In the context of global competition based on innovation, business sectors and the companies that they include develop according to the interplay of opposite forces. On the one hand, gains in efficiency as well as in economies of scale and scope lead to an increase in the size of companies and the creation of oligopolistic market structures, dominated by firms focusing on technological and financial power. On the other hand, competition, the diffusion of new ways of producing, organizing the innovation process, marketing or consuming, as well as public policies, favor the creation of new actors, upsetting the existing rules. These changes, which affect both sides of the market, contribute to the transformation of established structures and the institution of new entities and activities. Innovation is now central to the analysis linking market structures, the actors’ strategies and performances. However, innovation strategies refer to a broad environment that incorporates the market structure (the level of concentration of sellers and buyers, the degree of product differentiation, market entry conditions) and includes human, financial, material or immaterial resources that businesses can make use of to innovate and transform market structures with their strategies and performances. Institutional characteristics (laws, rules, norms, conventions) also help structure the framework within which companies act. Alteration of these structures may result from technological progress, the behaviors and strategies employed by companies, and the action of public policies on national, regional and even global levels. Studying market structures then becomes pertinent only if the analysis of innovation strategies is associated with the use of performance criteria beyond merely their economic aspect.

The innovation process is causally related to a problem – technological, economic or social – facing the market economy and consciously or unconsciously identified by its actors. Thus, innovation is related to finding the best solution to this problem. This implies the use of knowledge and information coming from practice, experience and science. Innovation itself is a collective, cumulative and historical process defined by the following seven main characteristics: (1) the effects of innovation are difficult to predict; (2) the scale of the dissemination of innovation is difficult to calculate; (3) innovative activities are asymmetrical and evolve at different paces over time; (4) learning, execution and diffusion time plays a major part in the innovative act; (5) the business environment affects the time, scale, nature and effects of innovation; (6) the implementation space, in other words, the geographic and communication distances, favor or, on the contrary, hinder access to the information and strategic knowledge of the innovation process and (7) innovations are interconnected; due to the risk associated with cost and time, innovation is at times a collective act and at other times – or simultaneously – the result of the collectivization of its inputs.

In new approaches to innovation, entrepreneurs and companies are understood in relation to their skills and their function in the creation of resources. Whether gradual or radical, innovation therefore becomes endogenous and it is incorporated in a complex process characterized by several types of feedback and interactions. An innovative organization is presented as a dynamic system that includes specific and diversified skills. An innovative agent (entrepreneur, company, group or, in general, organization), by acquiring, combining and making use of these skills, can create technological resources and develop its relationship with its environment. This accounts for the importance of managing design, application and development in the implementation of an innovation process. An innovation system mobilizes a set of bodies of knowledge and skills resulting from learning processes and that are incorporated in its memory. These bodies of knowledge must be enriched to be developed by technological, organizational and business innovation. The survival of the system depends on its ability to innovate, which allows it to face external attacks, evolve and persist. External stimuli (competition, product substitutability, innovation policies, etc.) are generated by the economic environment and affect entrepreneurs and companies as a means of selection. Selection procedures are shaped by the business climate: the nature of the product market, availability of capital and work, innovation pace, effects of public policies, etc. Consequently, they can create alternatives to the way in which a given company (an organization or, more generally, a specific innovation system) works, manages and produces. The strategy of an innovative organization is therefore based on the three-“A” model: analyze one’s own strengths and weaknesses and those of the technological, economic and social environment in order to anticipate change and act to adapt to or, on the contrary, drive progress [BOU 13].

The methods employed for managing innovation have radically evolved in the last two decades. The progress observed in digital technologies and the increase in the pressure of competition have led companies to open up their research and development (R&D) activities, employing strategies that rely more and more on the combination of their internal capacities with a range of external resources [UZU 12].

