Innovation Engines E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 313

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

In an uncertain economy where business risk is significant, the company tends to rely more on its environment than to invest, for example, in all steps of technological creation; This can be explained by the fact that investments in the acquisition (ownership) of production resources are less expensive than those implied in the formation of these resources; which also explains the attractiveness (in an open economy) of regions with abundant scientific and technical resources. To understand and analyze the innovation process in order to better design and launch new goods, services and technologies, one has to consider the creative dimension of the individual, the business and the organization in general. In new approaches to innovation, the entrepreneur and the company are analyzed through their skills, and their function of resource generation; Innovation thus becomes endogenous, gradual or radical, integrated in a complex process with many feedbacks and interactions. The innovative organization (small or large) is presented in this book as a dynamic system composed of specific and diverse skills (including those of the contractor, engineers or managers). By acquiring, combining and mobilizing these skills, the innovative agent (entrepreneur or company) can create technological resources and develop relations with its environment. Hence the importance of management in design, implementation, protection of intellectual property as well as of the development of new goods, services and technology, commercial and organizational models.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title

Copyright

Introduction

1 Innovation Strategies and Entrepreneurial Dynamics

1.1. The entrepreneur: the key player in innovation

1.2. Industrial analysis of innovation

1.3. The three eras of industrial capitalism

1.4. Extensive and intensive stages

1.5. Innovation: between order and progress

1.6. Innovation and the “technical age”: a Pandora’s box?

1.7. The major strategic choices

1.8. The spread of innovation

1.9. Conclusion

1.10. Bibliography

2 Innovative Milieus and Innovative Entrepreneurship

2.1. The innovative milieu and proximities

2.2. The innovative milieu and entrepreneurs

2.3. Conclusion

2.4. Bibliography

3 Start-up Founders and Support for Technology Entrepreneurs

3.1. Putting entrepreneurial identity into theoretical perspective

3.2. Demonstration of the components of the identity of a start-up entrepreneur

3.3. Conclusion

3.4. Bibliography

4 The Importance of Entrepreneurial Creativity

4.1. Creativity, innovation and entrepreneurial context

4.2. What does the economic reality teach us?

4.3. Discussion

4.4. Conclusion

4.5. Bibliography

5 From Ideation to Product Launch

5.1. The quest for continuous renewal: collaborative innovation within business strategy

5.2. An internal environment supporting innovation

5.3. Managing invention through innovation: building a strong intellectual property management process to maintain a competitive advantage

5.4. Conclusion

5.5. Bibliography

6 The Patent: A “Swiss Army Knife” for Invention and Innovation

6.1. Invention, innovation and intellectual property: some references

6.2. The means tree: a language for innovation and good use of patents

6.3. The patent system: a model for the management of knowledge for innovation

6.4. Conclusion

6.5. Bibliography

7 Invention, Innovation and Intellectual Property Rights

7.1. Innovation

7.2. Invention and the ability to invent

7.3. The inventive intellectual corpus

7.4. Analysis of the links between invention, innovation and the inventive intellectual heritage

7.5. The nature of bridges between knowledge areas

7.6. Conclusion

7.7. Bibliography

8 Commitment to an Industrial Evolution

8.1. Findings, shared feelings and risks incurred

8.2. Focus on the new industrial order

8.3. Corollaries: impacts on innovation

8.4. Conclusion

8.5. Bibliography

List of Authors

Index

End User License Agreement

List of Tables

2 Innovative Milieus and Innovative Entrepreneurship

Table 2.1. The three categories of proximity

3 Start-up Founders and Support for Technology Entrepreneurs

Table 3.1. The most significant major occurrences in terms of chi

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7 Invention, Innovation and Intellectual Property Rights

Table 7.1. Divergent thinking (source: Pierre Saulais)

Table 7.2. Convergent thinking (source: Pierre Saulais)

List of Illustrations

3 Start-up Founders and Support for Technology Entrepreneurs

Figure 3.1. Functional components of entrepreneurial identity

Figure 3.2. Graph of the major lexical shape of the body studied

4 The Importance of Entrepreneurial Creativity

Figure 4.1. Entrepreneurial creativity as a source of value for activity

5 From Ideation to Product Launch

Figure 5.1. Diagram of the innovation procedure implemented by Essilor

6 The Patent: A “Swiss Army Knife” for Invention and Innovation

Figure 6.1. Innovation, inventions and patents

Figure 6.2. Drawings of patent FR 2 752 374

Figure 6.3. Claim 1 of patent FR 2 752 374

Figure 6.4. Claim 1 representation using a means tree (source: author). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/uzinidis/innovation.zip

