How Nissan's Lab builds with customers
Nissan Europe 12 weeks
Before: 4 strategic options with no product.
After: 6 MVPs with users.
Ivan Ollivier, General Manager, Innovation Lab
Stop pushing technology. Start pulling customers.
For VPs of Innovation who must deliver viable products in the next 12 months. We embed with your team until the product reaches paying customers, or we kill it together.
Franck Debane Engineer by training, operator by trade. He sits in the customer interviews with your engineers.
- Month 1. Talk to 20-30 customers first.
- Month 2. Test the risky bets. No customer pull, killed.
- Months 3-4. Build what survived.
- Months 5-6. Ship to paying customers.
Teams we have worked with
- Renault
- Schneider Electric
- Nissan
- Belden
- Butagaz
- Engie
- Framatome
- Groupe Atlantic
- and more
Two plans to launch a new product
Two playbooks branch out from the same starting point. Only one ends in a working product within 6 months.
Plan A Technology push
The default playbook
- Months 1-2
Engineering, marketing, and product align internally around the idea. Someone walks into the kickoff with the end product already decided. No customer in the room.
- Months 3-6
The build starts from internal consensus. Engineering executes, but no one on the build team has talked to a customer. Requirements arrive filtered through product, sales, or marketing, and features get chosen by internal vote. Buzzwords stand in for value propositions.
- Months 7-9
The beta runs with friendly customers, organized by sales rather than engineering. The customer voice stays one or two steps from the people writing the code, and what little signal arrives comes too late to change the build.
- Months 10-18
The launch happens. Sales reports that the market isn't ready. Customers nod politely and don't buy. Engineering moves on, still defending decisions that started with opinion.
Result. Eighteen months pass. The product launches to silence, engineering capacity is burned, and the competitor whose team did the upfront work has already shipped.
Plan B Customer pull
Installed in 6 months
- Month 1
Talk to 20-30 customers first. Engineering, product, and marketing sit in the room with customers before the internal kickoff. Real answers replace internal opinions, and the end product everyone had in mind gets challenged against what customers actually pull.
- Month 2
Test the risky bets early. The biggest unknowns go in front of real prospects: who wants this, would they pay, can we build it. Ideas with no customer pull get killed before engineering commits. The strong ones survive with proof.
- Months 3-4
Build what survived. Engineering builds the validated concept. They know what to build and who it's for because they were in the customer conversations. Each iteration goes back to the same customers for feedback.
- Months 5-6
Ship and iterate. The product reaches paying customers. Engineers hear feedback directly from users rather than filtered through sales. Customer pull shows up in signed POs and committed pilot deployments. The team has the muscle to run the playbook again without us.
Result. Six months in, the product ships with paying customers. The next budget cycle gives the team more resources. They run the next launch on their own.
Four outcomes by month six.
Not a slide deck. Not a workshop debrief. Outcomes your team can point to in the next budget cycle.
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A validated product concept
Tested with 20-30 real prospects before engineering commits a single sprint. You know what to build, who it's for, and whether they'll pay.
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Customer pull, evidenced
Signed POs, committed pilots, and reorder signals from the prospects who saw the concept earliest. Not promises, receipts.
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An operating team
Engineering, product, and marketing trained to run the customer-pull playbook on the next launch. We leave; the muscle stays.
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Engineering capacity protected
Ideas with no customer pull get killed in weeks, not in year-two budget reviews. Your roadmap stops carrying dead weight.
From push to pull.
The shift from technology-push to market-pull changes how your organisation operates at every level.
| Before | becomes | After |
|---|---|---|
| Every project gets funded because nobody wants to say no. | A governed pipeline where only projects with customer evidence get resources. | |
| Engineering builds what it thinks is clever. Sales tries to sell it afterwards. | Teams validate demand before committing engineering resources. | |
| Innovation is a side project someone runs when they have time. | A structured process that runs in parallel with core operations. | |
| Customer feedback arrives after launch, usually as complaints. | Customer evidence is collected before a single spec is written. | |
| Killing a project feels like admitting failure. | Killing a project early is celebrated as capital saved. | |
| The innovation team operates in a bubble. The rest of the company ignores it. | Innovation capability is embedded in how product teams work every day. |
Proof of impact
Selected client projects, each one a structural shift in how the organisation validates and funds new products.
How Schneider Electric stopped building in a vacuum
Schneider Electric Multi-year program
Before: Trained on case studies.
After: Trained on real customers.
Damien Carroz, VP Retail
How Renault's Car Data Lab builds EV features its drivers actually use
Renault 3 years and counting
Before: Features chosen from the data.
After: Features built with real drivers.
Thomas Andre, Innovation Lab Lead, Car Data
“Beyond the tools and methodology, Forward taught us how to think and work like entrepreneurs.”
“We appreciated Forward's expertise in innovation management, which we didn't find with our other partners.”
“The confrontation with the reality of the passenger was an eye-opener. Meeting customers and understanding their needs is something we never did before.”
Who you'll be working with
Engineer by training. Operator by trade. 30 years solving human problems.
“I'm an engineer. I spent the first half of my career inside tech companies watching good products die because no one talked to a customer until launch. I built Forward to fix that.
Every engagement, I sit in customer interviews with your engineers. I'm not the consultant who hands off to a junior. I show up and run the playbook with your team, week after week.
The engagement has succeeded when your team stops asking permission to kill a bad idea. When they can do this without me, my job is done.”
Franck Debane
12weeks
A typical engagement lasts 12 weeks. We embed with your team, not as observers, but as operators. The work starts with customer interviews and ends with validated concepts and a funded roadmap. Your team runs the process with us. By the end, they can run it without us.
Before we engage.
We take on four to six engagements per year. We only work with teams whose survival depends on delivering business impact. Here's what we need from you.
If your team meets these four conditions, the next step is a 30-minute call. If you don't, we'll tell you.
Book a 30-min discovery call-
A VP who owns the P&L impact
Not just the budget line. A senior leader whose number moves when the launch lands.
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A live product or category launch
With a market-facing deadline. Not a training exercise, not an innovation theatre.
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Willingness to talk to customers
Engineering, product, and marketing in the room with prospects from week one.
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Commitment to act on what you learn
If the customer doesn't pull, we drop the project. Together.