Vanessa Dilara Trupia: An ethnography of open innovation: The case of “La Cantine Numérique”

Innovating innovation. This is the essence of open innovation, which, ever since its formalisation within management science, has been hailed as the ‘new imperative for creating and capitalising on technologies’. Presented as a new management paradigm, this concept nevertheless encompasses a wide variety of definitions and realities depending on the stakeholders—who are increasingly seeking to adopt its organisational models. This thesis focuses specifically on this search for new models that are constructed neither within companies nor solely by innovation collectives, but through physical spaces and mechanisms of cooperation emerging within digital worlds to operate in the in-between, as third spaces distinct from the former. It aims to demonstrate that this ongoing search, far from being haphazard, is organised beyond a mere assemblage of management tools, through modes of action and representation that take shape within these spaces, in a situated manner, in the form of new practical and relational conventions of cooperative work.

Taking an empirical approach, this thesis offers an ethnographic immersion into the experience of ‘La Cantine’, the first co-working space to establish itself as a hub for digital innovation in Paris, managed by a business association, Silicon Sentier. Initiated in 2010 as participant observation, the research was conducted between 2011 and 2014 on three fronts: the venue, open innovation mechanisms, and the intermediation work carried out at the interface of heterogeneous worlds. Rather than treating open innovation as a given, the description enables us to trace how a particular conception emerges within the venue’s institutionalisation process (Part 1), through its physical dimension and hybrid framing mechanisms (Part 2), as well as in the intermediation work carried out by its staff (Part 3). The thesis draws on a variety of theoretical frameworks to analyse each of these aspects: an ecological approach to social worlds, a situationist approach to frameworks and framings, and, finally, an interactionist approach to cooperative work. By bringing these approaches together, it ultimately offers a conclusive study that broadens the scope of the reflection developed within La Cantine, extending beyond it, as open innovation mechanisms spread throughout the organisational world. This broadening makes it possible to characterise these ‘frontier mechanisms’ by a constant movement of framing and overflow, of shared structure and interpretative and organisational flexibility, of formalisation and destabilisation, through which the principles of cooperation originating in digital worlds are not only translated into the realm of interactions, but also institutionalised in increasingly distant worlds.

Members of the jury

• Valérie BEAUDOUIN, Director of Studies at Télécom ParisTech (Rapporteur)
• Alexandre MALLARD, Research Director at Mines ParisTech (Rapporteur)
• Dominique CARDON, Professor at Sciences Po Paris (Examiner)
• Franck COCHOY, Professor at the University of Toulouse II (Examiner)
• Alexandre MATHIEU-FRITZ, Professor at the University of Paris-Est (Examiner)
• Patrice FLICHY, Professor Emeritus at the University of Paris-Est (Director)