Over the last years, aeronautic industry has changed under the effects of the European market and globalisation. In particular, it is crucial to reduce aircraft development cost and lead time in order to be competitive on the market while ensuring a high level of safety. In parallel to these economic objectives, the aeronautic growth foreseen in the two next decades leads to deliver an important number of aircrafts per year inducing strong industrialisation constraints. These economic and industrial drivers have a strong impact on all the phases of the aircraft development process. Consequently, the industrial practises shall evolve making research and innovation crucial to aeronautics further development and conducive to European competitiveness. This talk will focus on Airbus systems development challenges in the context of a world-wide market. The key evolutions to conduct in terms of processes, methods and tools for the next generation of avionics systems will be pointed out. Finally, some possible avenues of cooperation with the research community will be highlighted.