Les entreprises développant des produits ou procédés nouveaux sont également reconnues comme innovantes en matière d’organisation. La reconnaissance de l’innovation organisationnelle constitue une avancée significative pour l’analyse des processus d’innovation et permet de dépasser l’approche fragmentaire, centrée exclusivement sur la technologie, qui a longtemps dominé. Elle introduit toutefois un certain nombre d’interrogations. Parmi ces questionnements, la complémentarité entre les innovations technologique et organisationnelle ainsi que l’étude comparative des mécanismes de diffusion de ces innovations apparaissent encore peu explorées. Nous nous sommes donc intéressée à ces deux volets afin de rendre compte de la complexité de la dynamique d’innovation dans son ensemble. Plus précisément, notre article se propose de répondre aux questions suivantes :Pour cela, nous avons eu recours à une analyse qualitative reposant sur une stratégie de cas multiples. Les PME innovantes ont été retenues comme terrain d’investigation. Les principaux résultats montrent l’existence de plusieurs phases, caractéristiques de l’évolution des différentes innovations réalisées par les PME sur longue période. Ils permettent en outre de relever les influences mutuelles entre innovations de différents types. De plus, l’étude des mécanismes de diffusion des innovations, visant aussi bien la technologie que l’organisation, autorise une compréhension plus fine de l’imbrication entre les différentes innovations réalisées par la PME et nous amène à repenser leurs liens en termes de « co-activation ».Product and process innovative firms are also considered to be innovative in their organisational structure. The recognition of the major role of organisational innovation is a main contribution to the understanding of the whole innovation process. However it also raises a few questions such as the complementarity between technological and organisational innovations of the firm, or the comparative analysis of their diffusion mechanisms. These two main points have been investigated in order to outline the complexity of innovation process. Precisely, this article aims at answering the two following questions :To deal with these questions, we refer to a qualitative methodology based on multiple case studies of high technology based SMEs. The main results of this research stress three phases characteristic of the evolution of the various innovations within a longitudinal perspective. They also outline the mutual influence between innovations of different types. Moreover, the analysis of the diffusion mechanisms of technological and organisational innovations allows a precise understanding of their close relations within innovative SMEs. It also leads to reconsider the relations between technology and organisation in terms of “co-activation”.A las empresas que desarrollan productos o procedimientos nuevos se las considera también como innovadoras en cuanto a la organización. El reconocimiento de la innovación organizacional constituye un avance signi...

To cite this version:Cécile Ayerbe, Nathalie Lazaric, Michel Callois, Liliana Mitkova. The new challenges of organizing intellectual property in complex industries: a discussion based on the case of Thales. Technovation, Elsevier, 2014, 34, pp. Abstract:The defence industries in France and elsewhere have, in recent years, undergone important technological, organizational and institutional changes that have profoundly altered their architectures. These changes have introduced a new division of labour bringing new opportunities for interaction leading to the creation of additional assets. In this context, the issue of protecting innovations and their exploitation has become central. Managing Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) requires industrial groups to draw on additional capabilities. This article analyzes these evolutions and focuses in particular on the new organizational arrangements that have accompanied them. Using the case of Thales, which in 2005 outsourced its Intellectual Property (IP), we answer questions such as: why should IP be outsourced; how should the outsourcing of IP activities be organized; and, how should capabilities involved in this new organizational arrangement be managed. These issues lie at the centre of this research and illustrate new challenges inherent to in-house and outsourced IPR management strategies.

In this paper, we focus on how focal firms influence business ecosystem stability through patent management. We present and discuss a case study of Thales Alenia Space, a leader in the aerospace industry, and its ecosystem partners. We make two counterintuitive insights about ecosystem management. First, a focal firm can use patents in a new way in order to ensure the stability of its ecosystem. Second, patent licensing facilitates an inverted pattern of knowledge creation and commercialisation between large and small firms, in which small firms are able to commercialise innovations created by large firms in unexpected markets. Furthermore, this article contributes to the literature on patent management by providing new evidence on the external leveraging of knowledge.