Innovation at Icade is everyone’s business! To stimulate creativity, challenge the status quo and enable employees to be entrepreneurial in their day-to-day activities, Icade has put intrapreneurial processes in place, financed by an in-house Innovation Fund (€2m in 2018). Developing a culture conducive to innovative projects means allowing employees to take part in the Group’s transformation, as regards both its solutions and way of working.
Innovathons, workshops, conferences, learning expeditions... so many ways to think outside the box to generate new ideas! With this objective in mind, the team in charge of innovation encourages employees to give shape to their ideas, by providing coaching, intrapreneurship training, new tools, etc.Once the project has been structured, financing can be obtained through Icade’s Innovation Fund. This is the project’s seed phase which should result in a Proof of Concept, with the continued support of the Innovation team.
Open Lab, a fully adaptable area located at the heart of Icade’s headquarters, provides intrapreneurs with a multi-purpose space dedicated to innovative projects. There, the team in charge of innovation also conducts its day-to-day activities (workshops, meetings with start-ups, pitching sessions, etc.).
Projects aimed at being implemented on a larger scale can join Urban Odyssey, Icade’s start-up studio, in order to benefit from fresh funding and incubation at Station F, in the HEC Incubator.
Cycle Up, a beacon of innovation for business, is a digital platform dedicated to the circular economy and the reuse of building materials. It got off the ground as a start-up under a partnership between Icade and Egis. Devised by intrapreneurs, Cycle Up records the available building materials on a construction site and ranks them according to their degree of reusability. As a result, the Pulse building, located in the Portes de Paris business park, was partially built using materials chosen on Cycle Up. The concept as a whole has many advantages, including reduced construction costs, a smaller carbon footprint, waste reduction, resource conservation, etc.