Vol 3 - Issue 2

Technology and Innovation

List of Articles

The entrepreneur and the enterprise, through multiple partnerships, are at the center of a network made up of a collective of actors who mobilize various productive capacities (material and cognitive). In this case, using their functions, the enterprise and the entrepreneur create collective innovation, but also promote the emergence of collective innovations: clusters, coworking spaces, FabLabs, Living Labs, etc. The “innovative milieu” promotes the development of innovation networks. It emerges in economies where knowledge (and therefore informational, scientific, technical, industrial and financial) resources and technological learning capabilities are quantitatively and qualitatively important. Thus, innovation can be presented as a collective adventure.

The purpose of this article is to introduce the concept of Enterprise knowledge capital, which explores how the enterprise combines and uses resources in the form of knowledge and information. It also facilitates the identification of internal and external stakeholders involved in the innovation process. Its study reveals the stakes related to its accumulation, use and appropriation. The first part of this paper gives a synthetic definition of knowledge capital, while linking it to current and related concepts. The second part presents its roles in the production process and the particular functions of information in this dynamic. In today’s digital enterprise and industry 4.0, the collection, processing and use of information to enrich knowledge capital and accelerate innovation processes, while reducing costs, are key elements for enhancing competitiveness.

The economic theory of the entrepreneur is based on three key-words: uncertainty, risk and innovation. The theory was developed in the 18th century with Cantillon who defined the entrepreneur as a risk taker and the engine of economic evolution. During the 19th and 20th centuries, Say and Schumpeter contributed to innovation. Thereafter the Austria School of thought analyzed the discovery process of entrepreneurial opportunities, underlining the key role of social relationship networks reducing the market uncertainty. The concept of the resource potential of the innovative entrepreneur makes the synthesis of these different theories show on the one hand that the entrepreneur is a socialized economic agent, and on the other hand that the entrepreneur owns three kind of resources that they capitalize and enhance in order to develop their project in a context of uncertainty.

Innovate, Innovate, Innovate! Desire for some, obligation of survival for others. The result is a proliferation of proposals aimed at businesses and local authorities in the territories to make them more creative and innovative. Commonly called "innovation spaces", these places (Fab labs, Living Labs, Design Factories, co-working spaces, etc.) encourage the meeting of different stakeholders in order to develop a relational framework of type P-P-P (Public-Private-Population). Innovation catalysts, chameleon spaces, these can take many forms depending on the innovation ecosystem to which they must contribute. However, having physical space is not enough to ensure their durability. This paper is intended as a plea not to do things upside down and fight against the "shoe-horn" or "push architecture" method: physical space is not the aim but a means to improve projects and therefore innovation. Let’s create the dynamics before we try to design/reconfigure the places!

Research on regional innovation systems has highlighted the crucial role of territory and the effects of proximity in the development of cooperative relations between actors. In this article we develop a critical analysis of clusters and similar notions and we discuss the role of geographical proximity. The importance of distant relationships enabled by increasing mobility and information technology are explored. We analyze how a combination of different forms of proximity (geographic, organized, relational, cognitive and social) potentially foster learning and networking. This in turn leads to innovation inscribed in and revealed at the territory level.

Industrial ecology includes a set of practices aimed at reducing polluting industrial effluents and promotes the transition of the industrial system towards a viable and sustainable one. This notion is usually studied in terms of its functioning (organization of input and output flows, of cooperation between enterprises, etc.) and the environmental impacts that such an industrial organization entails. Based on the concepts of related variety and smart specialization, we approach this topic from a different angle, that is, to study its potential in terms of territorial economic development. This
involves analyzing how industrial ecology, through the creation of an "eco-innovative" milieu [KAS, 17] can change the economic trajectory of a territory toward “smart” diversification.

Innovation and learning capacities are crucial to the performance of current economies. Because the economy is knowledge-based, innovation is more linked to the dissemination of knowledge than to the creation of new knowledge. The performance of national innovation systems is linked to the construction of innovation capacities, which themselves create interactive dynamics. Our article proposes revisiting the link between institutions and innovation systems through innovation capabilities approach. The value of our contribution is to conceptualize the importance of capacity building within national innovation systems. While capacities are the prerequisite for the formation of national innovation systems, they must above all be interpreted in a broad sense in order to be able to adopt an orientation that is both linked to economic growth but above all to economic development.