Francois-Xavier Meunier - Dual Innovation Systems

Let us first consider the role of demand: besides the specificity of military demand, for which performance criteria are essential and strategic superiority or sustainable supply are high priority, a “small edge in performance can mean survival” (Alic et al. 1992, p. 114). Already in 1988, Albrecht (Gummett and Reppy 1988) raised the question of the role of final users in the dynamics of technology transfer, both in relation with the army and with civilian users. This proves essential in the dominance of one sector or another in the development of technology. The dominance (in terms of value) of a (civilian or military) demand with respect to the other drives the manufacturers to address this demand as a priority, which leads to structuring the products depending on the expectations of the dominant client. The other one is secondary and must do with the technology such as developed, though it may not exactly meet its needs.

Due to consumer computing emergence, the civilian sector has progressively become the main engine of this industry, while the military sector became a follower engaging in off-the-shelf purchase in the semiconductors field (for example, Alic et al. 1992). Moreover, users do not have the same understanding of technology as manufacturers, and are not necessarily concerned by its origin. Therefore, a technology that best meets their need is preferred to the one originally developed to meet that need. Taking their expectation into account is an important element in the dissemination and development of duality, initiating transfers from one sector to another (similar to the example of lead users).

Next, financing constraints should be considered: the financing structure of defense companies is characterized by specific constraints marked by the state’s dominant role, fluctuating financial markets, less involved banks, etc. (Goyal et al. 2002; Besancenot and Vranceanu 2006). Nevertheless, due to the dualization of defense, financing structures seem to converge. One question formulated in the literature is how this technological duality can modify the financing structure of defense industries and bring them closer to the civilian sector. The works conducted by Jean Belin seem to show that, for a defense company, duality appears to facilitate its access to private capital and therefore improve its financing capacity (Belin and Guille 2008).

Finally, constraints related to the management of competences: the more or less efficient use of this knowledge depends on the competences within organizations; knowledge management becomes a key competence in the implementation of duality (Versailles and Mérindol 2014). Companies active in the defense sector rethink the limits within which they draw and use their knowledge. Consequently, the limits of a secrecy-based knowledge management strategy, formerly prevailing in this sector, become obvious. Some studies even indicate a stronger tendency for patent filing in the companies active in defense (Guillou et al. 2009). According to innovation economics, there is an interest in new strategies for knowledge management and more widely for the management of competences (Lazaric et al. 2011).

Depending on the type of company, these constraints weigh differently on the strategies. Nowadays, more than in the past, following the large-scale privatization taking place in the 1990s in the major arms producing countries (Bellais 2005; Lazaric et al. 2011), top manufacturers play the role of Lead System Integrators (LSI), and the dual potential of armament systems depends on their capacity to integrate a wide variety of subsystems from various horizons (Mérindol 2010). It is worth noting that the integrator role can also be assumed by a public organization. As such, the French National Aerospace Research Center (Office national d’études et de recherches aérospatiales (ONERA)), which absorbs and develops technologies from both civilian and military sectors to the benefit of both, is a good example (Lafon 2001). Unlike large organizations, entrepreneurship or spin-off strategies can also be platforms that facilitate the dissemination of technologies between civilian and defense sectors (Azulay et al. 2002).

Referring to innovation in general and dual innovation in particular, one part of the literature points out the importance of knowledge networks and learning processes. On this subject, innovation sociology enables the significant expansion of the analysis framework by studying innovation networks. They show that their organization plays a role in the use of technological potentialities, and in particular in the use of dual potential.

Guichard (2004a) recalls the interest of sociological approaches that understand the encounter between different social worlds in terms of processes. Her analysis relies particularly on “technoeconomic networks”. These are defined as “a set of heterogeneous actors – public laboratories, technical research centers, industrial firms, financial organizations, users, and public authorities – which participate collectively in the development and the diffusion of innovation and which via numerous interactions organize the relationships between scientifico-technical research and the marketplace” (Callon 1991, p. 220). Guichard points out the role of an actor who “shifts and transforms ideas, means, objects, roles and their links and maintains various interests in alignment until a single solution emerges” (Guichard and Heisbourg 2004, p. 97). According to this solution, Guichard refers to this role as that of “translator” within “dual networks”.

According to this approach, network construction is a collective challenge centered on this translator. She recalls that these networks have variable geometry and go beyond the set of actors composing them, and are also composed of a set of intermediaries such as written documents (scientific articles, reports, patents, etc.), embedded competences (mobile researchers, engineers moving from one company to another, etc.), money (cooperation agreements between a research center and a company, financial loans, a client purchasing a good or a service, etc.) and more or less elaborated technical objects (prototypes, machines, end-user products, etc.). They are structured around three poles, each of which has its role: the scientific pole (knowledge production), the technical pole (design of a coherent object able to provide services) and the market pole (groups the users and defines the demand). Therefore, the dual network is a specific case of a technico-economic network (TEN). According to this approach, technology is not a priori defined as dual. Its development at the core of a network grouping two different social worlds, the defense and civilian worlds, through the interactions it generates, confers technology a dual nature.

Assuming that the duality of a technology is defined by the network in which it is developed, this analysis of duality comes close to the framework of analysis developed by Kulve and Smit (2003). They reworked the TEN and proposed the concept of STN, which they apply to the specific case of duality. They developed the idea that the social network within which technologies are developed determines the dual nature of a technology, unlike other approaches that focus on uses or financing, for example. It is a network of dual actors working together around the same technology that makes it possible to qualify the respective technology as “dual” (Guichard 2004a, 2004b; Guichard and Heisbourg 2004). Within this theoretical framework, the way to understand duality resumes the principles established by Cowan and Foray (1995, 1997), which stipulate that the transfer of a technology developed in an innovation network entirely dedicated to defense toward the civilian sector (or vice versa) is rather a proof of the absence of duality.