Thales Alenia Space Opens Innovation Cluster for European Offices

Sentinel 3A, a satellite Thales Alenia Space built for ESA. Photo: Thales Alenia Space

[Via Satellite 07-07-2016] Thales Alenia Space has created an Innovation Cluster tasked with accelerating the development of innovative projects. The cluster is open to all employees, at all levels across the company, with the purpose of providing a space to nurture disruptive concepts within the company, whether for design, production, engineering, sales or support.

Thales Alenia Space has increased its budget for R&D by 15 percent in one year’s time. The cluster can instantly provide funding and other resources, and is based on an agile structure to enable the fast validation of solutions that may well meet emerging market trends, offering disruptive technologies and novel development paths to the company’s customers. All Thales Alenia Space units in France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Germany and Poland are included in the cluster.

“We are heavily involved in the dynamic stimulated by the Innovation Cluster, which will enable us to stimulate concrete new ideas and concepts, such as Stratobus, our standalone stratospheric airship,” said Christophe Wilhelm, VP for strategy and innovation at Thales Alenia Space. “Innovation is an integral part of our strategy, a real differentiating criterion and a major asset in today’s fiercely competitive market. The aim of our cluster is to keep pace with trends in our customers’ markets and anticipate emerging needs.”