Open Innovation

4Topography: the Characteristics of a Structure

In Chapter 2 of this book, I suggested that we assimilate CI, a form of OI, to an MI. We were able to establish together that the fundamentals of MI – “novelty”, “operationality”, “intentionality” – could be applied to OI and thus to CI. These can be understood as three characteristics of a CI. However, I also explained that managerial innovation and open innovation relate to the concept of process. This process is at the same time structural and social.

Now, is it enough to leave things there on the characteristics of CI? These fundamentals do not encapsulate, strictly speaking, the idea of a social-organizational process of institutionalization, that is, of acceptance of the structure in the general organization of the company. In fact, how do “novelty”, “operationality” and “intentionality” relate to these social and organizational dimensions? Furthermore, could everything that is new, operational and intentional be considered as CIs? This is obviously false. It thus seemed more than necessary to me to go further and to seek to specify a little further the characteristics of CI, to even go as far as to qualify these characteristics precisely, based on my numerous observations.

In fact, the analysis in the cases presented subsequently in this work as well as many discussions over time have allowed me, during my four years of research, to identify for CIs what the literature refers to as structural characteristics. This is an ...