Stop pushing technology. Start pulling customers.
For VPs who must deliver viable products in the next 12 months. We embed with your team until the product reaches paying customers.
Innovation consulting and training for industrial teams, Paris
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.
Technology-push
The default playbook
Customer-pull
Installed in 6 months
Engineering, marketing, and product align internally around the idea. No customer in the room.
Talk to 20-30 customers first. Engineering, product, and marketing sit in the room before the internal kickoff.
The build starts from internal consensus. Features get chosen by internal vote.
Test the risky bets early. Ideas with no customer pull get killed before engineering commits.
The beta runs with friendly customers, organized by sales. Signal arrives too late to change the build.
Build what survived. Each iteration goes back to the same customers for feedback.
The launch happens. Customers nod politely and don't buy.
Ship and iterate. The product reaches paying customers.
Eighteen months pass. The product launches to silence, engineering capacity is burned, and the competitor whose team did the upfront work has already shipped.
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.
Teams we have worked with
- Renault
- Schneider Electric
- Nissan
- Belden
- Butagaz
- Engie
- Framatome
- Groupe Atlantic
- TotalEnergies
- Quadient
- Lesaffre
- Allianz
- Allianz Trade
- Euler Hermes
- AXA
- BNP Paribas
- RCI Banque
- Mobilize
- Manulife
- L'Oréal
- Pernod Ricard
- Moët Hennessy
- Galeries Lafayette
- Leroy Merlin
- Lagardère
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
Four outcomes by month six.
Not a slide deck. Not a workshop debrief. Outcomes your team can point to in the next budget cycle.
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.
Customer pull, evidenced
Signed POs, committed pilots, and reorder signals from the prospects who saw the concept earliest. Not promises, receipts.
An operating team
Engineering, product, and marketing trained to run the customer-pull playbook on the next launch. We leave; the muscle stays.
Engineering capacity protected
Ideas with no customer pull get killed in weeks, not in year-two budget reviews. Your roadmap stops carrying dead weight.
The method.
From first customer interview to market launch.
- Discovery
Discover real customer demand
Talk to customers. Understand their pain. Validate that a real problem exists before investing in solutions.
- Decision
Decide what to fund or kill
Use evidence to allocate resources. Fund what's working. Kill what isn't. No more zombie projects.
- Execution
Build, test, and validate
Run rapid experiments. Stress-test assumptions across desirability, feasibility, and viability before scaling.
In their words.
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“Beyond the tools and methodology, Forward taught us how to think and work like entrepreneurs.”
Ivan OllivierInnovation Lab Director, Nissan Europe
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“We appreciated Forward's expertise in innovation management, which we didn't find with our other partners.”
Allianz Trade
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“The confrontation with the reality of the passenger was an eye-opener. Meeting customers and understanding their needs is something we never did before.”
Lagardère Travel RetailDigital Team
From push to pull.
The shift from technology-push to market-pull changes how your organisation operates at every level.
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Before: Every project gets funded because nobody wants to say no.
After: A governed pipeline where only projects with customer evidence get resources.
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Before: Engineering builds what it thinks is clever. Sales tries to sell it afterwards.
After: Teams validate demand before committing engineering resources.
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Before: Innovation is a side project someone runs when they have time.
After: A structured process that runs in parallel with core operations.
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Before: Customer feedback arrives after launch, usually as complaints.
After: Customer evidence is collected before a single spec is written.
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Before: Killing a project feels like admitting failure.
After: Killing a project early is celebrated as capital saved.
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Before: The innovation team operates in a bubble. The rest of the company ignores it.
After: Innovation capability is embedded in how product teams work every day.
We don't run workshops and leave. We embed with your team until the project reaches the market.
What changes for you.
We run projects. Those projects create results. Over time, those results change how the organization decides what to build.
Speed
Faster from decision to market
We compress the gap between strategic ambition and first commercial revenue.
Risk
Evidence before the specification
We replace boardroom assumptions with direct customer evidence (interviews, prototype tests, live signals) before your engineering team commits to a specification.
Autonomy
Teams that execute without constant escalation
Remove leadership bottlenecks. We build teams with clear decision rights so your organisation can move without everything escalating to the top.
Money
Less budget on the wrong bets
Stop funding 'zombie projects.' We install a simple governance threshold: if a project can't show customer traction by a defined milestone, it stops, freeing budget for the ones that can.
How it works in practice
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.
A VP who owns the P&L impact
Not just the budget line. A senior leader whose number moves when the launch lands.
A live product or category launch
With a market-facing deadline. Not a training exercise, not an innovation theatre.
Willingness to talk to customers
Engineering, product, and marketing in the room with prospects from week one.
Commitment to act on what you learn
If the customer doesn't pull, we drop the project. Together.
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