Decision and power are the two key words in business management. The decision-making system of a company ensures the regulation of its activities. It is built on the game for power and control of its owners and contributes to the establishment of the decision-making authority of its “technostructure”. A company is forced to grow in size and strengthen its power on the market to avoid disappearing. In order to do so, it must reduce the uncertainty that characterizes how the market works by acquiring all means necessary to capture, sort, process and use the largest number of economic, technological, financial, business and political pieces of information. A more changeable environment is associated with a more rapid capital turnover, leading to a faster innovation pace and higher business risks. The constant expansion, integration and renewal of the market increases business and financial risks. Therefore, a company must invest in the creation of a partnership network and/or in the involvement with existing innovation networks to ward off these risks thanks to access to rare skills and knowledge, the profit made from intra-network externalities or closer relationships with its customers and providers.

The theoretical models that focus on opening the borders of a company include the open innovation paradigm, the user-led innovation theory, approaches to innovation such as the community of communities, or the approach involving business ecosystems and models. All of these approaches consider innovation as the result of the interaction and collaboration between organizations. They involve researching, selecting, combining and integrating a wide range of tangible and intangible resources, incorporated in different organizational and technological contexts and distributed within and beyond the borders of an organization. These interactive approaches to innovation involve the transformation of the processes and practices related to knowledge management implemented by innovative organizations. Thus, the distribution of knowledge associated with performing tasks that involve invention and innovation consequently develops the way in which knowledge is created, applied and put to work. Collective intelligence (multi-individual, multi-organizational) must outweigh singular intelligence (individual, mono-organizational).

A company “collectivizes” innovation processes by spreading out as a network and simultaneously setting up networks to share the costs and controlling when new technologies and production methods, as well as new products and marketing methods, are introduced internally and on the market. In any case, an outline based on a collective effort is shaped by the companies’ decision to build up “knowledge capital” (and integrate it in its own assets, both tangible and intangible, material and immaterial, productive and financial) in order to guarantee access to and the creation of new resources necessary for continuous innovation (see Blandine Laperche’s chapter in this book (Chapter 1) and [LAP 17]). Large companies appropriate the useful scientific and technological information available in their environment to incorporate it in their own bodies of knowledge. The production of knowledge and innovation are therefore considered as collective processes built within complex networks of interorganizational cooperation.

For several years, the networking of individuals and organizations, the multiplication of data and format dematerialization have brought about a real change in human activities, leading us to reconsider uses and to satisfy them in different ways. All these changes also lead us to rethink companies and their business models. The tension between increasingly more sophisticated innovations in a complex world and short-term profit motives draws attention to the economic assessment of an innovative project. However, other values such as knowledge, trust and achievement are generated by the collective work mobilized by not only a company or business networks, but also innovative products or processes, which must be regarded as outputs in their own right rather than as positive consequences, and, on this basis, we should build multidimensional business models that include unmeasurable parameters. Non-economic values, resulting in most cases from the collectivization of innovation processes, may over time turn into economic values. Moreover, they are as indispensable as economic flows for transforming an innovation project into a long-term success. Finally, they make it possible to integrate in the process the issue of the hidden costs caused by the fact that innovation negatively affects relationships among the stakeholders (see Edouard Le Maréchal’s chapter in this book (Chapter 2)).

These economic values, resulting from companies’ collective work and their creation of collectives of innovation, require the collective clusters to be somewhat stable over time in order to develop with the goal of making a profit. Immobility leads organizations to certain death, but excessive disruption also leads them to take some risks that may be fatal. Is it necessary to change constantly for everything to remain the same? Or is it necessary to keep what is essential in order to develop? The issue of innovation makes it possible to consider the change necessary for a company, the paradoxical tensions within the processes of exploration required for development (searching for new investment and profit opportunities) and the capitalization processes based on invariants, which represent the DNA of the company (see Sophie Mignon’s chapter in this book (Chapter 3)), to remain stable over time. A company must accumulate knowledge capital (instead of dispersed capital) to ensure constant innovation processes.

