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This paper explores the question of the design activity at the shop floor level. The design activity has been confined for a large part in the design and the methods office. However, a certain form of design adapted to the factory remains. It is necessary to solve the problems which appear during the manufacturing process and to improve the productivity. However another form of design can emerge; it has a stronger impact on the factory, since the rules of the manufacturing system are modified under its effect. The paper studies 21 cases of design in the Airbus factory at Saint-Nazaire. It shows that the design activity does exist at the shop floor level. It characterizes this activity distinguishing two types of design which can co-exist in a factory. It shows that the type of results reached is not the same according to the type of design implemented.

The literature on design distinguishes between exploration-based experimentation and validation-based experimentation. This typology relies on an assumption that exploration and validation cannot and should not be performed simultaneously in the same experimentation. By contrast, some practitioners, such as les Sismo, propose that proof of concept might combine these two logics. This raises the question of what design logic might enable this type of combination of exploration and validation. We first use design theory to build an experimentation design framework. This framework highlights a typology of proof logics in experimentation related to proof of the known and proof of the unknown. Second, we show that these proof models are supported by les Sismo's cases and describe a diversity of arrangements of exploration and validation mechanisms: sequential, parallel, and combinational. Through the formalisation of proof of concept as a double proof (proof of the known and proof of the unknown), we show that proof of concept can be more than a tool for the go/no-go decision by gradually validating propositions, questioning the relevance of propositions, and discovering new propositions to be investigated and tested.

For the past 5 years, more and more established technological firms have structured domain of expertise dedicated to breakthrough innovation management, in order to foster their innovative capabilities. Our paper studies how such expertise may be organised to identify and exploit more effectively new design paths. Our case study is based on the Renault's experts who demonstrate how the design theories could support the firm's innovation capabilities through an exploration partnership. The conclusion presents new co-exploration models and proposes organisations of the expert's activities.

Cet article rend compte d’une recherche-intervention menée autour de la gestion d’un bien commun : une race locale au Pays basque. Pour dépasser les crises de la coopération entre les acteurs menaçant ce bien commun, une démarche de conception innovante s’appuyant sur la méthode KCP (Knowledge, Concept, Proposals) a été mise en place. Cette méthode, conçue dans le domaine des entreprises, a nécessité des adaptations pour la rendre opérationnelle dans le cas d’une situation distribuée sur un territoire. La démarche a produit trois principaux résultats : la conception d’innovations techniques et organisationnelles, la redéfinition d’un objectif commun permettant l’action collective, la création de capacités d’innovation durables. Notre analyse offre des clés opérationnelles pour la mise en œuvre de démarches de conception innovante dans le cas de situations distribuées, enjeu des innovations dans les agroécosystèmes., This article reports an intervention research project on the management and breeding of a local dairy sheep breed in the French basque Country, the Manech Tête Noire. The collective management of this breed and long-term sustainability of this biological resource considered as a “common good” have been threatened by several cooperation crises. To overcome them an innovative participative approach was designed based on the KCP method (Knowledge – Concept – Proposals, Elmquist & Segrestin, 2009). From March to October 2012, we facilitated KCP workshops which brought together local stakeholders and the breed users in order to work out innovative technical and organizational schemes to redesign the breeding program and management system of the breed. This method, initially developed in business and industries, required adaptations so as to be operational in a territorial and distributed context. This approach produced three main results: the design of technical and organizational innovations, the redefining of a common objective for collective action, and the creation of sustainable capacities for innovation. Our analysis of this intervention research based on KCP methods provides useful tools for researchers and stakeholders involved in design processes for the management of common goods in the case of distributed situations of collective action.

C-K theory has been developed by Armand Hatchuel and Benoit Weil and then by other researchers since 1990s. In this paper we show that its very abstract nature and its high degree of universality actually supported a large variety of industrial applications. We distinguish three types of applications: 1) C-K theory provides a new language, that supports new analysis and descriptive capacity and new teachable individual models of thoughts; 2) C-K theory provides a very general framework to better characterize the validity domain and the performance conditions of existing methods, leading to potential improvement of these methods ; 3) C-K theory is the conceptual model at the root of new design methods that are today largely used in the industry.

International audience; In several industries, competitive and societal factors have highlighted the need for incubating dedicated radical innovation (RI) capabilities. Traditional approaches to RI strategies have often emphasised either organisational or cognitive aspects, but tend to overlook how these dimensions interact within the organisation. This paper tackles the issue of these interplays by investigating the effects of a creativity-based collaborative method, the KCP Workshops, on the RI capability of a firm. We present an in-depth case study of a leading aeronautics firm that adopted the method to face its RI challenges. While being consistent with prior research and underscoring the impact of organisational settings on creative cognitive processes, our analysis empirically demonstrates a triple capability developed through the KCP Workshops: (1) collectively building a conceivable RI strategy, (2) deploying a monitoring process adapted to the exploration of cognitive breakthroughs, (3) collectively building “emerging creative organisations” at the ecosystem level to support the development of RI strategy. Beyond the performance of the RI capability for commercial applications, these findings underline how the collective design of an RI strategy also involves players in the exploration and establishment of organisational innovations.

