- Forthcoming papers

Technology and Innovation

List of Articles

Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror series is a futuristic projection of new technologies whose primary objective is to improve our daily lives. The series examines artificial intelligence, digitalisation, gamification and robotisation of our daily lives, augmented reality and virtual reality. The mirror held up by Charlie Brooker is sometimes blackened, sometimes true to our reality. The series reflects the utopian intentions of the technologies implemented and shows to what extent human use reminds us of the dangers and highlights the dystopian side of all these new technologies when man appropriates or distorts them to serve his own interests. These works of anticipation, by hybridising the fictional and the real, reveal both the dystopian and the mirror aspects, allowing the viewer to engage in both a reflective and self-reflexive process.

This article reports on the research conducted during my PhD “Color in the visual environment: perception(s), reading(s), interpretation(s) and impact(s) on the elderly user. From the perspective of the lighting engineer (science and technology of lighting systems) and the color designer (applied art, design)”. Starting from the premise that maintaining the ability of older people to carry out their daily activities is an important lever for maintaining their quality of life, I have developed a new design method. It’s combines color design and lighting science and represents the beginning of a non-pharmacological strategy that leads to the design of environments adapted to the needs of older users with visual impairments. This study shows that this strategy can also be applied to cognitive disorders. This systemic approach is thus a driving force for a social innovation that breaks with current methods of care.

Recent pandemics have forced most companies to experiment with remote working to varying degrees. Despite the exceptional productivity of employees in this crisis context and the desire of employees to continue working remotely, the most innovative companies are making a strong case for more face-to-face work. This movement, called ”return to the office" is seen as the only way to create effective collaboration in innovative teams. In this paper, we show that the „return to the office‟ argument is based on a narrow conception of face-to-face trust or affect-based trust, as the main driver of collaborative dynamics. On the contrary, drawing on trust and innovation management research, we emphasize that distance does not limit the production of effective trust for innovative teams. Moreover, we propose a new articulation between two forms of trust, swift trust and reflective trust, i.e., the “swift reflective trust”, to support a new hybrid way of working that fosters collaboration and innovation.

The French army’s Red Team program consists of creating science fiction stories with the aim of anticipating conflicts that could threaten the territory by 2030-2060. Part of the trend of institutional science fiction, it is based on the capacity to arouse the cognitive strangeness dear to Darko Suvin and to create novum (imaginary technologies) vectors of difficulties, but also of solutions in the wars of the future. If certain novum have a performative function, the diegesis, that is to say the spatiotemporal environment of the story, takes on more of a dysperformative dimension. These stories seek to arouse the reaction of soldiers to imaginary dangers so that they implement strategies in advance to avoid their occurrence. Science fiction authors capture the unconscious of organizations and reveal their prophetic imaginaries. Innovism is also a true ideology pragmatically using the imaginary to question the established order and generate new ideas that are sources of creative destruction. The Red Team also brings the French army into a regime of historicity oriented towards the future, more than towards the battles of the past. Science fiction is also a paradoxical genre, involving a specific interpretation of reality and the future. It is therefore appropriate to question the advantages and possible disadvantages linked to the use of a paradoxical vision of the future in the development of an organization’s strategies aimed above all at efficiency and pragmatism.

In the light of the contributions of the logics of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and disruptive innovations [ADA, 18] and research issues on solutions for participatory qualification of impact data recalling older questions and analyzes including the Condorcet paradox [CON 85] and the incompleteness theorem of Arrow [ARR 51] or of Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen [SEN 70] on the evolution of economic models towards an economy of well-being with collective choice we propose possible responses for co-construction of new highly collaborative open qualification tools and processes [PAU 12]. By taking into account the diversity of open innovation actors to integrate the capabilities augmented by AI, we manage to integrate ex ante into highly democratic processes and AI tools the diversity of evolving determinants of opinions on the perceived impacts on everything. topics of common interest expressed. This leads our research towards the discovery [PAU 22] of a third typology of AI in addition to the symbolic one and the connective one: the Qualificative Artificial Intelligence (QuAI) - with the ability to integrate human critical thinking. New spaces – QuAI tools, collaborative open qualification processes – can thus lead to optimal choices through collaboration and the collective creation of relevance and trust, particularly through new dynamic capabilities that potentially create disruptive innovations. Several usage functionalities are identified in terms of developments towards a functionality economy [VAI, 20]. and the democratization of access and contribution to impact data aimed at disruptive innovative solutions and tools for resilience [SCH 22] considering the multifaceted (economic, climate change, confidence) crises [PAU 09, 12, 18].