The creation of collectives of functions related to innovation (through work, research institutions and companies) and the underlying collectivization of the processes producing “new productive combinations” can also apply to innovating entrepreneurs. Mythical figures in the economic thought of capitalism, entrepreneurs play a key role in systemic evolution: they open new markets and update the existing ones. As the product of organizations, an entrepreneur mobilizes the resources with which these organizations provide him; he combines them in different ways and offers the economy new growth benchmarks.

Since the beginning of the 1980s, entrepreneurs have become a topical issue. The direct support given to new entrepreneurs at the beginning of this period has been replaced by policies that are decidedly more liberal and aimed at creating institutional conditions favorable for the creation of companies. In order to understand modern entrepreneurs, we have to consider the “entrepreneurial function”: entrepreneur = f (incertitude + risk + innovation + social capital + public policy). An entrepreneur, regardless of the merit we attribute to them, is created by their network. He or she creates his or her company and innovates by appropriating and developing a set of economic, financial and social resources. There is an “entrepreneurial milieu” that supports the project and enables the creation of the corresponding company. This environment includes the entrepreneur themselves, the organization, the relational context and time. Time explains why some entrepreneurs are more successful than others. Those who make it, arrive on time and not too early (to seize the opportunities at the right moment). The “milieu” provides information about the market conditions, the risks that should be taken and the production resources that should be combined. Information, network and innovation are situated at the center of the entrepreneurial function. An economy develops a dynamic industrial environment based on conventions and dynamic bonds that favor the emergence of new ideas and the sharing of resources (being cognitive, financial and social). Some of these resources are “useful” and “strategic” for carrying out the entrepreneurial project. They constitute the entrepreneur’s resource potential (see Sophie Boutillier’s chapter in this book (Chapter 4) and [BOU 16b]). An entrepreneur gains access to, sorts, appropriates, combines and mobilizes different types of information, bodies of knowledge, funding sources and social relationships that are necessary to reach his aims. He or she creates, through his or her function, a collective of innovation whose main goal is entrepreneurship.

On the contray, a type of effervescence – or enthusiasm – which stimulates all sides takes shape in the “entrepreneurial milieu”. If this “milieu” makes distance and time (as the source of transaction costs that, in most cases, cannot be reduced) disappear, as well as strengthens the relationships based on trust and mutual acknowledgment, then the creative innovation process turns into a collective innovation process. This is the case for “innovation spaces” (see the chapter by Laure Morel, Laurent Dupont and Marie-Reine Boudarel in this book (Chapter 5)) that take shape as coworking spaces, third places, Living Labs, Open Labs, incubators, accelerators, hothouses, FabLabs, Makerspaces, Tech Shops, Hackerspaces, Design Factories, etc. All these different places share means in a communal workspace, grouping producers, consumers and users to boost creativity, entrepreneurship and innovation. This collectivization of localized processes of innovation is supported by (1) the creation of innovation networks (collaborative digital manufacturing laboratories: FabLabs, Makerspaces, Tech Shops, Hackerspaces, etc. [MOR 16]); (2) creative groups aimed at innovating (third places, Living Labs, etc.) and (3) the networking and sharing of physical means commonly classed as “collaborative spaces”.

Sharing means and services aim to collectivize the “spirit of enterprise” and favor the emergence of innovations through the cross-fertilization of ideas and knowledge and the reduction of time and distance in the relationships among stakeholders (designers, users, producers and consumers). The goal of these spaces is to bring about creative environments that boost innovations, making it possible to transform a basic idea into an innovative product, to perfect it and to fashion it based on the evolution of the customers or the markets’ needs. Once again, the resource potential and knowledge capital of creative and entrepreneurial individuals develop through collaborations expected to take shape among the members of budding collectives and among the collectives themselves.

The main feature of these collaborative spaces is the spatial, organizational and cognitive closeness between the members of a given collective and among the collectives of innovation themselves. Spatial proximity is characterized by the shortening of the distances (and time) that physically separate the economic actors; this is the condition that allows the development of relationships of recognition and mutual acknowledgment among them. What defines organizational proximity is belonging to the same organization (company, R&D laboratory, university, a team within the same company or an administration unit, etc.), the same network (intraorganizational and/or interorganizational) or, more broadly, the same collective (of innovation). Cognitive proximity refers to the different actors’ adherence to the same way of conceiving innovation, the same paradigm (technological and/or organizational), the same routines, the same conventions, the same traditions, the same beliefs, the same internal codes, the same languages and/or the same learning, decision-making and management procedures. Thus, it is situated within the same organizations, networks and communities.

