At EDHEC, a day dedicated to innovation in all its forms

During his talk, Florent Ménégaux discussed the importance of the long term at Michelin: “in view of their innovative nature, some of our products required close to 20 years of R&D”. The CEO also covered the diversification of his company’s activities: “we are currently developing products for the aerospace or medical sectors, such as prosthetics implantable into the human body”, and the company’s efforts to reduce CO2 emissions: “we’ve optimized energy consumption during our tyre manufacturing process, particularly during the heating phase, in order to reduce the associated carbon footprint”. 

This talk closed the Innovation Day devoted to the issues of nutrition and well-being, organised by the Foresight, Innovation and Transformation Chair (FIT) under the leadership of Professor René Rohrbeck and designed as part of the Chair’s “Future of Wellbeing and Nutrition” research programme. This three-year project, run in partnership with food industry players (Roquette, Bonduelle, La Vie Claire, etc.), aims to find solutions to the challenges facing the food industry, such as soil management in farming, the search for alternatives to animal proteins and the impact of AI on the understanding of nutritional needs. 

The Innovation Day is a key stage in the first year of the programme and featured the final of the “Future of Wellbeing and Nutrition” Hackathon. This student challenge enabled some 120 MSc in Strategy, Organisation & Consulting students to work in small groups and devise solutions to one of the eight problems proposed by the FIT Chair, such as the role of robotics in meal preparation, and food and nutrition education. The jury comprised industry professionals, such as Christelle Le Hir (EDHEC 2000), Managing Board Chairwoman, La Vie Claire and mentor of the programme, Valérie le Bihan, Head of Global Marketing Food, Roquette, Laetitia Guerin-Deremaux, Head of Nutrition & R&D, Roquette, Sergio Neves, Head of Plant Protein Research, Roquette, Olivier Ponthieux, Agro Industry Domain Transformation Leader, Bonduelle and Laura Van Eeckhout, Lead Foresight across Categories, Foresight Factory, Danone.