Pour une prise en compte géographique de la commande publique dans l’analyse des dynamiques d’innovation territoriale

In geography and, to a lesser extent, in urban planning and development, the topic of Public Procurement (PP) has received little consideration from the French and international scientific community. This observation must be set against the abundant scientific literature from the other related disciplines (management sciences, economics and legal sciences). In France, no thesis on this subject has ever been defended in Geography, a few articles and no books have been published on this interaction between PP and "territories". This observation challenges geographers, policy designers and planners, even though, beyond the question of the law that frames it, PP has always been a major instrument of public policies and their implementation. This research project focuses on how PP is taken into account in the analysis of the dynamics of territorial innovation.In particular, it will enrich our understanding of the dynamics of proximity and territorial intermediation processes, which have become key issues in economic geography and Regional Science. The aim is to understand how, on a territorial scale, public procurement enables coordination and matching between the players involved in these territorial innovation dynamics. The smart city perspective is introduced as a relevant analytical framework for studying the manufacture of urban innovation, focusing on the way in which public procurement facilitates exchanges and interactions between stakeholders with sometimes conflicting objectives and differing timeframes. The text describes a research methodology based on a case study of the Toulouse scene engaged in proactive programs to support innovation since 2014, with a protocol incorporating a complete literature review, a systemic analysis, a data collection via semi-structured interviews, and a comparative approach with other similar territorial scenes.