Figure 6.5. The advantages of patents

Figure 6.6. Activities linked to patents

Figure 6.7. The underlying questions about the patent

Figure 6.8. The innovation memo

Figure 6.9. The knowledge sheet

7 Invention, Innovation and Intellectual Property Rights

Figure 7.1. The innovation process

Figure 7.2. The Front End of Innovation

Figure 7.3. Knowledge contributions in the innovation process

Figure 7.4. Comprehensive process of integrating creativity techniques

Figure 7.5. The inventive intellectual corpus

Figure 7.6. Diagram of the production of inventive knowledge by ideation

Figure 7.7. Analysis of inventive activity

Figure 7.8. Applications of showing analysis of inventive activity in knowledge maps

8 Commitment to an Industrial

Figure 8.1. Homo numeris

Figure 8.2. Revenue distributed to shareholders of parison non-financial corporations (NFC) in France in comparison to the investments made [GAD 14]

Figure 8.3. Operating principles of blockchain, an exploratory tool

Figure 8.4. The 34 plans for a new industrial France

Figure 8.5. Tesla factory – Fremont, USA

Figure 8.6. The individual at the heart of operational excellence

Figure 8.7. The uberized industry

Figure 8.8. Tesla Gigafactory – planned production of lithium-ion batteries

Figure 8.9. Idriss Aberkane (left) and Gunter Pauli

Figure 8.10. ZERO EMISSION waste processing in a factory ecosys tem in Fiji

3

Figure 8.11. The structure of innovation policies

Guide

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Innovation in Engineering and Technology Set

coordinated by Dimitri Uzunidis

Volume 1

Innovation Engines

Entrepreneurs and Enterprises in a Turbulent World

Edited by

Dimitri Uzunidis

Pierre Saulais

First published 2017 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:

ISTE Ltd

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www.iste.co.uk

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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USA

www.wiley.com

© ISTE Ltd 2017

The rights of Dimitri Uzunidis and Pierre Saulais to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017934905

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78630-164-2

IntroductionInnovation Engines: Entrepreneurs and Enterprises in a Turbulent World

The thesis that the competitiveness of an economy depends on the density and performance of its system of innovation is generally accepted by economists. Nonetheless, it is easy to defend the idea of a correlation between a company’s innovation and production capabilities and the wealth of innovation resources in the (national or local) economy in which the business or entrepreneur has developed: namely, the availability of a highly qualified and skilled workforce, large investments in scientific research and technological development, buying markets with significant purchasing power and tendencies to reinvent themselves, suitable institutional frameworks and support, etc. The innovation system is studied like an R&D network made up of scientific and technical institutions, of laboratories for research and engineering with the aim of creating, producing, learning – of innovating. This concept of an innovation system has opened up several avenues for research, two of which have particularly grabbed the attention of political decision makers: the idea of localizing the innovation process, and that of the emergence of innovation networks with technology entrepreneurs acting as the main brokers. The creator of the business that has the knowledge capital is enhanced by the dual investment and (re)appropriation process [BOU 16].

It is not only the entrepreneurial aspects of innovation, but also the economic, financial and sociotechnical aspects that fall within the practices of creating and acquiring the capital and labor resources necessary for carrying out production. The issue of excludability is central to understanding the functioning (creation or development) of a business. Considering, for example, that activities producing scientific and technical information have a larger positive impact (in terms of creating wealth and profit) on a collective level (a large number of businesses) than for an individual business (this is still more frustrating in cases where the business producing information to serve its own innovation activities in fact benefits others), means defending the idea of pooling profits, risks and opportunities. In an economy marked by the asymmetry of information, this does not mean that the selection mechanisms of businesses are unable to operate. It means that external economies, which firms can claim to conquer, are guiding entrepreneurial strategies on localization, competition, spinning off and cooperation.

