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June 2000 - present
Publications
Publications (76)
The objective of the paper is to highlight the process behind the design and development of Centech, a world-class incubator located in Montreal and recognized as one of the most successful university incubators in the world. Centech is housed in a cultural heritage building, the old Dow Planetarium, situated in the heart of the innovative district...
The dynamics of the knowledge commons: the role of a living lab as an open innovation intermediary in the health ecosystemIn a context of open innovation, an increasing role is played by innovation intermediary devices that articulate the knowledge of heterogeneous actors in the health ecosystem. This article presents the case study of a living lab...
L’industrie aérospatiale poursuit sa croissance de façon très marquée avec près de
7,8 milliards de passagers annuels attendus d’ici 2036, par rapport à 4,3 milliards
en 2018 (International Air Transport Association, 2016 ; International Civil Aviation
Organization, 2019). Cette industrie, qui avait des perspectives favorables avant la
pandémie de...
The concept of ecosystem plays a central role in the recent debates on the unfolding of a new regime of innovation. In this paper, we contribute to these debates by clarifying the distinction between the emerging concept of ‘ecosystem of innovation’ from the established concept of ‘business ecosystems.’ Re-interpreting the case of the historical de...
This chapter aims to analyze how Ubisoft Montreal's studio was able to respond to a major crisis: the cancellation of the production of a blockbuster (a game with a sales potential of more than 5 million units) due to a lack of originality and strategic differentiation. Such a situation can be interpreted as a case of extreme management, insofar as...
In this article, we attempt to show how the reconciliation of the international business and economic geography perspectives allows a more refined analysis of the interplay between current business dynamics and local/global spaces of knowledge creation, leading to innovation. Our aim is to develop a framework to highlight how in some specific clust...
This paper aims at a better understanding of the dynamics behind the concept of innovation ecosystems. We argue that interactions and interdependencies between the various actors of an ecosystem cannot be thought of as solely resulting from a complex arrangement of formal linkages. These dynamics cannot be disconnected from the local environment in...
Les entrepreneurs ne travaillent pas en vase clos. Ils font partie d’une communauté qui, bien souvent, contribue à faire d’eux des bâtisseurs. Lorsque la connexion est forte et authentique, elle permet aux deux groupes de se renforcer mutuellement. Puisque ces interrelations peuvent revêtir de nombreuses formes, nous vous présentons quatre exemples...
This paper aims at analyzing the role that can be played by artefacts in order to stimulate intrapreneurial routines within large organizations. It analyzes the development and implementation of a toolkit and of new managerial practices to frame, format and promote intrapreneurial ideas within the main studio of a multinational video-game company....
Location plays a major role in the building of artistic, technological or scientific movements that emerge in specific locations before achieving a worldwide reach. However, a deeper understanding is needed about the interplay of local/global knowledge dynamics in the epistemic construction of a movement. Based on an in-depth longitudinal study of...
L’innovation dans les entreprises connait aujourd’hui un bouleversement profond et irreversible. Il y a quelques annees encore, elle etait stimulee selon des methodes formelles, du laboratoire de R&D jusqu’a la mise sur le marche. Toutefois, de nos jours, l’innovation tire sa source principale des communautes, c’est-a-dire des groupes sociaux infor...
Peut-on imaginer une action collective pour l'innovation la ou les participants ne sont ni experimentes ni formes a la conception ou a la creation collaborative ? C'est le pari du co-design, qui reussit a rassembler des citoyens pour resoudre des enjeux qui les concernent directement.
This study examines how an organization can redefine its core process when faced with a major crisis of creative efficiency. We analyze the case of the experimentation of the "Always Playable" project at Ubisoft Montreal, a leading video game development studio, where a crisis of creativity triggered an active reconfiguration of routines and their...
A significant part of management in creative organisations is the discovery, development, and engagement of the creative talents. These activities require practices at the intersection of talent management, knowledge management and HR management. In this paper, we observed a bootcamp held at Cirque du Soleil in order to experiment with new casting...
Ferran Adrià is one of the most recognized chefs in the world. His restaurant, elBulli, was awarded five times the title of the Best Restaurant in the World. Through an analysis of the last 30 years of the creative journey of elBulli, this contribution highlights that Adrià and his team of chefs succeeded in articulating two different processes: i)...
OVERVIEW: Drawing on a case study at Ubisoft, a major creative firm in the videogame industry, this article shows how a firm can nurture and engage with its knowing communities to fuel the front end of innovation. Actions taken by management can catalyze four types of knowing
community activities: unscripted internal activities, which are emergent,...
This article aims to clarify how epistemic communities dynamically shape the process of knowledge creation in a localized
context and how the evolving interaction between different members of these communities enables knowledge to transit from
its locus of emergence to the global market. It is argued that these dynamics rest on a series of clashes...
The aim of this contribution is to proceed to an in-depth exploration of the micro-context of the origin of routines and of their intimate link with organizational creativity. Our view is that organizational creativity orchestrates continuous interactions between different types of routines, operating at different levels of the organization. More p...
Les gestionnaires sont de plus en plus convaincus que la generation et le developpement d’idees representent des enjeux prioritaires pour l’organisation. Gerer strategiquement les idees permet a leur organisation d’innover plus souvent, plus rapidement ou plus radicalement. Cela peut contribuer, d’une part, a maintenir des parts de marche ou a en g...
This paper explores the purposeful design and development of a community of practice within a professional bureaucracy. The view of communities of practice has shifted from fundamentally organic entities to ones that can be deliberately designed and developed and they have frequently been presented as a panacea for knowledge sharing and creation, a...
