Today we announce the merger of Possible Future with Capgemini Invent!

Let us tell you the story behind one of the most decisive steps we’ve taken since starting this journey just five years ago.

When we created Possible Future (formerly French Bureau) in 2016, our hope was to “give French companies their place back in the global innovation field,” and our promise to these companies was “to innovate at startup speed.” We compensated for our youth with our ingenuity, our agility, the multidisciplinary nature of our teams (which was almost unheard of in France at the time), and our boundless audacity.

After only five years, we are proud to have established Possible Future in France and internationally as one of the most important sustainable innovation studios in Europe. We have worked with over 80 clients, across 26 countries, on nearly 150 extremely diverse innovation projects, during which we have refined our methodology and our tools, but also our desires and ambition.

More importantly, over the years Possible Future has become a banner under which 70 incredible talents have united, eager to transform the world by working with the finest companies in France and abroad to develop a way to innovate sustainably―the French way.

By the end of 2019, we had already begun to reflect on our development options. Even then, we could see that the formula was working:

• We saw an average growth of 50% per year and had 40 “Fortune 500” clients.
• We had succeeded in creating a multidisciplinary mix of design-business-tech that was unparalleled on the market.
• We had laid the foundations of a new business model based on hyper-responsibility, where every employee takes part in the management and development of the structure.

So, together (as we have done from the beginning), we set out a variety of options that would help us write Possible Future Season 2 even faster:

1. Organic development, with our own funds, just like we had done from the outset.
2. Fundraising, to get a financial boost, increase recruitment, and open new offices abroad.
3. Join forces with a leading player in the sector, to benefit from maximum exposure and the resources of a large group.

March 2020―when the pandemic took hold―was a moment of truth: not a single project stopped. Even better: despite the uncertainty ahead, our clients continued to call us to launch new projects.

In 2020, growth was smaller than expected (5% in a market that was at -15%), but we maintained a level of activity that allowed us to retain 100% of our jobs and continue to recruit. Most importantly, we have come out of this period more united than ever and confident about the future of our model.

At the beginning of 2021, while we were focused on the start of the year, we were surprised when 4 major players in the consulting and communication sector contacted us. For us, this was a sign that something was happening in the market. At the same time, it shouldn’t have been all that surprising: in five years we had seen the innovation-consulting market mature, and it was about time the industry leaders took an interest in us! ;) Naturally, these calls encouraged us to continue the discussions we had started more than a year earlier and decide what we wanted to do. This time, however, we had to take into account a new fact: the market was becoming more concentrated. The question then was whether we wanted to take advantage of this wave or risk being relegated to the 2nd league due to the sector’s restructuring.

Over the course of three months, we met with 16 companies, all of which were thinking about positioning themselves more decidedly in the innovation-consulting field and who were interested in Possible Future:

• communication agency networks
• digital service companies
• management consulting firms
• strategy consulting firms

During our conversations with the management teams of different players, we discovered projects that were more or less successful, reasons for being interested in us that were more or less relevant, and organizational models that were too far removed from ours to envisage a common future. Just as we were beginning to think about continuing on our own, we were lucky enough to cross paths with a company that made us reconsider.

Beyond having become one of the French flagships in the digital transformation consulting sector in France and abroad in less than 20 years, they have spent the last five years integrating, one by one, most of the companies specialized in innovation consulting that we had had as a model at the time of our own start. More importantly, we met them right when they were about to launch an unparalleled initiative in the market, bringing together (at last!) all of the capabilities necessary for sustainable business transformation through innovation under a single brand, all backed by a workforce of 2,200 people.

That company is Capgemini Invent. The brand is frog.

While the idea of joining such a large group may seem like a surprising choice for those familiar with Possible Future, it’s really about our collective desire to gain five years in our development and to accelerate our ambition to have the most impact through our work.

With the entire Possible Future team, we defined several criteria that guided our choice of which project we ultimately wanted to link our destiny to:

1. The ability to improve our access to various actors and sectors that we had not had the opportunity to work with and that we felt needed to be rethought.
2. The ability to work on bigger projects and have even more of an impact on the world. With 70 people, we were limited, but with our 2,200 new colleagues at frog, we have a formidable strike force.
3. A shared desire to be even more present in the field of sustainable innovation, and to become an essential partner in the regenerative transformation of the economy.
4. The compatibility of a more established and broader structure with our hyper-empowering, very horizontal, and highly collegial organizational model and culture. With the frog rebels, we are served ;)

Today, two feelings prevail.

First of all, pride in the progress we’ve made. In particular when we think back to the first projects we carried out with clients who put their trust in us, seeing our team members interact at the highest level with our clients while supporting them on their journey of transformation, and watching our startups continue to grow successfully.

And then, of course, the excitement of being faced with the incredible challenge the managers of Capgemini Invent and frog have set for us: that of inventing the world of tomorrow, of contributing to a society that is more respectful of humans and the environment, by leading companies toward more virtuous and sustainable models.

This is a challenge we, together, as a team, want and are more than happy to accept!