Research Overview
In today’s rapid­ly evolv­ing soci­ety, research in inno­v­a­tive project man­age­ment is piv­otal for address­ing con­tem­po­rary soci­etal needs. Inno­v­a­tive projects serve as means for enter­pris­es and orga­ni­za­tions to mate­ri­al­ize socio-eco­log­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, ener­gy, and dig­i­tal tran­si­tions.

More­over, in an increas­ing­ly inter­con­nect­ed and glob­al­ized world, col­lab­o­ra­tive work among dis­trib­uted inter­cul­tur­al teams has become cru­cial for busi­ness suc­cess.

How­ev­er, chal­lenges relat­ed to pre­lim­i­nary design, respon­si­ble inno­va­tion, and remote col­lab­o­ra­tion abound. These include risk assess­ment, stake­hold­er engage­ment, diver­si­ty of actors and per­spec­tives, main­tain­ing sym­bi­ot­ic inter­ac­tions, and shared inten­tion­al­i­ty despite geo­graph­ic dis­per­sion.
Focus Areas
1. Project Risk Man­age­ment and Agile Inno­va­tion Project Man­age­ment: Devel­op­ing mod­els and tools to inte­grate risks, agili­ty, and indi­vid­ual pref­er­ences into inno­va­tion projects.
2. Cou­pled Inno­va­tions in Busi­ness Mod­els and Prod­ucts: Explor­ing mod­els and tools for assess­ing the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of inno­va­tions in align­ment with eco­nom­ic mod­els.
3. Col­lab­o­ra­tive Work Medi­at­ed by Dig­i­tal Devices: Research­ing meth­ods of col­lab­o­ra­tive work sup­port­ed by dig­i­tal tools, empha­siz­ing learn­ing and facil­i­tat­ing both in-per­son and remote col­lab­o­ra­tion.

Our research cen­ters on pre­lim­i­nary design projects of new prod­ucts, encom­pass­ing tech­no­log­i­cal, con­cep­tu­al, and orga­ni­za­tion­al inno­va­tions. By enhanc­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive work medi­at­ed by dig­i­tal devices with­in dis­trib­uted inter­cul­tur­al teams, we aim to under­stand syn­chro­nous and asyn­chro­nous work modes and cul­ti­vate a sense of pres­ence among remote par­tic­i­pants.
Our goal is to devel­op mod­els and tools to fos­ter effec­tive and seam­less col­lab­o­ra­tion in dig­i­tal envi­ron­ments, address­ing tech­ni­cal and human chal­lenges in ongo­ing tran­si­tions while enhanc­ing design and inno­va­tion prac­tices.

Teach­ing Activ­i­ties for Grad­u­ate Stu­dents
Since 2003, I have spear­head­ed the restruc­tur­ing of project man­age­ment and inno­va­tion edu­ca­tion at UTC. This ini­tia­tive led to the estab­lish­ment of a new course, GE40 “Advanced Project Man­age­ment,” the reor­ga­ni­za­tion of GE37 “Intro­duc­tion to Project Man­age­ment,” and the pub­li­ca­tion of a tril­o­gy by Her­mès Sci­ences focus­ing on project man­age­ment for engi­neers (Gidel T., Zonghéro W., Man­age­ment de pro­jet, vol.1, Intro­duc­tion et fon­da­men­taux, Her­mès Science/Lavoisier, 256p., Paris, 2006, with a ful­ly revised edi­tion in 2020), advanced project man­age­ment tech­niques and tools (Gidel T., Zonghéro W., Man­age­ment de pro­jet, vol.2, Appro­fondisse­ments, Her­mès Science/Lavoisier, 448p., Paris, 2006, with a ful­ly revised edi­tion in 2021), and struc­tur­ing project man­age­ment learn­ing in engi­neer­ing schools through case stud­ies and real-world project exper­i­ments (Gidel T., Zonghéro W., Man­age­ment de pro­jet, vol.3, Études de cas et sup­ports de for­ma­tion, Her­mès Science/Lavoisier, 526p., Paris, 2007). This endeav­or demand­ed sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment and pro­found reflec­tion on ped­a­gog­i­cal meth­ods to impart knowl­edge and skills to engi­neer­ing stu­dents.
Build­ing upon the expe­ri­ences of my pre­de­ces­sors at UTC, par­tic­u­lar­ly François Romon, I struc­tured an orig­i­nal approach ground­ed in the­o­ret­i­cal teach­ing, case stud­ies, pro­fes­sion­al tes­ti­monies, and, most impor­tant­ly, stu­dent involve­ment in real projects, often in col­lab­o­ra­tion with indus­try part­ners. All cours­es spe­cif­ic to the Inno­v­a­tive Project Man­age­ment pro­gram (https://costech.utc.fr/formations/ fil­ière MPI) now fol­low this frame­work.
In this con­text, I have been the design­er and edu­ca­tion­al coor­di­na­tor of GE40 “Advanced Project Man­age­ment” course since 2004, a course tai­lored for senior engi­neer­ing stu­dents.

