L'émergence des collectifs de conception inter-industries : le cas de la Lunar Society dans l'Angleterre du XVIIIème

Il nous semble que nous pencher sur une forme historique de collectif de conception inter-industrie dans des contextes de forts changements sociétaux et technologiques peut nous aider à mieux comprendre la nature et les processus d'émergence des collectifs contemporains. Nous proposons alors d'examiner l'émergence d'un collectif de conception inter-industries, la Lunar Society de Birmingham au XVIIIème siècle, dont la performance est aujourd'hui indéniable tant l'héritage du travail collaboratif de ses membres a profondément modifié l'Angleterre de l'époque. Nous nous référons aux travaux des deux grands historiens de la Lunar Society, Richard Schofield (Schofield, 1957; 1963) et Jenny Uglow (Uglow, 2002). Les sources permettant d'étayer l'histoire de la Lunar Society sont en fait peu nombreuses : même si la vie de certains membres (notamment James Watt et Josiah Wedgwood) fut l'objet les historiens des sciences et des techniques se sont en fait peu penchés sur l'histoire de cette société savante anglaise, comme le soulignait par exemple un article de Science et Vie consacrée à la Lunar Society en novembre 2002. Ce manque d'études historiques peut s'expliquer par le peu d'archives sur les activités de la Lunar Society. Ainsi, les travaux de Schofield et de Uglow s'appuient sur la correspondance que s'échangèrent les membres de la Lunar Society, et ne peuvent donc rendre compte avec exhaustivité de l'ensemble des mécanismes de coopération, les rencontres physiques entre les divers protagonistes n'étant que peu relatées. Néanmoins, les perspectives historiques que nous apportent ces ouvrages nous permettent de saisir, de manière assez complète, l'essence de ce collectif

A new methodology for advanced engineering design: Lessons from experimenting C-K Theory driven tools

International audienceThis research shows that C-K Design Theory provides fruitful connections between New Product Development and Knowledge Management issues. Our purpose is to go a step further on the benefits of C-K Theory-based design tools for managing the upstream phases of innovative design processes. Based on 14 industrial case studies conducted between 2009 and 2011, we find that C-K Theory-based design tools enable practitioners to generate and explore various design paths while converging on the most competitive one

Rethinking the role of intermediaries as an architect of collective exploration and creation of knowledge in open innovation

This paper questions the applicability of traditional notions of intermediary activities, which are usually categorized as either brokering or networking, in cases of high uncertainty regarding technologies, markets or which actors to involve. In the case of collaborative open innovation, especially in circumstances when no single organization is able to take on the challenge alone, the activities traditionally associated with intermediation do not suffice to describe what an intermediary can do to support innovation. This paper presents two cases of intermediaries working with the early phases of traffic safety innovations, and how they have managed to develop their activities beyond solely brokering and networking, but also to take an active role in the process of joint exploration and creation of knowledge. We use a qualitative approach to analyze the two cases in order to provide examples of how rethinking intermediation activities can support open innovation in a collaborative setting. The findings suggest that intermediaries taking on a more active role, which could be described as an architect which designs prerequisites and offers leadership in the process of joint exploration and creation of knowledge

Experimenting with innovation processes: the case of reinventing a museum through collaboration

This paper explores how experimenting with collaborative processes contributes to reinventing the purpose and practices of an organisation. Based on a case study of the Insectarium of Montréal, we focus on the 2-year collaborative process orchestrated by the director, involving employees, experts and visitors. Our findings show several organisational implications of engaging in this type of experimentation: specifically, beyond enabling the collective generation of new ideas, experimenting through collaboration is an excellent opportunity to renew the organisation’s practices and support the development of a reflexive leadership. This suggests that despite the inherent challenges associated with organisational experiments, there are clear benefits of engaging in such experiments to stimulate innovation

Resisting classical solutions: The creative mind of industrial designers and engineers.

