Design and validation of a competency framework to support the radical innovation process in need seeker mode.

Summary The development of key skills is becoming a strategic issue that conditions the long-term prosperity of companies. In the academic world, this imperative translates into a double challenge: (1) to identify these key competencies and (2) to enable their acquisition by both students in initial training and by an industrial audience. This study focuses on the description of a repository of radical innovation competencies in support of competency-based learning. We focus in particular on the study of the skills required for an innovation strategy that aims at identifying the needs not covered by existing market solutions through an in-depth investigation of the motivations, mental/emotional state, values and preferences of the end-user: the need seeker strategy. A first phase combining an extensive literature review, interviews with 28 innovation experts/actors and a micro-qualitative study over two sessions (each lasting four months) of radical innovation need seeker training per project. This first study led to the design of a repository of 36 individual, collective and leadership competencies. Based on the results of this first phase, we propose in this article an approach that allows us to translate these competencies into training objectives. The proposed approach aims to contribute to the design of significant and transformative training experiences in support of a need-seeker radical innovation strategy.