Encouraging Open Community Innovation: Outils-Réseaux’s Modular Approach

Lorna Heaton (), Florence Millerand (), David Delon (), Florian Schmitt, Laurent Marseault and Jessica Deschamps
Additional contact information
Lorna Heaton: Université de Montréal
Florence Millerand: UQAM, Communication sociale et publique
David Delon: Outils-Réseaux, TelaBotanica, Institut de Botanique
Florian Schmitt: Outils-Réseaux, TelaBotanica, Institut de Botanique
Laurent Marseault: Outils-Réseaux, TelaBotanica, Institut de Botanique
Jessica Deschamps: Outils-Réseaux, TelaBotanica, Institut de Botanique

Chapter Chapter 6 in Managing Open Innovation Technologies, 2013, pp 93-106 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Increasingly, individuals, groups and communities are participating actively in the process of technological innovation. Indeed, the novelty of Web 2.0 technologies and platforms appears to lie in the fact that the user has the possibility to produce—and not just consult—a vast array of content and tools. Users are more and more aware of their capacity for making and changing technologies, but participation does not happen automatically for most people. This chapter is a case study of Outils-Réseaux, a French group whose mission is to encourage the development and use of collaborative tools by associative movements. Drawing on interviews and an analysis of the content of various Wiki pages, we reflect on how Outils-Réseaux’s actions and approach participate in community innovation, in which the community itself is an essential element of the innovation. We explore the coevolution of both technical infrastructure (tools for collaboration) and the community, and show how Outils-Réseaux mediates between the (social) world of users and the technical world of software developers. We place particular emphasis on the modularity of the group’s approach to illustrate how it helps reconfigure boundaries for innovation and collaboration. First, we outline Outils-Réseaux’s general approach and several guiding principles. We then describe several “success stories” that illustrate key elements of the approach: simplicity, modularity, user-driven innovation. We conclude with reflections on emergent, community innovation and relate our experiences to academic literature on open, collaborative innovation.

Keywords: Open Innovation; Success Story; Ordinary User; Collaborative Technology; Lead User (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-642-31650-0_6

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783642316500

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-31650-0_6

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().