International audienceIndustrial designers and engineers are 2 types of individuals who are typically contrasted with regard to their creative capabilities. Regarding idea-generation processes, studies have shown that individuals use existing elements to generate new ideas, which constrains their creative thinking and leads them to only focus on a narrow scope of solutions. This article explores how industrial designers and engineers behave when generating creative ideas and resisting fixation (i.e., their propensity to focus on a limited set of ideas). We used a creative task in which participants were asked to design a solution that would prevent a hen’s egg from breaking after being dropped from a height of 10 m. Our results show that engineers and industrial designers differ in their creative behaviors when they are asked to generate ideas in a creative task without any constraints. Industrial designers provide more answers and are less fixated than engineers. However, for both engineers and industrial designers, the introduction of an uncreative example reinforced the fixation effect and constrained participants’ fluency. Specifically, industrial designers who were exposed to an uncreative example behaved similarly to engineers who were not exposed to this type of example

Multiple forms of applications and impacts of a design theory -ten years of industrial applications of C-K theory

International audienceC-K theory has been developed by Armand Hatchuel and Benoit Weil and then by other researchers since 1990s. In this paper we show that its very abstract nature and its high degree of universality actually supported a large variety of industrial applications. We distinguish three types of applications: 1) C-K theory provides a new language, that supports new analysis and descriptive capacity and new teachable individual models of thoughts; 2) C-K theory provides a very general framework to better characterize the validity domain and the performance conditions of existing methods, leading to potential improvement of these methods ; 3) C-K theory is the conceptual model at the root of new design methods that are today largely used in the industry

A contingency approach of open innovation intermediaries - the management principles of the "intermediary of the unknown"

International audienceResearch has improved our understanding of the managerial challenges inherent in exploratory intermediation. For instance knowledge brokers help to solve well-defined problems based on existing competences. But what if the relevant actor networks are not known, if there is no clear common interest, or if there are only ill-defined, wicked problems and no legitimate common place where they can be discussed? The aim of this paper is to explore these management principles for intermediation of the unknown. Can intermediaries be active when the degree of unknown is high? And if so, what can they do and how can they manage and drive collective innovation? We first build on a review of the literature to highlight common core functions of the different types of intermediaries. Then, we introduce the "degree of unknown" as a new dimension for analyzing the role of intermediaries, and we discuss whether the core functions of the intermediary could be fulfilled when the degree of unknown is very high. Our analysis is based on four different empirical case studies in Sweden, France, and Germany where these functions have been tackled in particular because of the low level of pre-existing knowledge. We describe the managerial challenges these intermediaries face in the unknown and we demonstrate examples of how they have been handled. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and empirical perspectives raised by this work. The paper contributes to the theory of innovation intermediaries by exploring the properties of a form of intermediary for which the degree of unknown is a key contingency variable, and describes management principles for such intermediaries. In this way we characterize a new role -the "intermediary of the unknown" - that may be well spread in practice but scarcely analysed in the literature

Modéliser l’effet des biais cognitifs sur les dynamiques industrielles : innovation orpheline et architecte de l’inconnu

The purpose of the thesis is the study of industrial dynamics, in particular cognitive biases that lead to the lock-in of these dynamics. If innovation processes beyond the scope of the firm have been the subject of various studies, little has been done on the study of industrial dynamics from the perspective of cognitive lock in design activities. To explore this question, the thesis focuses on the study of a new phenomenology, orphan innovation, which is defined as orphan innovation as an innovation highly expected by society, but one which no actor or consortium of actors can manage to process with their current innovation capabilities, although all of the institutional conditions to foster it are gathered. The aim of the thesis is to answer three questions: How to model industrial dynamics and to identify causal factors of orphan innovation? How to build a tool to diagnose cognitive biases and orphan innovation in empirical situations? What are the organizational levers to overcome orphan innovation situations?The thesis then is based on three main results:1) a model of collective cognitive fixation, underlying the impact of imaginaries and their interactions among a collective action.2) a methodology to identify collective fixation and therefore to diagnose orphan innovation.3) a model of action for a new actor, called the architect of the unknown, in charge of stimulating innovative design capacities of the actors among the industry.L'objet de la thèse est l'étude des dynamiques industrielles, en particulier des biais cognitifs qui conduisent au blocage de ces dynamiques. Si les processus d'innovation dépassant le cadre de l'entreprise ont fait l'objet de diverses recherches, les dynamiques industrielles sont restées peu étudiées sous l'angle du blocage cognitif dans les activités de conception. Pour approfondir cette question, la thèse se focalise sur l'étude d'une phénoménologie nouvelle, l'innovation orpheline, définie comme une innovation très attendue par la société, mais qu'aucun acteur ou consortium d'acteurs n'est capable de générer, alors que les conditions traditionnelles pour favoriser son émergence sont réunies. L'enjeu de la thèse est de répondre à trois questions: Quelle modélisation pour cerner les facteurs causaux de l'innovation orpheline ? ; Quel outil pour diagnostiquer les biais cognitifs dans une situation empirique ? ; Quelles modalités organisationnelles pour sortir de l'innovation orpheline ?Cette démarche a permis de dégager trois résultats principaux :1) un modèle de la fixation cognitive collective, soulignant l'impact fort que peut avoir l'interaction entre les imaginaires singuliers au sein d'un collectif.2) un outil, le référentiel C-K pour identifier la fixation collective et pour diagnostiquer l'innovation orpheline.3) un modèle d'action pour un nouvel acteur, baptisé l'architecte de l'inconnu, en charge de stimuler les capacités de conception innovante de l'écosystème d'acteurs

