The "PEPITE" method - 6 steps to cross the Valley Of Death

In French PEPITE is the short name for "Pilotage de l'Exploration Par les Invariants Technologie et Environnement". It means "Steering Exploration with the Invariants Technology and Environment".

In this page you will find a description of the "PEPITE" Method, i.e. the six steps allowing to cross the Valley Of Death from a disruptive concept to a development project.

Step 1 - Define the Innovation Field

The PEPITE method starts with an innovation field or should I say a "desirable unknown"*. It might result from intelligence, creativity techniques or DKCP as it was the case at Safran.

The case of Swatch is particularly relevant**. In the early 1980s the firm explored the concept of "a Swiss quality watch 60% cheaper". This innovation field was really unknown as it triggered the exploration of new manufacturing processes that required to significantly lower the parts count. It was also desirable because competition with Japanese quartz watches was killing the Swiss watch industry.

*notion introduced by scholars specialised in innovative design at Mines ParisTech PSL

**see more in Garel, G. (2015). "Lessons in Creativity from the Innovative Design of the Swatch." Technology Innovation Management Review 5(7): 34-40.

Step 2 - Identify Technologies and Environments

During this step, the most experienced explorers draw a C-K T and a C-K E like I did at Safran or GRDF.

Otherwise, the minimum is to conduct two distinct brainstormings.

First "How can it work ?" is an example of questions that helps identifying existing technologies and generating new technical concepts.

Second "Whom is it useful to and to do what ?" is an example of question that helps identifying existing environments and imagining new ones.

Step 3 - Engage experts of technologies and environments

Innovation cannot be achieved alone. Precisely Step 3 involves scouting relevant individuals to learn about certain concepts and imagine new technologies, new uses and new environments.

The PhD thesis explains techniques to find these individuals and to engage them in reasoning in the unknown. Otherwise, even the most interested individuals observe without contributing directly to the exploration process.

Step 4 - Innovative design workshop

The individuals who are the most experts and contributors to the reasoning meet in a workshop to finish idea generation and concept consolidation together.

There are many technics to facilitate creativity worshops. The PEPITE method has its own. It is based on presentations, idea generation and concepts consolidation.

Concepts are consolidated on different model in every new PEPITE approach. But in all cases this model has been anticipated by the leading explorer during previous steps. It takes the form of Technology-function-Environement. As an example, energy recovery concepts were consolidated by completing the chain "lost energy - collection - buffer and distribution - use".

Step 5 - Exploration of consolidated concepts

Meetings on every consolidated concept are organised.

The first type of meeting explores value criteria for various environments (C-K E). The thesis describes a specific tool for these meetings. It can be used with wider unknown than Value Proposition Canvas or value-chain mapping but has the same purpose.

The second type of meetings explore proof of concepts and demonstration steps of technologies (C-K T). Classic engineering tools such as TRL are FMECA are available for that purpose. They should be used in a very preliminary way.

Step 6 - Development project launch

At step 6 it is time to prepare a gate meeting for each consolidated concept to launch development projects. The teams edit and present documents which demonstrate that project launching criteria are filled. Criteria include profitability, detailed budget, resource planning, clear deliverables...

Now it is time to ask your questions and test the method here !