There is actually a trend for businesses to use their environments to their own advantage rather than to invest, for example, in all stages of technology creation and innovation. This can be explained by the fact that during the acquisition (appropriation) of production resources, all investments are less expensive than those made during resource creation. This, in turn, explains the innovation strategies of organizations and the appeal of a region with plentiful scientific and technical resources. The collective profitability of capital can prove to be greater, while its private profitability can become insufficient. The explanation for the superiority of the social yield from investments in business research and innovation, in comparison to individual capital, lies in the increase in the number of factors that determine the possibility for a given business to make a profit. These overarching factors (education, environment, health, finance, links between industries, communication, needs and aspirations, etc.) have an effect on the marginal cost of a business or activity and, all things being otherwise equal, influence the yield made on the capital invested. The idea of the “network” then emerges as essential to economic observation and analysis. In our economy based on knowledge and open information, the “network” is the industrial structure that brings technical change and guarantees the development of the mode of production and consumption [UZU 12, LIU 16].

The formation of innovation networks follows four paths: the multiplication of exchanges between public research and businesses; the creation of institutions for commercializing research; help for the creation of technology businesses; and the organization of the territory using scientific and technological “centers of excellence”. The positive overall business climate ensures the emergence and spread of innovation. An innovative entrepreneur or even an innovative business that acquires scientific and technical knowledge to innovate therefore serves a crucial purpose within a group of interconnections and opportunities for innovation and profit.

To understand and analyze the conception and launch of the innovation process, it is essential to consider the creative dimension of the individual, the business and the organization in general. In new approaches to innovation, the entrepreneur and the business are used according to their skills and their function in the creation of resources; innovation therefore becomes endogenous, gradual or radical, and integrated into a complex process with abundant feedback and interplay. The innovative organization is presented here with a dynamic system made up of specific and varied skills. By acquiring, combining and mobilizing these skills, innovators are able to create technological resources and advance relationships with their environment. This is the reason that managing the conception, application and development is important in the implementation of an innovation process.

The organization (business, institution, spatial innovation system) has a set of knowledge and skills from learning processes, which are integrated into its memory (routines, according to the company’s evolutionist approach). The company therefore creates its “knowledge capital” [LAP 16]. The coordination mode and modalities applied here are related to the efficiency and specific features of managing projects and processes. The organization develops and is subject to continuous external aggressions. These aggressions (competition, substitutability of products and technologies, regulation, etc.) are the product of the economic context and have an effect on innovation engines, and also act as a means of selection. Selection procedures are at the heart of the business climate, and include the nature of product markets, the availability of capital and labor, the pace of innovation, the effects of public policies and the protection of intellectual property [LAP 12]. They can, as a result, create alternatives to the mode of functioning, management and production of a given business (or a particular economic system), which is brought about through the market.

The business climate is, in all cases, the creator of either barriers or opportunities for organizations and individuals. The unpredictability of results and the possibility of alternatives are the main uncertainties inherent in innovation activities. On the other hand, just as the innovation process involves learning and development, the innovative organization must constantly make internal adjustments and review its relationships with its technological, economic and social environment.

At the macroeconomic level, innovation requires a continuous reassessment of the social relationships and institutional structures that characterize a given economy at a given time. Innovation is the result of close relationships between producers and consumers, of asymmetry in information or even of microeconomic and macroeconomic growth processes that are out of touch with reality. It is born of imperfection or imbalance, and contributes, in turn, to improving the economic order. It also has a stake in the dynamic growth model based on uncertainty, risk and profit. Innovation is born of uncertainty and risk and, at the same time, creates uncertainty.

The “flaws” that characterize an economic system are, however, a significant source of opportunities for investment, production and the spread of new market values. Yet to arrive at those opportunities, it is necessary for the economic mechanisms to be, at one time or another, in stages relative to each other. Time intervenes in the preparation, organization and, quite simply, the seizure of opportunities that the market offers to agents that are supposed to create new productive combinations.

This book is made up of eight chapters with the aim of discussing the conditions that ensure the implementation of innovation processes, and the launch and distribution of innovations. The two major engines of innovation are knowledge and entrepreneurial spirit [BOU 14]. These engines are initiated by the entrepreneur and the business. The success of the actions of the entrepreneur and the business is the result of norms, rules, traditions and institutions through which economic functions are organized, and thanks to which innovation activities become both individually and collectively profitable. These activities must be considered through the lens of entrepreneurial spirit and creativity, capabilities and strategies for interacting with businesses, consumers, and public authorities, as well as through the means of coordinating their actions with the aim of creating or organizing a market that must recoup investments, alleviate risks and guarantee, for a time, the vitality of business. But how can the entrepreneur use these networks for innovation? What are the factors for success that can turn an idea into an innovation and create value? How can the dissemination of innovation be organized? How can a business transform itself? How can it acquire and enhance the knowledge required for its development? How can it protect its technological and knowledge-related inheritance? How can the economic environment influence innovation engines and systems?

