Frugal Innovation and Innovative Creation

3Communitization of Technological Innovation: The Value and the Symbolic

The FabLab’s approach to innovation, in itself and/or within the NoF, is a new medium whose strength lies both in the technological tools mobilized and in the organization. Moreover, the inter-organizational space of companies where innovations are developed is crossed by communities, especially innovative and/or virtual communities (upstream for design and/or downstream for the brand or use). The mobilization of ICT and DT follows the development of innovative communities that are often protean and have heterogeneous actors. The active role of innovation communities will not be examined here on a purely geographical basis nor by the formal-informal articulation, or even by the trajectories of actions (which may eventually close in on themselves), but rather via the upheaval induced by the ICT and DT couple in the innovation process. The issue is the analysis of a shift from the organizational and managerial to the virtual and, above all, increasingly, a shift (including in value) from the concrete to the symbolic¹.

Three distinct and complementary main orientations of work are proposed in the literature articulating virtual and symbolic:

• the first focuses on the link between virtual organization and trust (Handy 1995) with its symbolic consequences (but if, indeed, trust between community members is necessary for coordination, as well as for open collaborative interactions around the design and diffusion ...