Addi­tion­al­ly, I teach prob­lem-solv­ing meth­ods and project risk man­age­ment to engi­neer­ing stu­dents. I also con­tribute to teach­ing val­ue analy­sis (DI05 unit, val­ue analy­sis) and engage in dis­cus­sions on the teach­ing of design meth­ods.

As the head of the research plat­form Halle Numérique (http://halnum.utc.fr/), affil­i­at­ed with the COSTECH lab­o­ra­to­ry, I over­see its oper­a­tions and devel­op­ment.
Halle Numérique is a cut­ting-edge research facil­i­ty fea­tur­ing inno­v­a­tive tac­tile envi­ron­ments, includ­ing six large inter­ac­tive tables and six touch­screen dis­plays. Equipped with spe­cial­ized soft­ware and com­pat­i­ble with indi­vid­ual devices such as tablets and smart­phones. Each of these plat­forms enables col­lab­o­ra­tive work for 6 to 8 users simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. It serves both research and edu­ca­tion­al pur­pos­es, fos­ter­ing project-based ped­a­gogy and col­lab­o­ra­tive learn­ing. The facil­i­ty is equipped with audio and video cap­ture sys­tems, includ­ing four fixed cam­eras and a micro­phone for each work­sta­tion, as well as dig­i­tal trace cap­ture tech­nol­o­gy to ana­lyze user inter­ac­tions for research pur­pos­es.

Addi­tion­al­ly, I serve as the head of the Inno­v­a­tive Project Man­age­ment (MPI) pro­gram, a cross-depart­men­tal ini­tia­tive at UTC designed to con­fer engi­neer­ing degrees across var­i­ous domains: mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing, indus­tri­al process engi­neer­ing, urban engi­neer­ing, com­put­er sci­ence engi­neer­ing, bio­log­i­cal engi­neer­ing. Orig­i­nat­ing from the vision of François Romon, MPI pro­vides essen­tial train­ing in engi­neer­ing and inno­v­a­tive project man­age­ment, cater­ing to the diverse sec­tors rep­re­sent­ed with­in UTC’s depart­ments.

Fur­ther­more, I am the design­er and ped­a­gog­i­cal coor­di­na­tor of “Advanced Project Man­age­ment” course (UVGE40) at UTC, a cru­cial com­po­nent of the engi­neer­ing cur­ricu­lum. This course is part of the engi­neer­ing pro­gram and offers stu­dents com­pre­hen­sive train­ing in project man­age­ment prin­ci­ples and tools.

Thier­ry Gidel is an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at the uni­ver­sité de tech­nolo­gie de Com­piègne (UTC). He received his PhD degree in indus­tri­al engi­neer­ing from école nationale supérieure d’arts et métiers Paris­Tech (1999) and he is autho­rized to super­vise research at UTC.

He worked as a project man­ag­er in France, Asia and Eng­land for SMEs and indus­tri­al groups before being recruit­ed by UTC to devel­op an engi­neer train­ing course in Inno­v­a­tive Project Man­age­ment (2000) then an Inno­va­tion Cen­ter (2006).
He is a cer­ti­fied form Inter­na­tion­al Reg­is­ter of Cer­tifi­cat­ed Audi­tor (IRCA No. A009713) with more than 250 exper­tise in indus­tri­al projects and ser­vices.
His research inter­ests include pre­lim­i­nary design, mul­ti-project man­age­ment and inno­va­tion process. With­in COSTECH lab­o­ra­to­ry, EA 2223, he stud­ies the impact of dig­i­tal col­lab­o­ra­tive work devices in indus­tri­al design, prob­lem solv­ing and inno­va­tion.

Thier­ry Gidel is respon­si­ble for the Halle Numérique research plat­form (Dig­i­tal Hall research plat­form). He is the author papers and books on project risk man­age­ment, project man­age­ment, col­lab­o­ra­tion process and inno­va­tion process­es.

Pub­li­ca­tions: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Thierry_Gidel
Research projects: http://www.utc.fr/tatin/ ; http://halnum.utc.fr/

Pub­li­ca­tions:

https://cv.hal.science/thierry-gidel

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Thierry_Gidel