Vol 3 - Issue 1

Technology and Innovation

List of Articles

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the articulation of the various contributions to this special issue
around the theme of the links between system analysis and innovative start-ups, VSEs and SMEs. The common points
between the different points of view are the purpose of managing uncertainty and complexity and the systemic approach
that meets this goal and that is illustrated by a knowledge system, a values system, a learning system, a systemic
problem solving methodology, contributing to the management of complexity.

How can start-ups benefit from good business innovation practices while enforcing the link between
invention, innovation and intellectual property (IP) in order to contribute to this vital discussion for the survival of our
industries? Some experts of the association TRIZ France have drawn from their practical experiences to present a path to
illustrate the methodological and practical contributions of the Theory for inventive problem solving (TRIZ). This illustration
highlights a specific focus on businesses where the "start-up spirit" facilitates ideation and accelerates the production of
innovative products and services.

The existing tension between increasingly sophisticated innovations in a complex world and the pursuit of
short term profit leads to a focus on economical assessment of an innovative project. However, values other than money,
such as knowledge, trust and alignment are generated by an innovative product or process; they have to be considered
as outputs instead of potential advantages, and one has to build pluridimensional business models including nonmeasurable
parameters. These non-assessable values can eventually change into economical values, moreover, they
are essential, as much as economical values, in transforming the innovation project into a sustainable, long-lasting
success. Last but not least, hidden costs caused by the relational perturbance between stakeholders due to innovation
can be integrated in the process. Intellectual property should then evolve and integrate business model invention and
technological invention.

The course of operations in a company is increasingly disrupted by unpredictable elements experienced in
their internal or external environment. A response to this situation may be based on the dynamics of systems. The latter,
initially conceived to provide a method of analysis of management processes, has flourished especially in fields other than
industrial management: analysis of urban systems, world models, American economy models… This paper shows that,
on the sidelines of this academic boom, the reactivation of the initial spirit inspired by cybernetics has helped to stimulate
the modeling of a chain of industrial activity, based on the description and exploration of the dynamic properties of its
models. Thanks to the realistic representation of the latter in terms of temporal dynamic flows irrigating an industrial
environment considered as a dynamic non-linear system reacting to randomized parameterized perturbations, the
simulation described is a powerful means of decisional support, both operational (in the short-term view) and strategic (in
the long-term view).

This article examines the widening gap between the rapid evolution of the needs of organizations for
creative collaborators with a strong capacity for innovation and the slow evolution of practices in the world of education.
Many causes explain these changes, as they relate to the context, the rapid evolution of economic logic, the impact of
sociodemographic, societal, educational changes or merely behavioral changes on the part of students. To bridge this
gap, the article explores the possibilities offered by active pedagogy, in particular through project-based learning: the
theoretical foundations of these active methods are described first. The article then questions the methodological
principles and the purposes of this change of didactic paradigm, before giving an illustration about the field via the
empirical study of three cases of application, of which the lessons learned are detailed. Promising prospects are
presented, the achievement of which will remain dependent on the support and commitment of the leaders of educational
institutions.

This paper is dedicated to a real-life example of organizational innovation in a knowledge-intensive
enterprise, considered as a business project. This project aims to provide a company with a global knowledge
management plan (KM) shared by all actors in order to achieve a corporate culture revolution by injecting "KM spirit" The
paper begins with a presentation of the French Institute for Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) and the KM issue
regarding knowledge about nuclear safety, following recent accidents in Japan, the United States, etc. The different
conditions for success are presented (structured and proven methodology of knowledge management, project
management as an industrial program, commitment of the main actors in a business project). The implementation of the
KM plan shows the results already obtained and the prospects suggest how to extend the application of this KM plan to
the stimulation of innovation within the company.

This article is interested in the evolution of forms of employment and organizations as hybridization
employment and entrepreneurship (or employment and freelancing). Through this exploratory research, we wish to share
our first grounded reports on this reflection. Our preliminary results are based on fieldwork carried out between November
2014 and November 2016 by the network RGCS (Research Group on Collaborative Spaces) and in particular on: (1)
some descriptive statistics stemming from the online investigation led in 2016 on the transformations of work and its
spaces; (2) empirical observations based on data collected during the organization of 52 events (workshops, seminars,
etc.) in 7 countries and 82 visits of third-places and other collaborative spaces realized in about ten countries. Having
replaced in a historical perspective the evolution of work and the forms of employment and having clarified the adopted
methodology, we present our reports by distinguishing the individual level of the new working practices of the
organizational level. In regards to the individual dimension, we are interested in the forms of employmententrepreneurship
hybridization that represent the case of slashers and alternated entrepreneurship. In regards to the
organizational dimension, we underline the increasing hybridization between employees and entrepreneurs (or
freelancers) within certain types of communities and modes of governance mixing employees, freelancers, and
entrepreneurs (excubation, transition, open innovation, new forms of community management) or still in relation with
collaborative social movements (more and more imported in an organizational frame).