. Zulfukar chose to stay with the group while looking for another position.

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Backed by a powerful sponsor, he sent an email to one of the members of his company’s executive committee, who was aware of the value Zulfukar had generated. The next day, he received five calls from human resources managers at the group to discuss a transfer.

Conclusion: Learning from Failure

Finally, I haven’t told you everything yet about my first business venture as a can seller in high school. The venture lasted a week. Why? Because at the grocery store, the cans weren’t refrigerated, so nobody wanted my warm cans. My high school friends still bring this up all the time: “Hey, do you guys remember Raph and his warm cans in high school?” They laugh, I feel embarrassed, and then I end up laughing too!

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But what I learned that day was far more valuable than my two francs in profit: I learned to appreciate the taste of failure, to relish the cross-outs, because that is where innovation lies. That is where the intrapreneur is found. And, dear medium and large companies, given the world of today and tomorrow, this is clearly the kind of person you need: those who launch new projects that think outside the box, and those who help them succeed.