Hackathon: 3rd prize for Naval Group at the Hutchinson "24H of Innovation"

Future australian submarine

13 October 2017 Innovation News

The enthusiasm for hackathons, a contraction of the words ‘hack’ and ‘marathon’, continues to grow. This form, emerging from the programming and open-software community and devoted to collective intelligence and creativity, also won over Naval Group. Awarded 3rd prize at the Hutchinson 24H of Innovation, the group will also shortly take part in the Airbus hackathon in Nantes. The day after its first participation in the "24H of Innovation" event, organised in mid-September at 507 FabHouse, Hutchinson's temple to innovation, located close to Orleans, Loïc Mougeolle, Prospective Officer in Naval Group's Innovation and Technical Management Department, reports that he is "very satisfied". Open innovation is precisely one of the major added values of the hackathon, the principle of which is to mix, over a very short time, varied profiles driven by a taste for challenges in the subjects to be addressed. In this case, over 24 hours, 160 students from 27 engineering, chemistry, business, design and management schools and universities worked on some twenty themes proposed by ten project backers, including Naval Group, Total, Air Liquide… with a jury of experts to choose the best teams and allocate prizes. A high-adrenaline challenge whose success can be attributed to the sincerity of the approach, guaranteed by the commitment of both the competitors – carefully selected by Hutchinson and ESTIA – and the project backers. Two topics were proposed by Naval Group, selected by its Director of Innovations and Technical Management Department, Éric Papin. The first, "Seeing without being seen in the marine environment", invited competitors to rethink discretion and stealth systems. The second addressed the issue of "60 living comfortably in 80 m2 over 90 days?". "In both cases, the solutions proposed were judged to be pertinent by our experts", indicates Loïc Mougeolle, "to such an extent that Naval Group plans to take them further. One of these earned us 3rd place amongst the 17 competing teams, and the other the prize for best design". Over and above the collection of new ideas, he also underlines that "the hackathon is an interesting tool to be used by Naval Group to extend its methodological palette, strengthen its collaborative projects and open up to the outside world, to trigger innovation". At the same time, the group intends to boost its employer brand across a pool of young talent, familiar with the rules of collective creativity. The theme of the next hackathon, scheduled from 10 to 12 October at Airbus, Nantes, will be the plant of the future. Éric Papin will be a member of the jury.