De l'assimilation des connaissances à la capacité de gestion : les PMI agro-alimentaires de la région Rhône- Alpes

Abstract

From absorptive capacity to management capacity. Small firms in agri-food sector in Rhône-Alpes. The survey of innovation in agri-food industry describes a very active sector in which the propensity to innovate is above the average of the whole industry while R&D expenditures as well as R&D employment rate remain very low. Such a situation seems to be paradoxical enough to justify an in-depth analysis. Are the characteristics of innovation in agri-food industry different ? Are they based on the collective research done by the whole sector (including enterprises, technical institutes, research centres, school of engineers...) rather than on a lonely firm ? Or does it mean that innovation dynamics is different from those acting in science based sectors ? Our results are based on an in-depth study of 23 innovations cases in agrifood sector. These innovations are performed by small and medium size firms located in Rhône-Alpes. All these innovations benefit from subsidies from a public agency, ANVAR (National Agency for valorisation of research). We show that : 1 ) agri-food small-size firms have no R&D department or even no R&D staff, they have to manage new ways of organising the R&D : in some enterprises, innovation is completely delegated to other firms (industrial designers, sub-contractors...). Based on an original idea of the firm, the design of the technical tools as well as its realisation are delegated to partners, even if they have a bigger size than the agri-food firm. In some cases, the agri-food company makes the industrial design and dedicates only the realisation to partners. The usual case in science based industry is when the firm and its partners are doing collaborative research and innovation ; 2) geographical localisation is not a criteria for the firm in choosing its partners, even if geographic proximity is correlated with the frequency of meeting during the innovation process ; 3) failures are mostly due to problems of partnership (opportunistic behaviour of the partner, asymmetry of information about its know how...) than to scientific or technical obstacles.