Pierre-Jean Benghozi

Managing Innovation: From ad hoc to Routine in French Telecom

Up to a few years ago, project management was mainly concerned with running ad hoc structures: innovations appeared only rarely and could easily be handled by firms. The modern trend (multiplication and unsteadiness of the markets, increasing competition between firms, speeding up of technical change) implies the regular launching of innovative products. Here, the problems to be dealt with are not only technical (performance and reliability) and economic (marketing strategy) ones, but also have managerial implications: internal coordination procedures have to be introduced, development cost control, personnel management and so on. In this context, the introduction of project management structures tends toward a dislocation of the decisions and strategies. The movement away from occasional innovations towards a regular flow of new product developments requires innovation routines which impose limited bureaucratic structures. This paper refers to the findings of a field study performed in the telecommunication industry and concerns the deployment of new electronic mailing systems.

The economics and business models of prescription in the Internet

Our premise is that the mechanisms at work in distribution and intermediation at stake in the business models existing on Internet should be assessed in terms of a prescription economy. By analyzing the markets in terms of prescription, i.e. the capacity of a firm to transform the potential request of a customer into a specific proposal of products, we can investigate the structure of a product or service supply, the decision-making process involved in purchasing, market configurations, and business strategies and models. Analyzing intermediation and information markets in terms of prescription means considering three-pronged markets where prescribers are not simple intermediaries but third parties : they act alongside producers and consumers – not between them – in order to structure the product or service supply or to assume responsibility for some aspect of the consumer decision. If we proceed on this assumption, we can identify the market strategies and structures that characterize a prescription economy.

Are traditional industrial partnerships so strategic for research spin-off development? Some evidence from the Italian case

This paper aims to contribute to the literature on research spin-offs (SOs) and strategic alliances. The research SO phenomenon has attracted significant attention in recent years. Yet, research SOs might present a particular situation regarding their economic development. Therefore, the paper focuses on the relevance of traditional industrial partnerships and introduces a new and complementary approach for studying and analysing the role of alliances for this particular kind of firm. The results of a questionnaire investigation of Italian research SOs with and without a traditional industrial partner are investigated and supported by a linear regression model. Due to recent initiatives – a growing interest in the research SO phenomenon – and the increasing number of established research SOs, Italy is a suitable case study for such an investigation. Nonetheless, the results are generalizable beyond the Italian case. The findings demonstrate thought-provoking – and somehow unexpected – results regarding the role of traditional alliances in shaping the geographical and industrial environment as well as the performance, added value, age and production process of the company. This calls for a broader perspective regarding industrial partnerships and research SOs: it reflects new modes of relations for these particular firms in the form of business ecosystems, either they are physical or they are digital.

Innovation and Regulation in the Digital Age: A Call for New Perspectives

Relations between innovation and regulation are all but fluid and simple. When innovation, beyond just developing new techniques, means redefining the very framework for implementing and operating technologies, it often means breaking the rules, challenging them. In the digital economy, the way it overturns the regulation and rule setting system is particularly radical. Innovation is key to create competitive advantage in a highly dynamic sector such as information and communications technologies. Firms invest heavily in productive resources and take steps to protect their competitive advantage. Productive resources are either network and connection infrastructure or consumer control which is rarely seen as such. It could be consumer’s attention or visits which requires massive investments in content, for example. It does include intermediation platform like search engine, programs, knowledge, entertainment and other immaterial products of the digital age. There is a need to rethink regulation on the basis of innovation and mobilization of these productive resources. The digital economy calls for a more holistic consideration of the link between innovation and mobilization of value on the one hand, and regulation on the other.

The Race for Innovation in the Media and Content Industries: Legacy Players and Newcomers: Lessons for Policy Makers from the Video Game and Cinema Industries

ABSTRACT How do media industries innovate? How can they compete with powerful competitors from the information technology world? The article focuses on the video game and cinema industries. The findings reveal their contrasting specific forms of innovation and provide a fresh understanding of its twofold nature in these industries. It does not boil down to simply creating new content but is increasingly open to the investment and integration of technologies. The evolution of the development models and the changes brought by technology raise questions about how to (re)consider the role of public intervention in these industries.

Technological innovation and R&D. The disregarded dimension of the creative industries: the case of book publishing

Cultural and creative industries (CCIs) have excited increasing attention in recent years. Academic literature on the subject has been growing in parallel with the emergence of general reports aiming to support government strategies. Notwithstanding this increasing and comprehensive interest, what is often disregarded is the important matter of the characteristics of R&D management and how technological innovations function in organisational value chains. This issue is particularly underinvestigated in the book publishing sector. Paradoxically, innovations based on technology are often «hidden» in CCIs: actors in cultural industries rarely think specifically about technological innovations, which are perceived to be derived from outside the CCIs. Yet technology plays a key role in the current structure of cultural industries such as book publishing. Given this context, this article aims to retrace the key aspects of exceptional and recent changes to the «secular» book publishing industry due to the Internet and ICT revolutions. The analysis shows that digital technologies are not only regularly appropriated by editorial houses (e.g. e-books and e-readers) but that they should also be regarded as intrinsic industry developments. Nonetheless, publishers continue to play a marginal role, because the primary technologies are derived from outside their value chain, thanks to the involvement of new actors as intermediaries. This phenomenon calls for changes in the traditional vision of the policies and regulation of CCIs.

Book Reviews : Juha Laurila: Social Movements in Management: Making a Technological Leap in the Case of the Anjala Paper Mill: 1994, Helsinki: Helsinki School of Economics and Business Adminis tration/Acta Universitatis Oeconomicae Helsingiensis. 160 pages

Pierre-Jean Benghozi Ecole Polytechnique CRG, Paris, France Management as a social phenomenon resembles a social movement. It is dynamic, representing and sustaining collective change. It is a constellation of conflicting projects with distinctive goals promoted by different coalitions of actors. The central assumption of this book is that the recognition of social movement mobilization is relevant in understanding management. Laurila argues that social movements in management are based on characteristic features of the businesses and on the way they permit different managerial actors to promote both their managerial objectives and personal goals. He conceptualizes this phenomenon in a specific context: