Orange has been recognized for its leadership in innovation at the recent Innovation Management Trophies event. It was awarded for how we have set up R&D within the group. Orange overhauled its R&D activities in 2005. We now have 18 labs around the world helping to develop new technologies for local markets; we also created the concept of the Technocentre, a centre that combines marking, R&D and information systems expertise within a single location; the Usage Sociology Laboratory to identify and analyze customer behavior and usage innovations; La Cantine, our idea of an open-source ideas sharing space; and the Employee Innovation program supported by an intranet site idClic - more than 1300 ideas were piloted through this in 2007, with a net saving of more than €400 million.
Orange has considerable research and development presence in the Middle East. In Jordan, there is the first Technocentre outside of Europe. Its aim is to design and market new products not just in Jordan and other countries of the Africa, Middle East and Asia area, but also in all countries where the Group is present. And in Cairo there is France telecom’s 18th global Research & Development centre. The latter focuses on localizing technologies to the Middle East market and also develop products for multinational companies. The Cairo labopened in early 2008 and planed to employ 50 people by the end of the year, 90% of them Egyptian.
I am Head of Regional Marketing Communications and Operations in the Indirect, Middle East and Africa Region.
I am driving the digital transformation of the marketing function in this region. Among my favourite types of challenges are the ones that involve bringing people together to deliver a project, and I like the challenge of delivering “wow”. I have a passion for the new digital world, and I am often caught immersed in this when I should, in fact, be walking my dogs.