Collective Innovation Processes

IntroductionCollectives of Innovation and Collective Innovation

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 ...