Innovation Economics, Engineering and Management Handbook 2

In new approaches to innovation, the entrepreneur and the company are studied through their skills and their function of resource creation. Gradual or radical innovation thus becomes endogenous and is integrated into a complex process characterized by a lot of feedback and interactions in production and marketing networks: clusters, sectors and territorial or national innovation systems. The innovative organization is presented as a dynamic system composed of specific and diversified skills. Through the acquisition, combination and mobilization of these competencies, the innovator (entrepreneur or organization) can create technological resources and evolve the relationships it maintains with its environment. This explains the importance of design, application and development management in the implementation of an innovation process. An innovation system (sectoral, territorial or national) mobilizes a set of knowledge and skills resulting from learning processes and integrated into its memory. This knowledge must be enriched in order to be valorized by technological, organizational and commercial innovation. The survival of the system depends on its capacity to innovate, which enables it to face external aggressions, to transform and endure. External stimuli (competition, product substitutability, innovation policies, etc.) are generated by the economic context and affect the means of selection of entrepreneurs, companies and other public or private institutions. Selection procedures are shaped by the business climate: the nature of the product market, the availability of capital and labor, the pace of innovation, the effects of public policies, etc. They can, therefore, create alternatives to the mode of operation, management and production of a given firm (of an organization or, more generally, of a particular innovation system). It is thus clear that the effectiveness of innovation management is highly dependent on the internal capacity to seize external opportunities. The authors of this book repeatedly stress that innovation is part of the dynamic growth model based on uncertainty, risk and profit. The “flaws” that characterize an economic system are, however, important sources of opportunities for investment, production and the diffusion of innovations.

The richness of this book is the result of the reflections developed within the Research Network on Innovation (RNI) and carefully selected to take into account current and historical analyses, the relationship between technological mutations and social change, and the presentation and perspective of management, strategies and innovation policies. The authors are among the most eminent specialists of the Network, whose main objectives are the study of innovation processes in today’s information and knowledge society, the analysis of the intensification of links between the worlds of research and business, and the examination of the modes of appropriation and management of innovation by companies from a global as well as local or sectoral perspective. The Network has more than 1,500 researchers in 36 countries specializing in the multidisciplinary study of innovation: economics, management, engineering, sociology, history, law, epistemology, anthropology and psychology of the innovator.

The guiding principle of the studies presented in the two volumes allows us to understand the systemic nature of innovations and to reflect on their potential for dissemination and application, to study how innovations question our categories of thought and challenge the traditional mapping of knowledge… to think about the meaning of innovation.

This book is the continuation of a set of books dedicated to the study of innovation in the “Innovation in Engineering and Technology” Set published by ISTE and Wiley:

– Innovation Engines: Entrepreneurs and Enterprises in a Turbulent World (2017).

– Science, Technology and Innovation Culture (2018);

– Collective Innovation Processes: Principles and Practices (2018);

Divided across two volumes, it is composed of four long chapters on epistemology, economics, management and engineering that trace the contours of the holistic conception of innovation and continues with 81 shorter chapters that present and discuss, according to the sensitivity of their authors, the key notions associated with the studies of innovation. Note that the last chapter of Volume 1 on “X-Innovation” is devoted to highlighting the complexity of the concept in order to open perspectives for future research on innovation.

We would like to thank our colleagues Sophie Boutillier (University of the Littoral Opal Coast), Thierry Burger-Helmchen (University of Strasbourg), Vanessa Casadella (University of Picardie), Joëlle Forest (National Institution of Applied Sciences, Lyon), Michaël Laviolette (University of Lyon), Laure Morel (University of Lorraine), Francesco Schiavone (Parthenope University of Naples), Bérangère Szostak (University of Lorraine) and Corinne Tanguy (AgroSup-Dijon) for their contribution to the conception of this book.

We express our gratitude to our colleague Laurent Adatto for his contribution to the finalization of this important project.

Finally, it is important to mention the contribution of our colleague Blandine Laperche, President of the Research Network on Innovation, to the realization of this project. We express our gratitude and best wishes to her.

Introduction written by Dimitri UZUNIDIS and Fedoua KASMI.

Who can be against innovation nowadays? Regarding the permanent injunction to innovate associated with contemporary societies – in many fields, if not the whole of society – we would be inclined to say no-one. Nevertheless, the answer is not so obvious in spite of appearances.

Indeed, at the same time as it contributed to popularizing the concept of sustainable development (“ that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs ” (Brundtland 1987, p. 14)), the Brundtland Report initiated numerous publications stigmatizing the negative impacts of anthropogenic activities on the environment, which has gradually established “sustainable development” as a major concern for our societies.

The necessarily progressive conception of innovation has tended towards decline. There are several reasons for this. These include the following, without claiming to be exhaustive:

– the observation that we have never has so many technologies available to us while inequalities are growing in the world (the poor are getting poorer), that world hunger affects nearly 2 billion people, that half of the world’s population does not have access to basic healthcare according to the WHO, etc.;

– the realization that the unbridled development of new technologies goes together with an incessant evolution of skills to use them, and leads to an accumulation of continuous learning or risk of being overwhelmed and staying on the side lines;

– the contribution of innovation to growth and productivity gains that is running out of steam.

All these reasons have led to a disenchantment with regard to innovation. In this chapter, however, we will show that such disenchantment is not separate from our way of thinking and of implementing innovation.

The epistemology of innovation is indeed a valuable “tool” for studying and questioning the production of knowledge about innovation and, through this, the relationship of models to action. However, one observation must be made at the outset. While there is an abundance of academic literature dedicated to innovation (mainly apologetic, by the way), only a few focus on the links between innovation and society or, to be more precise, question the meaning of innovation.