What was your biggest challenge with this training? What specific needs of your company did it address?

I took a position in L'Occitane's Research and Development team, dedicated to radical innovation. My challenge was to refocus a team of scientific experts on the needs of our customers: consumers and nature. At the end of this 5-week program on Design Thinking, the participants had to become the relays of customer-centricity at L'Occitane. We needed a program that could be activated quickly, and a method that could be applied to all our projects.

What are the particularities of your company's culture, and how has NUMA managed to adapt to it?

On scientific profiles for whom the beauty of the gesture goes in the direction of science, the first step was for them to get out of their ingrained way of thinking and unlearn their reflexes to open up to new ways of identifying a problem and thinking about its solution. The notion of MVP addressed by NUMA (Minimum Viable Product) was decisive in this rethinking, and for them it was almost an exercise in humility: putting aside their search for the perfect solution, to experiment quickly and find a solution that, while not necessarily objectively perfect, responds very well to the consumer's problem. 

What did you enjoy most about working with the NUMA team?

Together, we were able to customize a case study to push the participants even further into their habitual blind spots. On this subject, I needed to put them in their true condition so that they could see their real reflexes coming out and realize that there were other ways of approaching the problem. It's these practical cases that make the difference when it comes to improving skills, and it's great to be able to make them as realistic as possible.

What was the most important aspect of the program for your employees? 

When I started the course, I was afraid of the digital format because I thought that not being able to "get my hands dirty" would be a barrier. Despite the distance, the program is designed around the various design phases of a project, which participants put into practice at each session. As we don't work on the same sites, following the program in small groups helped to break down silos and bring out new ideas.

What have they put in place or challenged since? What benefits do you see?

It's a little early to see the long-term effects in their problem-solving approach. The last workshop on the Pitch brought together all the learnings from the previous sessions, each participant was able to appropriate the different practices experienced and put them into practice in their own way.

3 words to describe your collaboration.

Disruptive, efficient and fun.