Driving Innovation in a Global Company

On a personal level, every new year forces us to reflect and look ahead. What can we be doing better? What new habits and news year’s resolutions can we implement (and try to stick to).??

Of course, in the technology sector this mindset is needed all year round. As a technology company, our continued relevance hinges on continuous innovation and boundary-pushing. This can only be achieved by tapping into talent at all levels, both within and outside our organisation, and from around the globe.?

When leadership is spread across North America, Europe and Asia like ours, it forces you to constantly evaluate whether you’re doing all that you can to foster innovation. I love hearing from my colleagues across the globe about how they’re doing this – and what learnings we can glean from it.??

One such example can be found in Noida, India, where we employ 1,200 engineers across various business units in our largest engineering centre. Our primary goal? To push the boundaries of innovation.?

Firstly, we define clear objectives for innovation. We’ve created small, dedicated technical engineering teams tasked with exploring new, innovative projects. These teams are currently testing cutting-edge concepts, like confidential computing and AI security, ensuring we stay ahead of the curve.?

To drive innovation and success, our working project teams gather engineers together from across the globe to share experience, knowledge and resources. A great example of this was seen with the development of a PQC algorithm for the HSM Luna Product, where, thanks to the collaboration of our teams working across France, Canada and India, we were able to drastically reduce the size of the code, whilst simultaneously improving its performance.?

Tech innovation needs diversity to thrive. We’ve found that these initiatives not only spark innovation and bring fresh perspectives, but also further motivate our thriving technical community within Thales. These projects and collaboration efforts have not only inspired the team by giving them the opportunity to work on tasks beyond their day-to-day roles but have also improved the quality of our work.?

But to really collaborate and innovate, we need to look outside of the business – that’s where our work with universities comes in. We’ve established partnerships with local universities where, together with our engineers, they explore these topics even further. This provides a dual benefit: our engineers gain fresh perspectives and feedback on ideas, while the universities and their students benefit from our expertise and gain insight into how the corporate world operates. In parallel, the partnership also opens up the opportunity for engineers to train at the university and further develop their knowledge, or to volunteer time to train students.?

I can’t talk about innovation and collaboration without mentioning our Hackathons. The most recent competition brought together the brightest minds in India to tackle challenges around programming, cybersecurity, eco-design and generative AI. The competition, which is built around collaboration, gives participating individuals the chance to work with our engineers from across the globe in a bid to highlight, develop and improve on innovative ideas for the future. From this competition, we selected and funded promising projects, demonstrating that great ideas really can come from anywhere.??

At Thales, our Leadership Model is all about creating a collaborative and inclusive workplace. Here’s what that means:?

• Include Others: We make sure our engineers get a say in decision-making relative to roadmap, and features improvement suggestions. It’s important to us that every voice is heard and that we value diverse perspectives, particularly when product management is located away from our engineering sites.?

• Embrace Diversity: We’re dedicated to building a diverse and inclusive environment. This means appreciating the unique backgrounds, skills, and experiences of all our employees and using this diversity to fuel innovation and growth. We foster international mobility for our talented engineers so that they can relocate to our various engineering centres across the planet.?

• Trust and Empower: Trust is key for us. We encourage our leaders to trust their teams and give them the freedom to take initiative and make decisions. This builds confidence and a sense of ownership.?

• Promote Collaboration: Teamwork is essential for our success. We promote cooperation across different departments and regions, making sure everyone is working towards the same goals. This is essential for our Cyber by Design approach where we promote our cyber knowledge and features across Thales products and solutions, be in defence or in more general purpose value propositions.?

These principles help us create a supportive and dynamic workplace where innovation can thrive, and the work we’re doing in Noida is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how we’re working to create an innovative culture.??

I’m keen to hear about other success stories across the industry on this topic.??