The density of close relationships between collectives of innovation, for its part, strengthens the ability of a local economy to generate small independent companies. The performances of the economy in question can improve thanks to an intensification of the activity of the entrepreneurial ecosystems present in the area [BOU 16a]. These ecosystems, through their ability to reinforce the innovation potential, can turn into “innovative milieus”. They situate business activities in a given territorial framework where networks of complex relationships, between competition and collaboration, take shape and give rise to the reconstitution of work collectives whose members may belong to different actors but whose economic objectives may be the same (e.g. creating the same value chain). The “productive alchemy” created between the innovative milieu on a territorial level (clusters, incubators, collaborative spaces, technopoles, etc.) and the close relationships that characterize it may bring about innovations. This innovative milieu is defined by a way of organizing production and creating new and specific productive combinations where close relationships contribute to the creation and flow/appropriation of a set of resources embodied in types of knowledge, capital, means of production, etc. The resulting “resource potential” is mobilized and developed by collectives of innovation, which, for their part, produce a network of externalities identified by new innovation and business collectives. Territories become the foundations and major actors for innovation and entrepreneurship thanks to their cultural heritage, expertise, skills, resources and the generic and especially the specific assets that they have been able to create and promote (see Corinne Tanguy’s chapter in this book (Chapter 6) and [TAN 17]).

To illustrate the force of collectives in the “innovative milieu” (logic of interaction and learning, articulation of proximity forms, agglomeration effects, innovation dynamics), let us consider the issue of “sustainable development”. Applied to the protection of the environment (less waste of energy and material through the implementation of short supply chains in inter-industrial exchanges [GAL 16]), this concept becomes meaningful in relation to the environmental constraints that offer new opportunities of producing new goods and services. In a given area, industrial symbiosis, defined as the concrete application of the concept of industrial ecology involving actors situated in a given geographical space, allows industrial ecology to become a catalyst for the development or redevelopment of an area to the extent that it can become a “sustainable” innovative milieu or an “eco-innovative milieu” (see Fedoua Kasmi’s chapter in this book (Chapter 7)). This happens by favoring the conglomeration of actors, which are scattered and yet generate eco-innovations (technological, organizational/institutional or business-related).

Industrial symbiosis may be an “eco-innovative milieu” to the extent that it is based on: (1) a collective of actors that relies on the establishment of eco-industrial collaborations (exchanges of materials and energy) and is characterized by its economic coherence and cohesiveness; (2) the ability to produce resources sustainably thanks to pooling and substitution flows; (3) a learning ability linked to the implementation of organizational and technological changes to face the complex enactment of industrial ecology measures; (4) a type of relational capital developed thanks to the creation of regionally differentiated dynamic networks (based on the relationships between matter and energy flows); (5) regulations that can devise specific norms and laws, founded on the knowledge of the actual matter, energy and issue flows as well as on a precise knowledge of the risks, stakes and challenges involved in the sustainable management of resources and (6) conventional collaborations that can not only build confidence through contracts and develop a clear type of communication and effective coordination, but also ensure the negotiation of conflicts among the actors.

The example of industrial ecology as a field where collectives of innovation take shape in a given geographical area should be considered alongside “responsible innovation”, which is becoming more and more significant. The goal of innovation must be placed in relation to perspectives involving sustainable development, taking into consideration environmental and social issues. The focus is also on “social desirability”, which makes managers and entrepreneurs face their societal responsibilities: they must willingly act in order to meet those objectives and values that are regarded as socially desirable. The behavior of companies must be in keeping with the values of society as a whole (it must consequently evolve) for innovation to become meaningful (see Leïla Temri’s chapter in this book (Chapter 8)). The implication of a group of stakeholders present as early as possible during the innovation process leads to the creation of tacit or explicit collectives, driving scientific research, which is the foundation for “new productive combinations”.

