Analyse sociotechnique d'une innovation sportive: le cas du kitesurf

Eric Boutroy, Bastien Soulé and Bénédicte Vignal

Innovations, 2014, vol. n° 43, issue 1, 163-185

Abstract: Within the sports industry, producers strongly rely on innovation in order to differentiate from competitors and to boost sales. Such innovation has mostly been tackled through management sciences. Our approach to these innovation processes prioritizes a sociological approach, rooted in the sociology of science and technics studies. It will consist of a case study focused on kiteboarding. Basically, we intend to understand the uncertain origins of this object, as well as its spaces, uses, users, and mediators. To do so, we describe successive hesitations that occurred during a long exploration stage, as well as the unpredictability and contingency of an attraction period which eventually happened thanks to the gradual compromising of inventors. Through this case study, we overall try to prove that explaining the success or failure of an innovation above all requires: 1) a diachronic analysis of the trajectory; 2) a synchronic description of the spreading out and continuous reconfiguration of the network. Through the enrolment of more and more new actors, these processes both transform and make invention real. Such sociotechnical analysis enables us to enrich previous studies, mostly based on pre-scheduled periods (conception, test...) and Schumpeterian actors (inventor, lead-user...). It is, thus, possible to take into consideration at each stage the broadened network of heterogeneous and interdependent human actors and material entities. It finally appears that kiteboarding has not simply spread out in a specific environment, through its progressive refining; it is also the output of many successive translations and new links that has transformed it.

Keywords: innovation; kiteboarding; network; process; sociotechnical analysis; sport (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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