Innovation with Users and Collaborative Platforms

Special Report: New Forms of Collectives
Heterogeneous Modes of Engagement
By Benoît Lelong, Émile Gayoso
English

Openness has become a new paradigm of innovation, expressed both in a growing tendency for inter-organizational partnerships and in the integration of users into the innovation process. One of the modalities of this integration, that the social sciences have barely explored, is firms' creation and facilitation of electronic user-communities for innovation. This article explores certain structural properties of this type of network and proposes a characterization of the moderator-facilitator role, which appears to be a new figure of intermediation. The authors' inquiry draws on a study of a test platform set up by a large telecommunications group.

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