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Policy

For Groupe SEB, innovation is part of a virtuous circle - creating value for retail clients and a source of growth and satisfaction for consumers, it generates profitable growth which is then reinvested in innovation to keep the circle going. 

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Innovation takes on many different forms within Groupe SEB and it gains momentum from the trilogy of strategic marketing, technology and design. Our Marketing, Research and Development teams observe and listen to prospective users at every stage of the product development process. They work with these future users to test and constantly enrich their innovative proposals.

 
Understanding consumer requirements and practices

 

In order to observe the actual use of products in everyday life and to understand specific cultural differences, the Group relies on an ethnographic type of approach by immersing itself in consumers' lives.

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Respond with practical innovations...

 
R&D teams have been built up considerably over recent years, both in terms of employee numbers and in terms of their profiles, in particular by recruiting highly specialised engineers who supply expertise in new fields such as coatings and materials, man-machine interfaces, batteries, nano-technologies, etc.

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...and clearly perceived

Design is one of the three innovation pillars, with strategic marketing and R&D. Well balanced, it permits to product to become a success. Its role is to contribute in genesis of innovative solutions.

It must emphasis the product’s features, and assures a perfect comprehension of their use and positioning. Then, design has to give them this extra spark of spirit which will make them indispensable in our daily life.

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Relevant and targeted innovation is all about launching the right product in the right place at the right time. It therefore needs to be based on an approach for exploring market trends and consumer expectations. As well as a purely internal approach, there is also the development of partnerships with major companies, research institutes, schools and universities.

The diversity of our business units requires an extremely wide range of skills in innovation, including more qualified and specialised profiles. At the same time, this diversity allows a high level of cross fertilisation between our different business units.

 SEB LAB: WHEN CREATIVITY TAKES SHAPE

The SEB Lab initiative was set up in response to the fact that innovation teams did not always have suitable space or facilities for working on projects upstream of the product design process.
We therefore started looking for the best solution, based on the requirements expressed by various members of the Group's Innovation Community, and decided to create an experimental place, inspired by Fab Labs and dedicated to creativity and implementation. We organise work sessions involving mixed teams (marketing, research, design, internal and external experts) to work on an innovation issue. The concepts identified are then immediately given concrete form in the workshop or even tested on site. It is an excellent way of assisting the design process and it will be further developed in the coming years because it allows a product's potential to be evaluated quickly.

 

Creating a Product range 

A structured process, 4 key phases :

  • exploration (generating ideas and checking they are pertinent);
  • demonstration (demonstrating feasibility of selected ideas);
  • realization (investing to create a new growth area or to boost an existing market)
  • and finally promotion…

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Watch the video
"Invent tomorrow's everyday life"

Chiffres Clés 2016

% sales of products less than 3 years
60
Innovation investment (€m)
225
Patents filed
542
Soleau envelopes
164
Innovation community: number of people
1,400
Innovation community: number of people in R&D
900