Grandadam D., Cohendet P. and Simon L. Places, spaces and the dynamics of creativity: the video game industry in Montreal, Regional Studies. The aim of this paper is to understand better the dynamics of situated creativity by reconsidering the formation of externalities in cities. What is suggested is that these externalities are not due to the pro...
The aim of this contribution is to proceed to an in-depth exploration of the micro-context of the origin of routines and of their intimate link with organizational creativity. Our view is that organizational creativity orchestrates continuous interactions between different types of routines, operating at different levels of the organization. More p...
Creativity in a city requires that new knowledge and innovative ideas transit permanently through three different layers of the city: the underground, the middleground and the upperground. The underground is comprised of creative individuals who are not immediately linked to the commercial and industrial world and whose culture lies outside the cor...
RÉINVENTER L’INNOVATION L‟innovation est devenue l‟un des principaux leviers de la compétition. Celle-ci se joue aussi aujourd‟hui sur les manières d‟innover elles-mêmes. Promu entre autres par l‟économiste Chesbrough, et mis en øe uvre par les plus grandes entreprises, un modèle d‟innovation ouverte est en train de s‟imposer contre l‟ancien modèle...
Managing Communities of Creation: Ubisoft Montreal and Video Games
For organizations, creativity is a source of value added, performance and competitive advantage. This being the case, what can organizations do to improve the creativity of their workforce? What mechanisms can they put in place? How can they ensure constant innovation in a turbulent...
Managing Communities of Practice in the Telecommunications Industry: A Comparison of Bell and Orange
Communities of practice bring together groups of individuals who share a concern or a passion for a subject and who develop their expertise in a given field through regular interaction. In principle, these communities should facilitate organizationa...
La propriete intellectuelle (PI) joue un role strategique dans les industries creatives ou la creativite est un processus collectif impliquant des acteurs aux interets contradictoires, conduisant a un “dilemne de la PI”. Les firmes veulent s’approprier le travail creatif et lutter contre l’imitation; les communautes creatives souhaitent un regime d...
The following contribution aims to analyze the sources of creativity in a modern, highly innovative and “stylised” company that does not rely on traditional sources of innovation (large R&D units, research cooperative agreements, R&D contracts with university centres, etc.). We show that the theories of the innovative firm have to be coupled with t...
The aim of this contribution is to depict and analyze the dynamics of situated creativity by presenting an anatomy of the creative city and an understanding of the emergence and formation of creative processes in these particular local ecologies of knowledge. We propose to study the anatomy of the creative city by defining three different layers—th...
Creativity does not result from the talents of a few individuals, but, on the contrary, nourishes itself from the repeated exchanges among a variety of heterogeneous entities that all contribute in their own way to foster the development of new ideas. As a result, the creative activity must be considered as embedded in creative territories. In othe...
Résumé
Cet article analyse un acteur méconnu des villes créatives : les collectifs créatifs. Les villes créatives s’articulent selon trois strates actives. Les firmes – upperground - absorbent les connaissances émergeant des activités créatives de la ville alors que les acteurs de l’underground explorent et proposent de nouvelles avenues créatives....
This contribution focuses on the relationship between the urban milieu and high creativity firms, focusing on the videogames sector in Montreal. It reveals an organizational frame of a lack of large R&D departments and a lack of global networks of subsidiaries or partners through which firms access creative knowledge. None of these classical ways t...
Empirical results from a qualitative study within an important North American aircraft engine manufacturing company allows us to propose an alternative framework for achieving effective knowledge sharing based on the boundary construction concept. Tapping into Latour's (1993) epistemological insights of mutual transformation, hybridization and inte...
Creativity does not result from the work of a few talented individuals, but, on the contrary, nourishes itself from the repeated interaction between heterogeneous entities, embedded in creative networks, that are dispersed among different collective forms and characterized by an important strategic dimension. The aim of this contribution is to pres...
This contribution illustrates how a videogame firm copes in managing creativity and expression of artistic values, while meeting the constraints of the economics of mass entertainment. The research is based on a case study in one of the largest video game studios in the world located in Montreal, Canada. The approach considers that the creative uni...
The Dilemma of Technology vs. Individuals in the Implementation of Knowledge Management: The Case of Cossette Communication Group
This article presents the knowledge management process launched by Cossette Communication Group in late 2003. It attempts to reconcile the two main trends in knowledge management and offers an example of the dialectic be...
This paper proposes a radical empirical look on the concrete activities of project managers involved in creative projects, with a specific focus on “non-administrative” issues. Through four case studies in the video-game industry, multimedia, advertising and a circus, we propose an integrated synthesis of what creative project managers actually do....
From Gamesman to Gamer: Gaming as an Emerging Dynamic in Contemporary Firms?
This article reconsiders the classic metaphor that conceptualizes management activities as a game within the context of the powerful rise of the generation of video gamers in the working world. First, a conceptual reflection reveals that the structures and dynamics of cont...
Creativity is a major driving force in modern economies, on a global scale, but also on a local scale. In other words, cities may benefit from a highly creative environment in order to foster their development. The aim of this contribution is to depict and examine the dynamics of situated creativity by presenting an anatomy of the creative city bas...
This contribution aims at highlighting how a video-game firm copes in managing creativity and expression of artistic values, while meeting the constraints of the economics of mass entertainment. The research is based on an ethnographic study in one of the largest video game studios in the world located in Montréal. The approach considers that the c...
The present research empirically suggests that a new type of community is emerging among the people who create new multimedia technology: the playful creative community. Based on a structural definition of what a game is, it intends to show that the game metaphor could offer a powerful perspective to better understand contemporary dynamics in knowl...
"Thèse présentée à la faculté des études supérieures en vue de l'obtention du grade de philosophiae doctor (Ph. D.) en administration." Thèse (Ph. D.)--École des hautes études commerciales, 2003.
