Bertrand Barré has been leading the Zebra Group, a consulting company in innovation and design based in Lyon, for over thirty years. His career combines entrepreneurship, industrial design, and reflection on the meaning of innovation within organizations. His recent speeches outline a trajectory that goes beyond traditional consulting to touch on applied foresight and the question of “why innovate.”
Chief Meaning Officer: a title that redefines the role of the innovative leader
Recent profiles associated with Bertrand Barré no longer present him as CEO or leader in the traditional sense. The chosen title is Chief Meaning Officer, a role focused on the company’s purpose rather than just operational management.
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This semantic shift is not trivial. It reflects a conviction: leading innovation first requires clarifying what the company seeks to achieve for its users, its sectors, and its territory. By adopting this positioning, the Zebra Group distinguishes the quest for meaning from the mere race for new products.
During an ESCP Alumni AURA regional evening held in Lyon in March 2026, Bertrand Barré shared his journey and his “oblique ideas, outside the box, on innovation.” The event, hosted at the Fourvière Hotel, confirmed this orientation: the news about Bertrand Barré showcases an entrepreneur who prefers to challenge conventional frameworks rather than deliver a standard speech on creativity.
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Innovation through reality: the method that structures the Zebra Group’s projects
Bertrand Barré publicly advocates what he calls innovation through reality. This expression, used as the title of his speech at APM, summarizes a precise methodological angle: starting from concrete uses, field experimentation, and material constraints before conceptualizing.
This approach contrasts with abstract disruptive innovation, which starts from a technology or patent and then seeks a market. The Zebra Group favors direct observation of behaviors, rapid prototyping, and early confrontation with end users.
What this method changes for client companies
Working with a logic of innovation grounded in reality changes the way a project progresses. Three characteristics distinguish this approach:
- The field precedes the concept. Teams collect usage data before formulating a product or service hypothesis, which reduces the risk of developing a solution disconnected from the need.
- The prototype is a tool for dialogue, not a validation model. It serves to provoke reactions, identify frictions, and bring forth unspoken expectations.
- Industrial cooperation is integrated from the start. The Zebra Group communicates about industrial innovation as a collective lever, not as an isolated competitive advantage.
Innovation through reality relies on observation before theory. This methodological stance explains why Bertrand Barré’s interventions appeal to diverse audiences, from SME leaders to alumni networks of prestigious schools.
Eye-novation: the proprietary method of the Zebra Group
The Zebra Group has formalized its approach under the name eye-novation. Bertrand Barré’s book, subtitled “innovate just, not just innovate,” details this methodology.
The play on words with “eye” and “innovation” is not just a branding exercise. It refers to the idea that the perspective taken on a problem determines the quality of the solution. Changing viewpoints, observing from an unexpected angle, crossing disciplines: these principles structure the group’s missions.
From design to innovation strategy consulting
The Zebra Group was founded as a design company. Over the decades, its scope has expanded to include innovation consulting, foresight, and strategic marketing. Bertrand Barré now addresses topics ranging from CSR to the impact of artificial intelligence on creative processes.
During a podcast with Visconti Partners, he discussed the issue of AI as an accelerator, not a substitute for strategic thinking. His position: artificial intelligence changes the speed of execution but does not replace the ability to ask the right questions.
Bertrand Barré as a speaker: themes recurring in 2025-2026
Bertrand Barré’s recent public appearances outline a coherent thematic scope. His interventions are not limited to design or pure creativity. They cover several axes that companies and professional networks actively seek.
- CSR and innovation: how to integrate environmental and social constraints as drivers of creativity rather than as regulatory barriers.
- Management and transformation: adapting decision-making processes to allow experimentation in organizations accustomed to linear processes.
- Applied foresight: identifying weak signals in a given sector and translating them into concrete action paths, without slipping into disconnected futurology.
- Inter-company cooperation: treating innovation as a collective exercise involving suppliers, distributors, and users from the ideation phase.
His involvement with EuroSIMA in 2024 illustrates this diversification. The action sports industry is not the usual terrain for Lyon’s design consulting, but the logic remains the same: observe real uses to design appropriate responses.
Bertrand Barré’s journey, from basketball in Villeurbanne to the role of Chief Meaning Officer, follows a stable guiding line despite changes in title and format. The innovation he advocates is not that of closed laboratories or spectacular keynotes. It is built in dialogue with the field, project after project, with a demand for meaning that gives the Zebra Group a recognizable signature in the consulting landscape in France.