According to Michel Marchesnay, in industrial capitalism, innovation is based on two pillars: understanding technology and having a significant entrepreneurial spirit. Innovation aims to make the capital invested by the entrepreneur profitable. In the first chapter, this link is analyzed at three levels: macroeconomic (nation), mesoeconomic (groups, sectors, regions) and microeconomic (entrepreneurial). The development of industrial capitalism is broken down, according to major inventions, into three generations (1775-1875-1975). Each generation takes place over two stages. The extensive stage focuses on the transfer of inventions to production techniques and tools, while the intensive stage concerns the development of consumer goods and “modern” service activities. Entrepreneurship is thus idealized in the intensive stage as it facilitates the transition to “modernity”. However, reality shows that major innovation is dependent on the strategy of industrial and financial groups, innovation policy and the land use policy implemented by the State.

As regards the importance of the territory in which an innovative entrepreneurship emerges, Corinne Tanguy and Dimitri Uzunidis refer to theories of the “innovative milieu”. An innovative milieu, defined as a group of actors (businesses, institutions, consumers, etc.) located and settled in a given region, is formed through multilateral socioeconomic interactions. It therefore stimulates the appearance of different kinds of innovation, as well the emergence of new businesses. However, the role of the innovative entrepreneur is crucial to the realization of opportunities and resources offered by an innovative milieu. Indeed, it is this that makes good use of the territory’s cognitive, financial or regulatory resources and contributes to the creation of new technologies and jobs through networks and the proximities it is able to make more widespread.

Focusing his analysis on start-ups, Gérard Kokou Akrikpan Dokou shows, in the third chapter, the position of interpersonal relationships in launching an entrepreneurial project. A start-up is an innovative company with a strong foundation in new technologies and good market prospects. An entrepreneur behind such an organization is often focused on the central task of making the most of experience, knowledge and skills. It is therefore necessary for them to have advisers. There are significant requirements for providing such support, as complementary skills are necessary for setting up and making a success of a complex business. In this regard, the logic behind the actions taken by creators is greatly impacted by what they need to be, know and be able to do, to the extent that it fundamentally rebuilds their entrepreneurial identity. Advisers must therefore make these three requirements for a high-tech entrepreneur part of their role as expert counsel in order for the innovative project to succeed.

The skills that are necessary to acquire for innovation are related to entrepreneurial creativity. Creativity and innovation are often addressed together to describe the product-oriented innovation that allows a business to have a “star” product, but this occurs much less often when it comes to studying the successful combinations of multiple ideas that have led to an entrepreneurial success. However, this creative approach can be difficult to emulate, which gives it the protection of a competitive advantage. The aim of Marc Jaillot, in the fourth chapter, is to question the idea of creativity belonging to entrepreneurship in order to determine its place and its importance in small businesses. These are the essential engines of inventiveness, innovation and production in industrial countries.

The question of creativity also arises in large businesses. Maggy Perrier and Audrey Depeige, in the fifth chapter, present the processes and methods used by an international company to create and guarantee value through its innovations. They describe the activities and structure of a business, in terms of contributing to improving performance in innovation and maintaining a competitive advantage. The competitive environment particularly pushes the business to research different forms of collaborating with other organizations in order to create, guarantee and offer value (products or services) by encouraging knowledge-based innovation. In particular, field studies show that the business makes use of two sources for accessing new technologies, turning to networking with other businesses in its sector that are likely to foster the co-development of new products. New forms of partnership here manifest themselves in the emergence of inter-organizational learning and the distribution of new knowledge, supported by dedicated intellectual property strategies.

Yann de Kermadec, in the sixth chapter, explains that at the heart of interactions between innovation, inventions and patents is the language of patents, which becomes very clear to the designer when complicated and often lengthy sentences on patent claims are put into diagrams known as “trees of means”. Being both a strategic tool for protecting and using innovations, a mine of information, and a powerful design language, patents allow innovation projects to be energized, secured and used more effectively.