Both private and public actors promote digitalisation as a way of contributing to the agroecological transition of agriculture. However, the actual effects of digital technology on the agroecological transition is a matter of controversy. The objective of this article is to investigate how digitalisation affects and interacts with the diversity of agricultural models. To do so, it proposes an institutional economic and multi-level analysis of innovation system, implemented through a methodology that combines quantitative and qualitative analysis. At the level of the Agricultural Innovation System, it demonstrates that depending on their involvement in organic or conventional farming, actors do not perceive the same potential and risks and enact digitalisation differently. Organisations that promote digital in agriculture seem not to perceive this heterogeneity. At farm level, based on 98 interviews with field crop farmers in Occitanie, I construct digital technology use profiles. Current digital use mostly supports weak or symbolic ecologisation, tied with the industrialization of farms, which is characterised by expansion, specialization, the growing of outsourcing activities and salaried workforce as well as a deeper value-chain integration. This article highlights that, depending on the agricultural model to which the actors belong, they do not have the same perceptions and uses of digital technology. Digitalisation does not appear to be the result of so-called ’pioneering’ behaviour, but depends on the diversity of models and paradigms, in interaction with a socio-economic system that proposes, encourages or even imposes these technologies. Current digitalisation presents several forms of opposition to the agroecological transition of agriculture, whether in terms of techniques, objectives, reasoning, temporal dynamics or political and social issues. However, hybridisations of digitalization and ecologisation seem possible in the case of industrial forms of ecologisation. A deeper contribution of digitalisation to ecologisation would imply rethinking its technical, economic and political models.

The professional or semi-professional practice of wargames is called wargaming. It encompasses numerous forms of war simulation that share the commonality of being serious games based on data derived from the field and/or aimed at collecting new data. Their use can be educational, preparatory for planification, exploratory, or prospective. Wargame can be played in a physical or computerized format, or even in a hybrid form combining these alternatives. Drawing on a literature review on this subject, this article aims to shed light on the different categories of wargames practiced by the military, as well as the advantages, disadvantages, and risks of physical wargames compared to digital ones.

On 17 March 2020, a team of researchers, managers and engineers joined forces to design a technical object considered essential at the time: an artificial respirator called MakAir, designed for the mechanical ventilation of patients suffering from pneumonia caused by the coronavirus 2019, which could develop into acute respiratory distress syndrome. This article describes and retraces the design dynamics of this innovative medical device, analysing it from the perspective of the three types of singularity that make it up: technical, socio-technical and contextual.

It is common to study scientific production through bibliometric analyses. In this article, we propose to focus more specifically on research that revolves around both design thinking or an approach to design closely related to it, and on the game or the transformation of devices through gamification. To accomplish this, we have assembled an initial reference corpus by querying the title field of three international scientific resources (Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science). This work has two objectives. The first is to estimate the evolution and distribution of research on these topics over the past 20 years. The second pertains to whether or not it is worthwhile to track this evolution through the sole indexing portal for international scientific works, Web of Science. We demonstrate, through the creation of a second corpus, that concerning research on these subjects, the Web of Science platform provides a fairly good overview of ongoing work, provided that a reference corpus is established by querying the abstract field, not just the title field.

This chapter presents two socio-technical systems that combine the use of serious games, especially digital ones, with design thinking. The aim of this approach is to test whether such a combination is possible. To this end, we conduct a comparative study of two serious games in which we were involved. Through a reflexive approach and by mobilizing surveys and field studies, the approach is not only feasible, but also allows for a good complementarity between game phases and design thinking. However, the way in which the game activity is conceived seems essential to achieve this. In fact, the strategy of combining these two phases is more effective than superimposing them.

Design thinking is a method of creativity based on empathy, storytelling and prototyping. These three characteristics are explained in particular by Tim Brown, one of whose books, Change by design (2009) is studied precisely in this article which seeks to establish a connection with design fiction, this new approach to design based on prototyping from of the science fiction imaginary. The Near Future Laboratory book The Manual of Design Fiction (2022) serves as a reference for analyzing the links between design fiction and design thinking. The Esoldat project is an example of design fiction whose function is notably to produce foresight. Science fiction and design thinking make it possible to extract the imaginary of organizations and create stories to optimize strategic discourse. Design fiction would therefore benefit from turning to design thinking methods to further improve a methodology oriented towards the implementation of innovation policies using the imaginary of experts, but also of organizational employees.

This contribution questions the dynamics of the aerospace and defense (A&D) industries by identifying the main factors acting on innovation. Based on the model developed by [BAR 19] and [BAR 20], the research examines the dynamics of defense innovations incorporating components from Artificial Intelligence (AI) research. Considered as a General Purpose Technology (GPT; [BRE 96]), AI and its multiple applications have a significant impact on current and future military capabilities, and constitute relevant empirical material for understanding how innovation operates in the A&D industries.

New Space designates the emergence of an economic system in the space sector in which more and more private actors are called upon to participate. Science fiction has been offering representations of the companies of space capitalism for several years. This article studies some of them, such as the films Space Sweepers, Venom, or the Salvation series, and shows that the figure of the New Space billionaire arouses both fascination and rejection. If these fictions are inspired by real characters like Elon Musk, they also influence the general public and the actors of the space sector. These stories are at the center of strategic and soft power issues. It is suggested that Europe should equip itself with an effective and performative system for creating space science fiction stories in order to optimize the creativity of its future entrepreneurs. Indeed, these stories often offer a reflection on the ethics of space conquest and imagine technologies that could become major innovations in the future.

