Un nouveau modèle de développement économique (DÉ) par l’innovation : la co-innovation, l’entrepreneuriat technologique et le rôle des agents de DÉ

For a few years, economic developers have integrated innovation to their practice as the engine for economic development. It is now well understood that innovation and economic development are intertwined with the seminal work of Schumpeter more than a century ago. Many researches have been done since, but the very dynamic nature of innovation, and thus the economic developers’ actions, needs constant reassessment. Innovation is changing from a linear perspective where firms, research centers and universities try to develop and commercialize new products and services, based on scientific researches, the so-called Public-Private Partnership, to a systemic form where firms, research centers and universities are still involved in the innovation process, but where more and more Public-Private-People Partnerships can occur. Why is innovation becoming a systemic process? One of the explanations lays in the greater complexity of knowledge and a greater distribution of it. In the meantime, more people can access technologies, as it is seen with the blooming of mobile applications. Since then, the way of innovation process occurs is dramatically changing, and more contributors can join the process, including as usual private companies or government, but also users. What is new with the users is that they are not only involved for commercialization purpose, but now also as co-developers and co-creators. By acknowledging those shifts, economic developers should also change the way they are acting to foster economic development and innovation. So, it is time to develop new forms of intervention in a context of co-innovation. They have to step back to see that their actions are done at the macro level (even if it has been practiced at the regional level) and generally based on industrial concentration with MAR and his industrial districts, on one side and specialization, on the other side with Porter and his clusters’ strategy. The idea is to nourish innovation by geographical, cultural, institutional and social proximity. In doing so, it helps tacit knowledge to flow from one company to another and to bring to the market new products and services more rapidly. Economic developers works with geographic proximity and implements clusters strategies all over the world with different results. So the mechanistic aspect of the strategy is not that simple. Actually, clusters are now shifting to a systemic perspective and try to open-up collaboration between clusters and enhance cross sectorial projects. It also has been demonstrated that innovation is more about people than organizations. Since Jacobs, and later with Florida, the spotlight has been put on the individual as the engine of creativity and innovation. Jacobs thought that knowledge is embedded in the individual expertise, and Florida worked on the creative class which represent about 30% of the population, and who is made of people who promote creativity and changes in some place, generally cities. With Jacobs and Florida, the quality of place is critical because it can help to attract talents. At that micro level also, works on the entrepreneur-opportunity dyad is important. With the neo-classic theory, entrepreneurs can use information asymmetry to exploit opportunities and bring their creativity to the market. Entrepreneurs are very special in essence, even though it has not been establish that they have some special traits, it seems that they have in common a way to act creatively and transform this creativity into opportunities and economic development. For economic developers, it means to develop supportive actions towards entrepreneurs: training, entrepreneurs club, special funding for example. But, the difficulties lay in: how can economic developers develop a more structured model for their interventions to entrepreneurs? Moreover, some do believe that these micro levels approaches can be self-organized and that there is no need for public policy towards entrepreneurs. At the meso level, economic developers can improve, particularly regarding the Regional Innovation System (RIS), the way they can foster business serendipity across networks. Since Chesbrough has defined the concept of open innovation, a more systemic approach to innovation seems to be accepted by economic developers. But, once again, there is lot of work to do to better understand how economic developers can put into practice those new approaches. Thus, neither the macro level approach, which is too mechanistic, nor the meso approaches level, which is to complex, nor the micro level, which doesn’t allow public policy, seem to offer a proper answer to economic developers with the systemic approach of innovation. This dissertation tries to answer the following question: What model can be developed for economic developers in context of co- innovation and technological entrepreneurship? Grounded theory as presented by Corbin and Strauss (2008) was the methodology in this survey. As it is permitted in grounded theory, the literacy has been completed by works on complexity theory, network theory and structural holes and co-innovation. Twenty-one interviews have been conducted in Montréal, the Province of Québec province, France and The United States between August and December 2012 with economic developers, scientific and technological parks managers, co-creation spaces organizers and entrepreneurs. The main conclusions of this research in an academic perspective are: 1. The correct level to support co-innovation is the meso level: this level allows macro and micro level actions to be coherent in a more interdependent perspective. The meso level is a medium term perspective at the regional level. The economic developers mostly use projects and communities of practice to do their actions regarding co-innovation; 2. The process for the economic development through co-innovation is intermediated and two-fold: a) Economic developers identify common needs in their ecosystems through their networks. In doing so, they create communities in which intrapreneurial opportunities occur. Some of these intrapreneurial opportunities lead to structuring projects. b) These projects open-up entrapreneurial opportunities that help regional economic development; 3. Finally, Economic developers are both intrapreneurs (leading project in their own organisations and exopreneurs (leading projects in communities). But as we want to develop something operational for economic developers, we also created an algorithm, which will help them to structure co-innovation actions (how to identify needs, communities, partners, etc.), but also a guide to use the right co-innovative tool at the right moment in their process of co-innovation. Some results of this research has been put into practice with the new program as PR@M-Est at the City of Montréal, this program is based on business serendipity and on co-innovation principles. This research shows some interest in France also. Of course this research has some limits, particularly with the size and the diversity of the sample, but we are confident it could open the way to further research in the field.

Name thesis:degree_name

D.B.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctorat

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Management et gestion des ressources humaines

Grantor dc:publisher

Université de Sherbrooke

Year dc:date.issued

2015

Author dc:creator

• Frangioni, Marina

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Baronet, Jacques

• Innovation
• Politiques publiques
• Développement économique
• Co-innovation
• Entrepreneuriat

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/

Language dc:language.iso

fr

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11143/8073

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:usherbrooke.scholaris.ca:11143/8073