Habitat and living spaces are experiencing large-scale changes. Major challenges—urbanization, carbon footprint, aging populations, digitalization, and the growing popularity of the service economy—are disrupting user habits and pushing industry stakeholders to continue reinventing solutions.

With the construction market experiencing massive change due to digital transformation, innovation is a priority for Somfy’s three Activities. The challenge is to design the products and services of tomorrow, and to anticipate future consumption patterns, in order to adapt our distribution channels.

Attentive to end-user needs and open to contributions from external partners (universities, R&D centers, start-ups, manufacturers), innovation at Somfy is becoming more agile by adopting exploratory methods used by start-ups.

In 2015, Somfy set up an Innovation Department in order to create an environment that encourages innovation at every level of the company.

To be useful, innovation has to be “applied”, which is why Somfy harnesses innovation to serve its business ambition: “Inspiring a better way of living accessible to all”. It places end-users and the new solutions that the Group can offer them at the heart of its innovation process.

To anticipate changing needs, innovation at Somfy over the past several years has created a direct relationship with end-users, specifically to test products during development. In many countries, the Group has put in place structures to actively listen to consumers, to understand how they live, pinpoint their needs, and identify expectations that have not yet been expressed. For example, the interactive platform My Somfy Lab, launched in 2016, gives online users an opportunity to discuss the key issues and benefits of smart home solutions. There was also an experiment carried out among middle-class households in India, in an effort to understand the primary needs to improve living environments in Somfy’s emerging markets.

Find out more about the vision that shapes our business ambitions

By observing the practices of end-users, we can define key changes to bring to our innovation programs. This is an essential process that mobilizes all our internal innovation expertise — engineers, R&D, marketing and communications — behind our key objectives. It also helps Activities and distribution subsidiaries to structure their joint co-design efforts, in accordance with the Group’s strategic priorities.