The aim of the seventh chapter, written by Pierre Saulais, is to discuss the connections between invention, innovation and intellectual property rights. Specifically, after having shed light on the three elements mentioned, the author shows that these links are in fact bridges between fields which, until now, have rarely been connected, and that it is none other than knowledge which creates these bridges. General knowledge of objects calls for knowledge of how to become a strong engine of innovation.

However, businesses and, more generally, industry must have an unprecedented resurgence to respond to the challenges presented by a complicated and turbulent present, which is particularly critical from a social, economic and environmental point of view. In the final chapter, Theodor Felezeu analyzes the steps that industry can take in order to become part of a continuous innovation, while also contributing to humankind taking back control of the direction of its development.

In all of these cases, the engines of innovation are formed in three stages: an observation stage, an imagination stage and a persistence stage. Whether formally or implicitly, these three stages also apply as much to an individual creator and entrepreneur as to a business with powerful scientific research structures and engineering technologies.

Bibliography

[BOU 14] BOUTILLIER S., UZUNIDIS D., “The theory of the entrepreneur: from heroic to socialised entrepreneurship”, Journal of Innovation Economics & Management, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 9–40, 2014.

[BOU 16] BOUTILLIER S., UZUNIDIS D., The Entrepreneur, ISTE Ltd, London and John Wiley & Sons, New York, 2016.

[LAP 12] LAPERCHE B., “Innovation processes: why institutions matter”, Journal ofInnovation Economics & Management, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 3–11, 2012.

[LAP 16] LAPERCHE B., “Large firms’ knowledge capital and innovation networks”, Journal of the Knowledge Economy, http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13132-016-0391-7, 30 June 2016.

[LIU 16] LIU Z., UZUNIDIS D., “Globalization of R&D, accumulation of knowledge and network innovation: the evolution of the firm’s boundaries”, Journal of the Knowledge Economy, http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13132-016-0381-9, 7 June 2016.

[UZU 12] UZUNIDIS D., BOUTILLIER B., “Globalization of R&D and network innovation: what do we learn from the evolutionist theory?”, Journal of Innovation Economics & Management, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 23–52, 2012.

Introduction written by Dimitri UZUNIDIS and Pierre SAULAIS.

1Innovation Strategies and Entrepreneurial Dynamics

Humankind has made ceaseless progress in discovering new ways to produce and consume. Its major discoveries have concerned energy sources, means of communication and transport, products and modes of production. They have then spread through migration, exploration and conflict, sometimes over the course of millennia.

However, over barely three centuries, European countries have undergone the “great transformation”, to use Karl Polanyi’s [POL 44] phrase. In reality, this encompasses three “revolutions”, or rather generations, of producing and consuming industrialized goods in line with certain features linked to technical or commercial innovation.

Industrial capitalism is the product of agrarian and mercantile capitalisms, through the search for profit undertaken by entrepreneurial individuals and companies. The industrial entrepreneur appeared first in England, and then in France, in the 18th Century, and became the dominant figure in the following century: the main player in innovation.

Nonetheless, the industrial system follows a threefold interactive process of innovation, internationalization and concentration, as evidenced, for example, by the current “great transformation” in the digital economy. Each generation developed in two stages: the first, focused on major discoveries, developed new stock from productive capital (knowledge, processes, etc.), and the second drew on these innovations to develop products and markets further down the line. These new activities spread throughout the world, first to create new areas of production, which in turn become areas of consumption, and then creation, within these new activities. At first regarded as futuristic, they become widespread and commonplace, demanding new forms of innovation focused on methods of consumption.

The following developments organize themselves around the most important questions, with regard to the complex relationship between the dynamism of industrial capitalism and the role of the entrepreneurial spirit. The following issues will be addressed: the nature of entrepreneurial innovation (1), and its level of economic analysis (2). The ideas of industrial generations (3) and then stages (4) are then placed in their historical context. Points 5 and 6 successively address the social question, through the relationship between order and progress, and then the issue of the plurality of the entrepreneur as innovator in the emerging capitalism. Points 7 and 8 consequently address the issue of individual (entrepreneurial) and collective (public) strategies in innovation.

1.1. The entrepreneur: the key player in innovation

An entrepreneur is, from a legal and economic standpoint, someone who uses their own capital (financial, personal, institutional, etc.) to take the risk of creating (or taking on) a business, with the aim of drawing various returns on investment from it (revenue, personal and social satisfaction, etc.) [JUL 98]. The desired result is as significant as the risk taken, and, in particular, it is as great as the degree of innovation. However, the range of expectations increases the complexity of innovation practices.