After a first long phase of governmental and scientific development, the space sector has been shaken up by new approaches during the 2000s, grouped under the generic term "New Space". Through the study of the evolution of this ecosystem, this academic work proposes a characterization of the New Space, considered as a set of ruptures composed of new entrants, new applications, new technologies, new regulations, new processes, and new modes of financing. But, beyond that, it emphasizes that these breakthroughs are fed by their interaction and interdependence. Finally, this richness of the New Space leads us to identify the numerous implications for the economic and management sciences, whether in terms of research programs or teaching.

The proliferation of patent litigation is indicative of the tension that exists between, on the one hand, the need to ensure interoperability and compatibility between a product’s components and, on the other, respect for intellectual property (IP) rights. In this article, we show that this tension is not new. Patent "wars" have historically been associated with breakthrough innovations, and reflect the growing importance of business models based on the valorisation of IP. While recognizing the sometimes deleterious effects of the litigation dynamic, litigation can be seen as a means of ex-post adjusting the scope of rights conferred by IP.

Despite their strengths, SMEs appear to have an insufficiently exploited potential for innovation. This is especially true in times of crisis. In a context characterised by three sources of destabilisation – economy of platform, the COVID-19 health crisis and market tensions – this article aims to suggest ways of boosting the innovation capacity of SMEs. After recalling the main obstacles of SMEs in terms of innovation – which are mainly due to limited access to resources –, and their main strength – which is mainly due to their organisational structure –, we consider how these changes challenge the capacity of SMEs to innovate. The resulting management and research issues lead us to shift the cursor from the SME’s manager to its teams and from outside collaborative innovation to inside collaborative innovation.

This multi-case study analyzes the role of organizational factors influencing Industry 5.0 resilience during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic in France. McKinsey’s 7S framework is used to understand how eight French Small and Medium Businesses belonging to the “Industrie du Futur” alliance adapted their strategy, structure, systems, skills, staff, shared values and management style while relying on their shared values to develop organizational agility and resilience. Our findings confirm that, even if technology systems were a key component of their response to the Covid-19 situation, human elements also played a central role in their ability to cope with the crisis. Our research also shed light on the importance of stakeholder networks in an organization’s ability to adapt and prosper during crises. The resulting framework could help companies to develop a human-centric approach to agility and resilience.

The aim of this article is to discuss the potential of the eco-innovative milieu for understanding the dynamics of sustainable local innovation. This approach is mainly based on the European theory of innovative milieus but seeks to integrate the sustainability dimension in the analysis of territorial innovation networks. We consider that the industrial symbioses, in which a collective of territorial actors are linked by relations of valorization of material and waste flows, can take the form of an eco-innovative milieu. These relationships can be at the origin of the emergence of new dynamics of innovation through the collective learning that results from the common management of resources in the territory (adoption of new eco-responsible practices, development of new sustainable technologies, reinforcement of communication and exchange of knowledge around these new practices...). We illustrate our reasoning with an example of application to the industrial territory of Dunkirk, France.

Codesign, or the involvement of target users in the design of a product or service, is promising but does not guarantee the achievement of objectives. Drawing on the latest work from the course of action [THE 15], we examined the experience of three people who participated in codesign sessions in cyberhealth. Our analysis resulted in maps of these individuals’ experiences, which visually represent the dynamics of their experience and highlight what was significant from their point of view. Our results suggest that participants were strongly mobilized by the reinterpretation of elements they believed were shared in their communities. They were concerned with systemic issues that, although complementary, questioned the solution proposed for the cogesign project. Our results lead us to propose three avenues to explore to optimize the codesign process.

Design Thinking (DT) is a problem-solving approach based on a collaborative process involving end-user feedback. This process consists of different steps with different iterations and changes over time. However, DT is still a linear method, which takes time to implement a solution and does not deal with the work organization within the team. To address the limitations of DT and to reduce the development time, this paper proposes the integration of agile method into journey map, which is one of DT tools used to analyze the user needs. The proposed approach was called Agile Design Thinking (ADT). The results show that journey map permits an agile management approach in DT. This integration ensures the user participation and enables an effective interaction between the user and the team, a rapid implementation of concrete solutions, and a fast reaction to the user appreciation. A case study was conducted on the well-being of elders at home to illustrate the implementation of the proposed ADT. This study was successfully carried out by students of IDEAS (Innovation et Design EvAlués par les uSages) master’s degree at the ENSGSI (Ecole Nationale Supérieure en Génie des Systèmes et de l’Innovation) engineering school.

Designing user-friendly products requires methodological skills but also an empathetic and collaborative approach towards the user. A wide variety of tools from many disciplinary fields are traditionally used in design thinking or user-centred design, which sometimes makes it difficult to choose and train in these tools. Within the framework of our research and educational activities, we have proposed a tool-based approach to guide the engineering student towards a better consideration of the user when designing a new product. The tool-based approach has been used for several semesters and has been evaluated by students. The results highlight the usefulness of the tools and the approach as well as the support it provides for taking the user into account, adopting an empathic approach and multidisciplinary work. The results also highlight a difference in appropriation according to the profiles of engineering students. These results allow us to conclude on the relevance of the P&P approach from a pedagogical point of view and on ways of improving the approach.