If you bring up innovation at the dinner table, the conversation will likely turn to tech: AI, iPhones, electric vehicles, digital things pioneered in Silicon Valley or Eastern China.

Yet tech companies hardly have a monopoly on new ideas, and the success of Europe’s most dynamic businesses suggests the continent can still compete in the second quarter of the 21st century.

One leading light is global beauty leader L’Oréal, which Fortune recently named Europe’s Most Innovative Company . Although famed for its $1.5bn (€1.3 billion) R&D budget, there is more to its success here than brute scale. As the company’s head of tech and open innovation, Guive Balooch tells us, it’s the way L’Oréal approaches it that makes the difference.

“Beauty is at an inflection point, with so many areas of

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