1.1.1.By their very nature, every entrepreneur takes a risk dependent on innovation

From the moment that an entrepreneur creates and manages his organization, he is inevitably met with uncertainty. Moreover, they contribute ever more to increasing that uncertainty as they are lead, whether voluntarily or not, to innovate. Whether they choose to adopt a strategy based on leading or on following, by intent or by adaptation, this operating logic has its economic rationale in expectation of a surplus, a return in an economic sense, related to appeal for clients, on an unstable market open to opportunities. Contrarily, and theoretically, the less the entrepreneur is an innovator and a risk-taker, the less he can hope to make their investment profitable [LOW 70]. However, this logical explanation does not hold up when:

– the market is overprotected, in which case it creates subsidies, hardly encouraging innovation;

– the market is too easily accessible, in which case the cost of innovation is not in line with the risks of failure or hypercompetition;

– the market is dependent on the sector in such a way that the profits of innovation and surplus factors are picked up by partners before or after, which can dissuade people from undertaking unprotected innovations.

1.1.2.Innovation restores a range of logical structures and practices in entrepreneurial action

Individual and emerging entrepreneurial innovation must be characterized by managerial, organic and planned (deliberate) innovation. Each story of innovation is unique as it depends largely on the innovator: who they are, what they want, what they know and what they do. It is then dependent on internal social interaction (the culture of the organization), knowledge and know-how (working experience), and meeting the pressing and underlying needs of the market (the mission). In reality, all of these data are variable and constantly changing.

Nonetheless, there are several points shared in all innovative approaches. The most common is for the innovative entrepreneur to draw on experience acquired through education (learning) or through training (doing), be they a pastry chef or a doctor or engineer. More broadly, the innovator enters into an atmosphere favorable to their operating logic, whether it be a profession, an environment or a community. In terms of legitimacy, their expectations will be at once economic (the feasibility and reception of the product) and social (recognition, from peers as much as from social networks, both local and further afield).

1.2. Industrial analysis of innovation

Industrial analysis addresses the issue of innovation from two distinct angles: the interaction between structures, conduct and performance (SCP model), or the differentiation of three areas of study – the sector, the group and the region.

1.2.1.The analytical approach: the SCP model

Industry is defined as a competitive field of companies adopting “conducts” (behaviors) ranging from conflict, collusion, cooperation. Each industry defines itself empirically according to its structures, including its degree of concentration, the elimination of potential competitors, etc. Lastly, it is characterized by its performance, particularly in profitability and growth. In these three areas, industrial innovation strategies wield a dominant influence. In particular, certain innovations are likely to have a destructive and reconstructive effect in a structure–strategy pairing, owing to technological breakthroughs (processes) or commercial ones (markets). In this way, the areas of strategic activity are continually disturbed by innovations, whether they arise from established companies or contenders just starting out.

1.2.2.The institutional approach: mesosystems

The intermediary approach between the microeconomic and macroeconomic levels provides a conceptual and empirical framework that allows links to be made between operational logic and practices. As regards innovation, it specifically offers a framework for evaluating and promoting the policies of companies (groups or SMEs) and public institutions.

– The

sector

, as an object of research, refers to the series of steps in a transformation up to the final stage. Depending on the case in question, it breaks itself down (from top to bottom) or rebuilds itself. The sector is constantly changing, mainly at the whim of innovations in one of its areas. In the example of innovations in digital technology, broadly speaking, the overall economy of the sector can be continually questioned. In particular, the operational actions of the players develop, bringing with them structural changes, adaptation strategies, or even breakdowns in the face of innovation, and, as a result, variations in performance.

– The

group

brings together companies controlled, whether legally or not, by a core group of owners. The prevailing managerial orthodoxy dominates in this area, with the aim of optimizing the capital invested. In theory, the group is, according to a well-known adage, “an island of conscious power in an ocean of unconscious coordination (the market)”. As a result, it has an independent strategy towards innovation which materializes in the form of an integrated technoscience system. By relying on its own laboratories, the executive ranks plan the pace and type of innovations, most often through technology transfers. However, some innovations rise unpredictably, uncontrollably or beyond the scope of the group’s laboratories. This issue arises most often at the two ends of the process: either for product-processes at the discovery stage, or for marketable products. In these two cases, small businesses, according to entrepreneurial logic, have proven to be more capable of withstanding risks: a case in point is pharmaceutical groups, which are continuously looking for patents or licenses from start-ups.