C-K theory has been developed by Armand Hatchuel and Benoit Weil and then by other researchers since 1990s. In this chapter, we show that its very abstract nature and its high degree of universality actually supported a large variety of industrial applications. We distinguish three types of applications: (1) C-K theory provides a new language, that supports new analysis and descriptive capacity and new teachable individual models of thoughts; (2) C-K theory provides a very general framework to better characterize the validity domain and the performance conditions of existing methods, leading to potential improvement of these methods; (3) C-K theory is the conceptual model at the root of new design methods that are today largely used in the industry.

International audience; In competitive industries, intensive innovation is a recognized necessity (Wheelwright and Clark, 1992; Le Masson et al., 2010). One success factor of breakthrough R&D projects lies in the knowledge articulation between innovation definition phases, composed of fuzzy front-end (FFE) and innovative new product development (NPD) stages (Koen et al, 2002; Cooper et al, 2001), and industrial development processes. Then, central issue for innovation projectsmanagers becomes internal R&D stakeholders’ management (Elias et al., 2002) and sustainable learning dynamics across the two parts of the organization (O’Connor, 2008). Our paper fits into this research gap for local breakthrough R&D in the dominant design. We discuss the role of technical expertise level of NDP stakeholders involved in early stages of innovative projects. The research mobilized two longitudinal studies (Yin, 1989) carried out with a global car manufacturer through collaborative management research (Radaelli et al., 2012) since 2005, one focusing on the FFE management, while the other was devoted to learning dynamics of engineering development departments. A cartography of the internal network of breakthrough R&D (Mitchell et al, 1997) underlined a stable organizational network across projects. Nevertheless, a quantitative analysis of accounting data on 8 projects highlights important dynamics of involvement or dis-engagement within the network. The analysis showed that the accounting reporting at the portfolio level used to hide to top-managers the heterogeneity and depth of resources dynamics at the project level. The impacts of local breakthrough R&D on the engineering development organization was similar to waves: some stakeholders, who played roles of experts, spokespersons or innovation design strategists, were able to involve quickly the individuals to maintain the project progress, sometime generating an over-commitment on innovation projects. At the opposite, a lack of trust of the design partners generated withdrawal of resources that needed a strong stakeholder management to be prevented.

International audience; Research questionThe study investigates the micro-processes of concept generation at ideation stages, on the case of innovation-oriented discussions within online communities of employees.Literature review and research positioningPrevious research has already described a variety of approaches and techniques to support collaborative generation of a large number of ideas (Garfield, 2001; Knoll and Horton, 2011; Harvey, 2014). This literature states the importance and interdependence of a cognitive process within individual group members and a social process as group members interact (Knoll and Horton, 2011). Existing innovation studies show that development of collaborative Web platforms facilitates social interaction, enabling different departments to gather knowledge and engage in idea generation (Michaelides et al. 2013). Xiaomi et al. (2013) investigate the role of knowledge management to support Collaborative Innovation Community Capacity Building (CICCB) in order to enhance the effectiveness of innovation within the online community of employees.However, there has been little research that analyzes the micro-process of collaborative concept generation. Taura and Nagai (2012) highlight the concept generation process to be a synthetic one, which is investigated through analogy, blending and integration by thematic relation as a research method (Taura and Nagai, 2012). We propose to empirically investigate this issue in the context of innovation-oriented online discussions. Furthermore, we aim to analyze which sequences of cognitive entities (i.e. groups of words corresponding to elementary ideas) explain the evolution of interactions between the participants and how initial ideas are, successfully or not, developed into concepts.Methodology and empirical materialThis paper focuses on the nature and dynamics of online discussions at the ideation stage in a virtual idea generation environment. In order to empirically study the micro-processes of concept generation, an action research method (Coughlan & Coghlan, 2002) was employed in this research: through collaboration with a consulting firm, the authors conducted and facilitated four online debates within an international group. The innovation-oriented online discussions were launched in the context of an online community of employees to allow its members to go beyond daily discussions and further explore one trend or opportunity for the group. Our role was to mobilize and stimulate collaborative innovation community capacity (Xiaomi et al, 2013) and creativity of community members during a whole week, in order to support the community ability to generate innovative concepts and ideas for the given topic. To obtain more detailed view of the observed discussions, every interaction and the content of every message posted in the debate were categorized and deeply analyzed through combination of Pena-Schaff and Nicholl’s analytical framework (Pena-Shaff & Nicholls, 2004) and Taura and Nagai design theory framework (Taura and Nagai, 2012)Findings and managerial implicationsWe present three sets of results: firstly, we describe the general dynamics of an online innovation-oriented conversation through its main characteristics (the number of participants, the nature of interactions, the response-time between messages and topics discussed); secondly, we describe the micro-processes of concept generation by deeply analyzing the content of the subsets of messages that contributed to generation. We further analyze the innovative potential of generated concepts for the international group; finally, we propose a framework of participatory roles by correlating the nature of interventions to specific cognitive entities. While limited, this study aims to help researchers and practitioners to better understand the process of concept generation in an online environment and thus, provide the archetypes defined by the patterns of analyzed interactions.

