UTC has enjoyed a part­ner­ship with the Lobster’Jazz Quar­tet, work­ing for sev­er­al months on a research and inno­va­tion pro­gramme enti­tled «Jazz & Inno­va­tion». A new step was made,December 1, 2020 in the clois­ters of the Saint-Corneille Library, Compiègne. 

Fol­low­ing an artis­tic res­i­den­tial stay by of the Quar­tet host­ed at the Saint-Corneil­le­Clois­ter, a jazz jam-ses­sion con­cert took place. The con­cert was observed and dis­cussed by var­i­ous per­son­al­i­ties from “civvy street”, sportsmen,entrepreneurs and UTC research sci­en­tists. This event, fol­lowed live on social net­works, is the result of a pro­gramme link­ing jazz and inno­va­tion. A project that is more than inspir­ing, since it is already the result of the imple­men­ta­tion of a new way of sup­port for com­pa­nies in order to reveal and devel­op their own poten­tial for inno­va­tion. In part­ner­ship with the City of Com­piègne and with the sup­port of the Hauts-de-France Region, this artists’ res­i­den­cy enabled the mem­bers of the Lob­ster’­Jazz Quar­tet to prac­tice musi­cal improvisation.

From an expert to a creative mode

“We tried to demon­strate through a musi­cal dis­course and an inter­ac­tive debate that the jazz impro­vi­sa­tion process releas­es a poten­tial for cre­ativ­i­ty that can be extrap­o­lat­ed to the field of busi­ness inno­va­tion by mobil­is­ing an orig­i­nal com­mu­ni­ty of action. The musi­cian, like the engi­neer, has fol­lowed a rig­or­ous and struc­tured path. The musi­cian, like the engi­neer, can, through con­sis­tent work, acquire are cog­nised and appre­ci­at­ed exper­tise. How­ev­er, this back­ground is not suf­fi­cient, or even dis­crim­i­nat­ing in the prac­tice of impro­vi­sa­tion and cre­ativ­i­ty. We there­fore hypoth­e­size that oth­er para­me­ters are mobi­lized to go from an expert group to an agile and cre­ative group”, explains Pas­cal Alber­ti, Direc­tor of Inno­va­tion and Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Devel­op­ment at UTC who on Novem­ber 5, 2019, had already car­ried out a first exper­i­men­ta­tion and illus­tra­tion of this pro­jectin the Sacem audi­to­ri­um in front of an audi­ence made up of inno­va­tion and busi­ness experts. 

Pursuing the project in the Hauts-de-France Region

Fol­low­ing this expe­ri­ence, UTC is com­mit­ted to a sec­ond phase in the deploy­ment of ses­sions in rep­re­sen­ta­tive cities of the Hauts-de-France region. And this will start with Amiens, on Octo­ber 1st at the Mai­son de la Cul­ture. The aim of this event, like the pre­vi­ous ones, is to pro­mote artis­tic activ­i­ties using impro­vi­sa­tion to illus­trate and serve as a field of analy­sis for a socio-eco­nom­ic inno­va­tion approach. This has enabled and will enable the devel­op­ment of meth­ods and process­es for cre­at­ing val­ue to sup­port the eco­nom­ic, man­age­r­i­al and tech­no­log­i­cal dynam­ics of inno­v­a­tive com­pa­nies in the Region.