Therefore, collectives take shape by incorporating interactive dynamics among the actors governed by the same tacit and explicit rules that define competition and cooperation. The collaborations among the collectives’ members and between specific collectives will be all the more significant, as the legal and institutional framework related to the promotion of skills able to “produce” innovations is suitable and stable. This framework, created by a coherent set of coercive rules, procedures, lines of action and ways of controlling and monitoring the markets, is used to organize collectives of innovation by training human resources, raising awareness among both producers and consumers, guiding entrepreneurship and consumption patterns or strengthening the innovation capabilities of the national economy (see Vanessa Casadella and Dimitri Uzunidis’ chapter in this book (Chapter 9) and [CAS 15]).

Innovation results from a set of learning processes that start with problems to be solved and involve individuals, structures, methods and bodies of knowledge in precise relationships. We refer to innovation systems to define this set of processes designed for the emergence and dissemination of productive “new combinations” and their related new knowledge. Learning, defined as a process inherent in the creation, transfer, absorption and improvement of techniques and practices, is the cornerstone of innovation capabilities. The degree and speed of knowledge transfer allowed by technological capabilities rely on very heterogeneous infrastructural and institutional foundations, so that each country is ultimately characterized by its specific technological and innovation framework. Innovations do not spread with the same intensity and at the same level. Although industrialized countries benefit from rich interactive learning spaces, these same spaces are poor in developing countries. The weaker the collectives of innovation, the weaker the innovation capabilities (or potential) and the worse the national innovation system performs. On the contrary, a rich national innovation potential indicates that the innovation capabilities and collectives can sustain an efficient national innovation system.

Innovation involves a significant organizational effort, but it also results from the organization. Currently, the aforementioned organization of the innovation process is characterized by the significance of the strategies whereby the innovative and entrepreneurial act is collectivized: access, training, appropriation and dissemination of scientific, technological and business knowledge. Investing in the acquisition of production resources is less costly than investing in their creation. The collective return on capital may be high, whereas private profitability may become insufficient. The reason behind the fact that the social productivity of investing in innovation is higher than the productivity of individual capital (the company’s or the entrepreneur’s) lies in the increased number of factors that become involved when trying to achieve financial results. These factors (skills, abilities, finance, communication, needs and aspirations, etc.) of a collective type affect the trajectory of the marginal cost of a company or activity and, other things being equal, have an effect on the return of the capital invested. A company, in a system of actual or latent competition, must appropriate these factors or at least control their impact on its profitability, or even better make a profit (abundance of appropriable production resources, opening of new markets) from the non-market dynamics that generate and reproduce these factors. In relation to how production is currently socialized, the innovative act involves creating new combinations of codified knowledge, disseminating these bodies of knowledge, as well as appropriating and integrating them in a broader combination of productive resources.

Entrepreneurs and companies, through several partnerships, are situated at the center of a network that includes a collective of actors mobilizing different types of productive capacity (material and cognitive). However, collectivizing innovation processes only become profitable when the actors ensure a certain organizational stability so that seizing opportunities can lead to growth. Companies and entrepreneurs, through their functions, not only create collectives of innovation, but also favor the emergence of collective innovations: clusters, co-working spaces, FabLabs, Living Labs, etc. The “innovative milieu” favors the development of innovation networks. It emerges in those economies where knowledge resources (and consequently information, scientific, technological, industrial and financial resources) and technological learning abilities are significant enough for innovation to appear as a collective adventure. On the contrary, under the pressure of “demand” and, even more importantly, the aspirations of civil society, for example, in relation to health, environmental protection, education, etc., the collectivization of innovation processes also incorporates in their spaces consumers or, more generally, citizens. Therefore, “responsible innovation” results from the deep socialization of the activity of both companies and entrepreneurs.

Introduction written by Dimitri UZUNIDIS.