International audience; The aim of this paper is to shed light on an innovative strategy for the design of generic technologies (GTs). Research on radical innovation management, while recognizing the success of GTs, generally describes their design according to evolutionary strategies featuring multiple and uncertain trials, which would finally result in the discovery of common features between multiple applications. Building on a case study conducted on two technological development programs at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), we exhibit an anomaly to this rarely discussed idea: we describe an alternative strategy that consists in intentionally designing common features that bridge the gap between a priori heterogeneous applications and a priori heterogeneous technologies. This anomaly brings three main results: 1) The usual trial-and-learning strategy is not necessarily the only strategy to design a GT; 2) beyond technological breakthrough, the value of GTs also relies on the capacity to reuse and connect existing technologies; 3) the design of GT might require sophisticated organizational patterns to be able to involve multiple technology suppliers and applications' providers.

International audience; Facing the necessity to increase their innovation capabilities in a more and more holistic context, companies are creating new collaborative organizations aiming to collectively explore potential radical innovation fields. In this paper, we propose to study the nature of these new collectives for innovation through two managerial patterns: objects of collaboration and organizational mechanisms of coordination. Based on longitudinal collaborative research with the French carmaker Renault, the research analyses the case of the Renault Innovation Community, which involved members in original collaboration features to stimulate the industrial ecosystem of mobility and to support the potential emergence of new ecosystems. The main results of the empirical research underlined that: (1) objects of collaboration surpassed the detection of societal expectations to focus on sociotechnical imaginaries stimulation and dissemination; and (2) organizational mechanisms of collaboration exceed open innovation logics to focus on the collective building of favorable emergence conditions for new industrial ecosystems.

International audience; In competitive industries, intensive and repeated innovation is a recognized necessity (Wheelwright and Clark, 1992; Le Masson et al., 2010). Literature on innovation (Utterback, 1994; Henderson & Clark, 1990) distinguishes Dominant Design revisions (radical innovations) from local improvements (incremental innovations). Regarding the innovation process management, one success factor lies in the knowledge articulation between front end and new product development (NPD) stages (Koen et al, 2002; Cooper et al, 2001). Then, central issue becomes NPD stakeholders' management (Elias et al., 2002) and their ability to establish perennial learning dynamics across the two parts of the organization (O'Connor, 2008). Our paper fits into this research field for local innovations on the dominant design. We discuss the role of technical expertise level of NDP stakeholders involved in early stages. The research mobilized two longitudinal studies (Yin, 1989) carried out with a global car manufacturer since 2005, one focusing on the innovation management process and organization, while the other was devoted to learning dynamics of engineering development departments. Leading as collaborative management research (Hatchuel and David, 2007), analyses were enhanced through deep interviews with project managers, technical experts and decision-makers. Analyzing local innovation impacts, we find that effect of breakthrough innovation projects on NPD organization was similar to waves: close expertise are quickly and strongly affected while distant expertise are more weakly and later affected. Our research material shows that tracking of key stakeholders is based on functional division of the organization whereas force and temporality of the innovation impact could potentially follow other propagation logic. Stakeholders identified by the organization as key actors could be in reality weakly impacted but we observed they were able to convey useful knowledge to heavily affected actors inside their organization when they had a high level of technical expertise of the dominant design. Expertise robustness plays a screen role that returns, as an amplified echo, the innovation low impact on their technical perimeter toward those heavily impacted.

International audience; Long-term success of firms depends on the efficiency of their management of R&D projects. However, there is a gap between standard economic and strategic indicators and the high uncertainty, complexity of commitments, and organizational issues that can be observed in the more innovative R&D projects. This paper presents the results of an eighteen-month study in the R&D departments of Renault SAS, which aimed to develop a new monitoring approach of R&D projects. In partnership with R&D teams and managers, a first empirical research on a sample of 64 projects assessed a series of hypothesis about what could be an appropriate monitoring for highly innovative projects. Then, a new monitoring system was built, based on a triangular approach of the project status: economic performance (value and reliability of the value), strategic potential indicators, organizational impact and resource assessment. This paper describes this model and associated tools, as well as the research methodology used to implement them. This monitoring system is now used routinely in the company.