Comment faciliter les pratiques frontières nécessaires aux processus créatifs ? Une étude de trois projets d’innovation ouverte

Translating, transforming and assembling new knowledge are essential boundary practices for creative processes, especially in an open innovation context. Only few studies highlight the role of individuals in these practices. This article aims to deepen the function they can take through the properties and uses of intermediary objects and negotiation areas in creative processes. It is based on a multi-case study of three projects led by different companies that participated in the open innovation program “Creation of an Innovative Product” (CPi). Our results show that the properties are specific to each type of frontier practice and are generally distributed between several objects and spaces. The specific role of boundary spanner emerges from our analysis. It consists in helping people to better mobilize the variety of spaces and objects during the creative process and to enter collective learning processes. As the boundaries to be crossed are multiple, the boundary spanner function is most often distributed within projects. Several individuals can take on this role and intervene at different stages of the project depending on their expertise.