dimensions than with organizational and industrial issues, specialists in management science and economics seek to identify (and, to a certain extent, prescribe) the best way to successfully commercialize a novelty, with a singular focus on technological innovation. From then on, the innovative company, its stakes and the expected return in terms of added value are central (Godin 2017). Appropriation on the one hand, commercialization on the other; although this division is often schematic, it is nonetheless rooted in a certain epistemological reality, even if several theoretical approaches propose going beyond it.
1.1. Classical approaches to innovation
Schumpeter’s thinking has already been mentioned, and it is of great importance in the work on innovation, since the economist has contributed to highlighting the driving role of innovation in economic evolution, including through its paradoxes (Schumpeter 1935). In particular, we owe him the famous “creative destruction” achieved by the novelty that competes with the old to the point of harming it. He drew up categories that are still used today, including that of typology (product innovation, organizational innovation, process innovation, etc.) and degree (difference between major and minor innovation). Above all, he highlighted the decisive action of an economic agent: the entrepreneur. The latter is not necessarily an inventor (or even a company founder), but a creative and persevering actor, capable of reconfiguring both the resources of the organization and the economic circuits (Munier 2013).
This classical approach has the advantage of highlighting the centrality of innovation in the creation of value in the sports sector (see for example (Chantelat 1992)). It allows us to account for the long time span between invention and innovation in many cases. In this respect, it is interesting to note that recommendations from management science and economics generally encourage the acceleration of processes, in order to increase the pace of innovation and, in so doing, the chances of success (Segercrantz et al. 2017). This acceleration, which aims to prevent competition from taking advantage of innovations, is not without ambiguity: the multiplication of destruction cycles can lead to the lasting destabilization of markets.
Above all, it is important to avoid focusing on providential entrepreneurs, on the one hand because the exceptional figure of the enlightened entrepreneur can be criticized as a chimera (Mustar 1994), but also, as we shall see, because it obscures many other actors and factors. This perspective is not self-evident, since we have been used to seeing innovation as essentially the work of avant-garde individuals capable of recombining productive systems. A recent history (Schutt 2012) of the manufacturer Petzl (technical outdoor sports equipment) describes the founder (Fernand Petzl) and especially his son (Paul Petzl) as visionary, determined and driven by a desire to innovate and capable of anticipating new needs and practices in order to reconfigure outdoor markets. While the career paths and sociological or personal characteristics of innovators must certainly be taken into account in innovation trajectories, they cannot be an exclusive explanatory factor for the fate of new products.
This caution is all the more necessary as we sometimes see the individual figure being substituted by that of the organization in studies. Following the example of the visionary entrepreneur, companies with exceptional characteristics (decompartmentalized, learning, hybrid, etc.) are designated as the driving force behind successful innovations. The Salomon company thus appears to be an ideal type of creative, even intuitive, organization, capable of managing uncertainty in order to regularly bring about innovations (Moingeon and Métais 1999; Puthod and Thévenard 1999; Desbordes 2001; Deroy 2004; Bueno Mérino et al. 2010). The Décathlon group – and one of its private labels, Quechua – are in turn analyzed as a hybrid organization capable of combining rational and turbulent processes in the service of effective innovations (Hillairet et al. 2010), in a description that seems somewhat idealized.
Moreover, Schumpeter’s brainwave leaves the concrete conditions of the success of innovations in the dark (aside from a mechanism of imitation of the innovator by follower companies). The work of Rogers (1995) would deepen the study of diffusion mechanisms, characterizing the way in which a novelty, more or less easily adoptable, spreads in a context (historical, social, technological, etc.) that is more or less favorable. The progressive adoption of an innovation by a growing number of users is done by persuasion and imitation, via a “trickle-down” movement (from the producer to the consumer, from the pioneers to the laggards, from the upper classes to other social circles). The success of an innovation is described as being linked to a double movement between certain endogenous factors which favor (or don’t favor) its progressive spread towards a market which is variably favorable (thus exogenous factors).
Several favorable characteristics of innovation can be singled out:
– the relative advantage over previous solutions;
– compatibility with existing values and practices;
– simplicity and ease of use;
– trialability or possibility of testing the innovation;
– finally, the observability of the results obtained.
Salomon’s arrival on the ski market in the 1990s, through a strategy of innovation (Desbordes 1998, 2001), is thus interpreted in the light of an organized rationality, centered on these factors of success: advantageous technological breakthrough for the skier, compatibility with the current practice of skiing, “visibilization” of the innovation, progressive marketing to validate the trialability, etc. The widespread uptake of the monocoque ski was described as a “snowball” effect, with users confined to the role of successive adopters, starting with champions, expert skiers, high-end customers and then regular skiers. Conversely, Trabal (2008) reveals the effects of social resistance to innovation within the French canoeing federation: a new form of competition kayak, technically optimal, was not taken up because it was not compatible with what certain key actors in the system (the first adopters: coaches, elite athletes) perceived as technical progress.
Classical approaches in sociology are therefore interested in the intrinsic properties of objects in order to deduce their advantages and disadvantages in relation to the social or cultural context in which they are received. Innovation spreads (or doesn’t spread) in a more or less receptive environment and makes it evolve or transforms itself to respond to major trends. This is how the relatively rapid adoption of the fiberglass pole vault in the 1960s was analyzed (Defrance 1984). However, in spite of obvious relative advantages compared to the previous solutions (bamboo or metal poles), it is again the compatibility with the traditional definition of the activity (body techniques, the spectacle on show, the validity of records) that is debated. For Defrance, the context (ideology of progress) and the adoption of the fiber in other countries obliged the French athletes to imitate. But if the contextual dimension of an acceptance or rejection is undeniable, the mechanisms of adoption (or rejection) are not always made explicit.
Thus, Martha’s (2006) account of technological innovations modifying BASE jump practices only partially describes how practitioners became interested in the invention. As a result, she hardly discusses how the invention was not only adopted, but adapted to a physical environment (take-off site, air) and social environment (uses, techniques, conceptions), which were both evolving together.
KEY POINTS – The studies included in this first set of theories have the merit of highlighting the role of social factors and the influence of the global innovation environment. They sometimes deal with cases of resistance or failure to spread, which can be considered as failures. From this point of view, innovation appears less as a result than as a process; it is not limited to the emergence of a novelty, however ingenious it may be, and only succeeds when it is adopted by an environment and goes hand in hand with the renewal of social practices as much as of productive systems. Such works have thus made it possible to anchor technical constraints in their social, economic and cultural contexts, in order to underline the complexity and the progressiveness of the processes