Rethinking ideation: a cognitive approach of innovation lock-ins

Some industries are lacking the proposal of truly original new ideas to renew existing products and/or services, despite repeated efforts from all stakeholders to make innovative and original proposals. These situations, called orphan innovation, lead to revisit the contemporary approaches to the study of obstacles in ideation, as orphan innovation is a paradoxical situation. Conventional financial constraints and institutional level are released, the market demand is strong, niche strategies are possible and bold entrepreneurs abound. And yet, the proposals do not fulfill expectations regarding innovation. We advocate in this paper the idea that cognitive sciences can contribute to make sense of this phenomenon. Breaking with the common assumption that individual creativity is constrained by collective mechanisms such as social conformity or inhibition, we argue that there is a need today to rethink the collective action as leverage on the capacity of individuals to generate creative ideas

Modeling the impact of cognitive biases on industrial dynamics : Orphaninnovation and architect of the unknown

L'objet de la thèse est l'étude des dynamiques industrielles, en particulier des biais cognitifs qui conduisent au blocage de ces dynamiques. Si les processus d'innovation dépassant le cadre de l'entreprise ont fait l'objet de diverses recherches, les dynamiques industrielles sont restées peu étudiées sous l'angle du blocage cognitif dans les activités de conception. Pour approfondir cette question, la thèse se focalise sur l'étude d'une phénoménologie nouvelle, l'innovation orpheline, définie comme une innovation très attendue par la société, mais qu'aucun acteur ou consortium d'acteurs n'est capable de générer, alors que les conditions traditionnelles pour favoriser son émergence sont réunies. L'enjeu de la thèse est de répondre à trois questions: Quelle modélisation pour cerner les facteurs causaux de l'innovation orpheline ? ; Quel outil pour diagnostiquer les biais cognitifs dans une situation empirique ? ; Quelles modalités organisationnelles pour sortir de l'innovation orpheline ?Cette démarche a permis de dégager trois résultats principaux :1) un modèle de la fixation cognitive collective, soulignant l'impact fort que peut avoir l'interaction entre les imaginaires singuliers au sein d'un collectif.2) un outil, le référentiel C-K pour identifier la fixation collective et pour diagnostiquer l'innovation orpheline.3) un modèle d'action pour un nouvel acteur, baptisé l'architecte de l'inconnu, en charge de stimuler les capacités de conception innovante de l'écosystème d'acteurs.The purpose of the thesis is the study of industrial dynamics, in particular cognitive biases that lead to the lock-in of these dynamics. If innovation processes beyond the scope of the firm have been the subject of various studies, little has been done on the study of industrial dynamics from the perspective of cognitive lock in design activities. To explore this question, the thesis focuses on the study of a new phenomenology, orphan innovation, which is defined as orphan innovation as an innovation highly expected by society, but one which no actor or consortium of actors can manage to process with their current innovation capabilities, although all of the institutional conditions to foster it are gathered. The aim of the thesis is to answer three questions: How to model industrial dynamics and to identify causal factors of orphan innovation? How to build a tool to diagnose cognitive biases and orphan innovation in empirical situations? What are the organizational levers to overcome orphan innovation situations?The thesis then is based on three main results:1) a model of collective cognitive fixation, underlying the impact of imaginaries and their interactions among a collective action.2) a methodology to identify collective fixation and therefore to diagnose orphan innovation.3) a model of action for a new actor, called the architect of the unknown, in charge of stimulating innovative design capacities of the actors among the industry