Erwan Le Dins is part of the EDF Group and works within the commercial activity division. He operates in a team responsible for developing projects and innovations coming from the field and from the actors involved in this activity. He sums up his daily work in two main components: energizing this network of contributors to help initiatives emerge, and developing projects in a very hands-on manner by going into the field, meeting teams and clients, to advance new models.
Among the major challenges he faces, he first mentions one he describes as “the fuel”: having ideas, projects, and proposals that can be pushed forward and brought to life. This flow does not occur naturally — it must be generated. For him, this is the core challenge. He then highlights a second issue: once ideas and projects have been de-risked, it becomes essential to make them acceptable to the internal ecosystem, meaning the actors likely to adopt or integrate them. This is where the main difficulty currently lies. Finding the right balance between exploration on one side and exploitation on the other is a process he describes as “quite painful” and, as he puts it, deeply human.
When asked about his experience with Vianeo’s support, he explains that he tested the Marelle method — the Vianeo business design approach — on one of his projects with his project team. He draws two main takeaways. The first relates to guidance: Vianeo’s consultants were “highly relevant” and provided significant help. The second concerns the method itself: the Marelle integrates multiple dimensions drawn from various methodologies, bringing together the essentials in one place.
He adds, however, that in his view a method remains a method. One of his principles is not to cling to it rigidly. He uses it as a guiding thread — useful and sometimes necessary — but without turning it into a constraint. As he sums it up: “You shouldn’t let the framework become a cage.”
