Du laboratoire à la communauté : organiser l'espace pour innover

Abstract

This article analyses the relationships between organisational and technical innovation. The recent history of science and technology has highlighted situations where technical innovation is strengthened by the introduction of new organisational configurations. For example, the 19 th century invention of the industrial research laboratory was an organisational configuration that supported innovation by bringing designers, machinists and draftsmen together into the same space, with the sole task of producing innovations. Based on their analysis on a recent ethnographic study, the authors then present a contrasting organisational configuration found today in the "innovating community", a collective of freeware activists in Quebec. This configuration is based on the individual skills of its members, but also on public access to technical knowledge, which is supported by the use of networks. Three key dimensions characterise this community. Their innovations are produced in a free environment (as in free speech), they occur in a situated context and they are recognised as "contributions" only after peer-to-peer negotiation.