Making nothing or something: corporate Fab Labs seen through their objects as they cross organizational boundaries

Matthew Fuller and Albert David
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Matthew Fuller: DRM - Dauphine Recherches en Management - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Albert David: DRM - Dauphine Recherches en Management - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: As large firms pursue their quest to support NPD and fuzzy front-end activities within their organizations, some have recently opted to create "corporate Fab Labs". These spaces, which regroup an innovation-oriented community and provide any employee with a physical setting and open access to digital fabrication tools are also the birthplace of objects. A lingering and recurring question among practitioners and decision makers is: what do these objects represent? In terms of innovation, are they something, or nothing?This paper is an initial response to these reactions and develops a theoretical and empirical study of objects made in corporate Fab Labs. Building upon empirical data collected from a series of photos, we contribute a rudimentary tool for identifying the maturity of corporate Fab Labs as their objects cross three organizational knowledge boundaries: syntax, semantic, and pragmatic.

Keywords: Organisational boundaries; corporate Fab Labs; open innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino
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Published in 24 th Innovation and Product development Management Conference, Jun 2017, Reykjavik, Iceland

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