href="https://www.cnrtl.fr">https://www.cnrtl.fr). In the case of innovation management, this leads us, on one hand, to question what it means to adapt an innovation and make it one’s own, and, on the other, to understand the modalities for implementing such an action. We propose to answer these questions according to the type of “organism”, or actor in the organization. We have chosen three emblematic ones: (1) consumers, (2) members of the organization and (3) shareholders.
2.4.1. The appropriation of innovation by consumers
According to Schumpeter, innovation is the first commercial transaction of an invention. In other words, a customer is willing to invest resources in the invention. Essentially, this means that this client identifies the value of this invention in relation to a use that is specific to them. Then, the organization has to propose an attractive value for the client. Up until the mid-2000s, the consumer remained “at the end of the chain”; this meant that this value had to be anticipated and identified at the beginning of the innovation process, with a high risk of going wrong. Since then, the consumer’s position has evolved, and they are now involved in the co-creation of the product, participating in its promotion and dissemination (Cova and Cova 2009). In this sense, marketing research emphasizes how essential it is to integrate the consumer from the beginning of the process, which facilitates the identification and proposal of a particular value.
This is referred to as “consumer empowerment” (Fayn et al. 2019). This “delegation of power to the consumer” can be initiated by the organization itself in a “top-down” movement. In this case, it leaves the consumer free to choose certain technical or aesthetic characteristics, it includes them in the creation of the product, in its promotion and distribution (Cova and Cova 2009; Piligrimiene et al. 2015). The consumer is in a partnership relationship with the company. By contrast, this delegation of power can be more of a “power grab” by the consumer, who, for example, via comments on social networks, can direct consumption. It is more of a liberation according to a “bottom-up” movement, which can express an assertion of counter-power on the part of consumers in the face of traditional consumption, or even a civic commitment to more sustainable and democratic structures (Papaoikonomou and Alarcón 2015).
According to the two movements mentioned, consumer empowerment does not imply exactly the same notions in marketing (Fayn et al. 2019), which consequently influences work in innovation management. In the case of the “top-down” movement, it is a question of relational marketing (establishment of lasting relationships with the consumer) or marketing knowledge (mobilization and development of customer skills), whereas in the case of the “bottom-up” movement, it is more the notions of consumerism (or consumer resistance) or engagement (involvement of the customer beyond the transaction). However, the notion of brand community (a group of customers attached to the same brand values) is present in both, knowing that the “bottom-up” movement is favored by information and communication technologies, and, more broadly, by digital technology. Indeed, social media, evaluation platforms and online petitions reinforce the power of the consumer in the face of the organization (Fleck and Ambroise 2019). Ignoring this becomes impossible and, above all, a strategic error with serious consequences.
One of the challenges facing contemporary organizations concerns the ways in which innovation is appropriated by these creative, committed, even critical consumers, in the face of consumer society, by these consumers capable of expressing a counter-power without the limits of time and space via digital technology. It is true that organizations have always benefited from consumers’ good ideas, and research has already explored many ways of doing so, such as listening to customers via Web 2.0. (Viot 2010), design thinking approaches (Brown 2009) or crowdsourcing (Pénin and Burger-Helmchen 2012). However, given the intensity of these issues and the growing power of consumer criticism of the capitalist economy, it is essential to pursue these investigations in innovation management and reflect on the most relevant modalities, according to the type of consumer empowerment, in particular. This therefore questions the appropriation of innovation by the members of the organization.
2.4.2. Appropriation of innovation by the members of the organization
A major obstacle in innovation within organizations is often the organization itself, especially its members. Indeed, as Kotter (2016) makes explicit, when faced with novelty, these members express fears and may not adhere to it, not because of the poor quality of the innovation itself, but because of power games, the refusal to have their routines disrupted or to lose their resources, etc. Royer (2002) shows that this phenomenon is all the more important when we are at the beginning of the innovation process, at the time of the idea, when decision-making is essentially socio-political. Indeed, tangible and measurable results are hardly conceivable, hence the significance of fears and doubts. Little by little, the decision becomes rational, because the innovation achieves its material dimension: the actors can experiment, test, discuss and measure it more. Although this state of affairs has been investigated by major authors such as Akrich et al. (1988a, 1988b) or Burgelman (1983), it is still relevant today. Indeed, the subject is not exhausted insofar as contemporary organizations are confronted with major changes, be they economic, social or environmental (Gay and Szostak 2019), as well as health crises. We note that all of this calls the classic status of the innovation champion, leader or manager as the bearer of innovation into question. For example, in some organizations, they are becoming collective and protean.
This is particularly the case in co-operatives defined as “mutual aid enterprises that are democratically owned and controlled by the people who use its services” (Briscoe and Ward 2000). These organizations of the Social and Solidarity Economy are, in fact, atypical, since, by construction, the “leader” is collective and is a consumer-owner. We can consider it as de facto “empowered”1. In France, they include agricultural cooperatives, merchant cooperatives, SCOPs2, SCICs3, certain banks and mutual insurance companies. The impact of these characteristics on innovation management is significant. In their study, Capelli et al. (2016) show, among other things, that consumer-members propose more new ideas, which are, moreover, more feasible, than non-member consumers. Moreover, the ideas of the first group are considered more innovative and of a higher quality than those of the second group. Although this work deserves to be continued, we can highlight two conclusions. First, new statuses of idea bearers are emerging: it is no longer just a question of internal members, a manager or a leader, it can occupy several statuses simultaneously, which, in the classic format of the organization, are not compatible (owner and consumer). Second, their involvement seems more significant, potentially resulting in less reluctance in the face of novelty and easier appropriation, even though the facts show that there is very often an ideology (organic vs. traditional food; local vs. non-local), which may also explain why certain ideas echoing this ideology are more easily appropriated.
That said, they remain men and women, subject to questioning in the face of change. And the appropriation of innovation can be difficult, to the point of making it impossible. It is also important to think about how this appropriation will take place. For example, making the innovation one’s own may involve discursive strategies (convincing through rhetorical arguments) (Suddaby and Greenwood 2005) or mobilizing employees themselves in the decision-making process (Defélix et al. 2015). Another modality consists of integrating it into already existing practices, in order to limit the effect of novelty (Gay and Szostak 2019). This is how companies develop design thinking, not only to develop innovations, but also to engage the members of the organization in the search for insights and the collection and selection of new ideas. Others exploit prototyping practices to materialize ideas and make them tangible to facilitate discussions. In the end, ownership of innovation by members of the organization is a sine qua non for innovation, echoing Churchill, to reach for the moon. Another condition to consider concerns a final actor: the owners of the innovation, who have allocated resources to the development of the innovation.
2.4.3. Capturing the value of innovation
While in the previous subsections more emphasis has been placed on the social and societal dimensions of the issue of appropriation of innovation,