by DEBORAH LABRE
“The greatest difficulty no doubt remains the fear of the unknown, the fear of change.”
Deborah Labre holds a Master’s II in Branding and Innovation Management from Iscom Paris. She began her career at Omnicom Media Group as a Strategic Planner, and later joined the Marketing Intelligence department of Showroomprivé as a Brand Experience Planner. Deborah is currently Head of Marketing and Communication at PayLead.
BOLDNESS – AT THE HEART OF INNOVATION
What place does innovation occupy in your company?
Innovation is everywhere! It’s in our expertise, aimed at developing the most powerful customer knowledge possible, in order to create more affinity-oriented, more intelligent marketing. It’s also in our internal organisation, where fulfilment is the key word.
In all matters, both internal and external, it’s a continual Test and Learn approach: we imagine, we create, we deploy, we measure, we rethink, we improve, and then we do it all again!
What, in very practical terms, is the starting point for an innovation? Who drives the project, starting from what?
In our company there are so many possible starting points for innovations! Innovation can originate from a vision conceived and developed by our co-founders, it can originate from a fantastic idea launched by one of the members of our team, it can also be the fruit of research that was not intended to lead in this direction!
I think that in essence, innovation often starts when an individual gets a flash, but it requires the collective intelligence to turn it into something. At PayLead, every time a new project is discussed it instantly becomes this incredible competition. It makes me think that what drives projects is above all the enthusiasm of the team.
What difficulties have to be overcome in order for people in the company to accept innovation, for you to be able to impose innovation?
The greatest difficulty no doubt remains the fear of the unknown, the fear of change. It’s human nature to sometimes want to stay in one’s comfort zone rather than strike out into the unknown, which is what the challenge of innovation represents. We were very quick to understand that if everyone was going to come fully on board new, “crazy” projects and contribute to them, we would have to create a genuine relationship of trust with one another. This is also one of the pillars of our culture, and it emboldens us to pursue new initiatives every day.