– The approach in terms of

region

has sparked a vast amount of research, including from geographers and historians, into innovation structures and policies. Alfred Marshall, in Cambridge (England) at the end of the 19th Century, evoked the idea of ethos under the term “atmosphere”. In this way, certain geographic areas, both urban and rural, known as “districts” (of wool, cotton, cutlery, etc.), made up preferred locations for promoting, encouraging and assimilating innovations in a given sector. Nowadays, Marshall’s districts have been expanded and are known as “clusters”, with multiple forms of agglomerations of businesses, laboratories, etc., whether in a given sector (technology park) focused on one industry, or in a specific urban area (technology hub), such as a network of hotspots and research laboratories on various subjects.

1.3. The three eras of industrial capitalism

1.3.1.The origins of industrial capitalism

Industrial capitalism is the result of a series of major innovations, or breakthroughs, described by Adam Smith upon their inception (1776) and theorized in around 1900 by Schumpeter (using the cluster innovations of the second industrial generation). This type of capitalism is different from agrarian and mercantile capitalisms due to the formation, with the aid of financial capital, of a set of physical and intellectual assets that make up what is known as the “catalog of technologies” (blue book) and is available at all times. The capital is invested by entrepreneurs and their agents in the development of mechanization, the division of labor, and the physical and legal consolidation in companies (manufacturing). The task falling to entrepreneurs requires a “talent for administration”, according to the French economist Jean-Baptiste Say, who was himself a manufacturer in France during the First Empire.

The development of industrial capitalism has historically occurred alongside three underlying trends related to researching new opportunities and new prospects: this might be, on the one hand, the continuous, and if possible controlled, production of innovations; a focus as the markets reached maturity, on the other; or finally internationalization, in search of new prospects. The globalization of industrial capitalism was strengthened by the fact that major innovations – breakthroughs – were introduced in new countries.

1.3.2.The development of industrial capitalism: the concept of generations

Generations can be said to start in line with the emergence of their products and services in around 1780 (steam engines, weaving machines, spinning machines), 1880 (steel industry, internal combustion engines, electricity, etc.) and 1980 (computer technology, biotechnologies, etc.). For each industrial generation, there is an almost identical mode of development, indicated by an innovation process moving from basic research, to applied research, to the development of technically viable and commercially appealing products [JUL 97]. In a way, it moves from a scientific basis to a technological one, which generates new production processes. This leads to “machines” (intermediary goods and equipment) that enable the production of goods and services targeting the mass market, before turning to increasingly specialized customer groups, by relying on services responsible for creating and distributing ever more advanced innovations.

Use of the term “industrial revolution” to describe the first generation is misleading. It in fact brings together activities carried out over almost three quarters of a century (1710–1780) to design a tentative series of aims (like the steam engine) and, primarily, experiments (weaving and spinning machines) that lead to a technically operational invention following many mistakes, failures and collapses, as described in the works of Paul Mantoux, David Landes [LAN 69, LAN 98] and Denis Woronof [WOR 94]. Only innovative entrepreneurs with recognized business skills (risk takers, organization managers, market builders) eke out a living, but they must also have luck, reminiscent of the natural selection process in Darwinism. This period is one of a “savage capitalism”, where everything is permitted (such as “appropriating” the basic principle behind an invention or copying the development processes of competitors).

While this same initial (extensive) period of trial and error exists in the second industrial generation (the end of the 19th Century) during the move towards new TPM (technologies, products, markets) groups, the fundamental research is from this point onwards restricted to public and private laboratories and the development of new product markets through the management of industrial and financial groups. This is a technoscience system (the Pasteur Institute is an example of this dual affiliation).

The third industrial revolution, based on the ongoing digital revolution in particular, is, due to the complexity and growing costs of innovation, giving rise to networks of alliances, involving ever longer periods of time between design and marketing, and strategies mixing competition and cooperation (“coopetition”) depending on the stage of the industrial innovation process.

1.4. Extensive and intensive stages

The French school, known as the “regulation school”, supposes that each industrial generation has historically had two successive stages, the extensive and the intensive.

1.4.1.The extensive stage

This centers on the increased accumulation (widening