'Developing a usage network: combining business and non business resources to implement innovation'

International audience; This paper explores the roles of actors in combining resources to develop an innovation network supporting the actual use of AutomatedExternal Defibrillators –AEDs- by end citizens in France. While there is growing attention devoted to innovation networksand recognition of the importance of adopting a users’ perspective to analyze innovation ventures, the role of actors in the developmentof resource combinations as complex solutions has been acknowledged as requiring more empirical research.This paper contributes to better understanding how technical innovations can be embedded in a using setting through interaction anddevelopment of new resource combinations in networks with a focus on the implementation stage of innovation. The paper shedsthe light on new perspectives related to the configuration of innovation networks in terms of structure, coordination mechanisms andresource constellations. It suggests enlarging the perspective to a usage point of view to refer to the actual practices of appropriation(or lack of appropriation) of the innovation and to highlight the role of other value partners in this process (non users). It introducesthe concept of “Usage Network” to reflect a larger perspective than the concept of users’ network. Firstly, beyond users, the UsageNetwork integrates a plurality of actors such as public institutions, sponsors, associations and opinion leaders coming from differentbusiness and non business arenas (public, private, individuals/professionals, experts/lay citizens…) having idiosyncratic resourcesenabling them to relate and interact with users. Secondly, the paper shows how the transformation of the original innovative productand its combination with the resources from those various actors take form into additional solutions, enriching it and facilitating itsdiffusion and adoption.The paper also provides an original insight on the coordination mechanisms of such Usage Network carried out by boundary actorswhich are able to create links between the AED supplier and their own network. These boundary actors coordinate the activities ofits various members in their effort at combining their resources with those of the supplier: they act as “lead-value creating partners”for the supplier. The paper also highlights the variety of resource combinations required to develop the final solution both withintype and across types and confirmed the richness of mixed combinations in terms of value creation. This richness also comes fromthe plurality of the actors holding them.