Cost 298, Moscow, May 2007
“The good, the bad, and the unexpected”
“User as innovator” theme
INCREASING RETURNS OF CREATIVE ADOPTION
&
THE PEER TO PEER (P2P) GOVERNANCE
Pascal Jollivet †, Michaël Vicente *
†
Humanities and Technology Department (TSH), Costech research laboratory,
Université de Technologie de Compiègne (UTC), BP 60 319, 60203 Compiègne Cedex, France,
pascal.jollivet@utc.fr
*
Humanities and Technology Department (TSH), Costech research laboratory, Université de
Technologie de Compiègne(UTC), BP 60 319, 60203 Compiègne Cedex, France,
michael.vicente@utc.fr
Key words: ICT paradigm, user as innovator, P2P, governance, libre and free software, communities
Abstract
This article aims at arguing that the growing affirmation of the socio-technical New Information and
Communicating Technologies (ICT) paradigm (M. Castells, 1997) is carrying out a model of Peer to Peer
Governance (M. Bauwens, 2005) in which productive communities of user-innovators are empowered (E. Von
Hippel, 2005; P. Jollivet, 2002) and new economic “laws” such as Increasing Return of Creative Adoption (W.B.
Arthur, 1994 , P. Jollivet, 2006) are emerging.
The affirmation of the ICT socio-techniques in society and economy during the 90th led to major theoretical
shifts in different fields of academic knowledge : the “learning economy” and the new generic ICT technological
paradigm in economics (D. Foray & Lundvall, 1996; G. Dosi, 1995), the “network-society” in sociology (M.
Castells, 1997), the “Business Process Engineering” (BPR) in strategic management (M Hammer, J Champy,
1993 & 2001), and the “Business Process Automation” (BPA) in Information System Management (A. Cichocki,
,1998).
Despite the adjustment crisis of new-technology markets of early 2000th, ICTs are confirming their creativedestruction power in the society and the economy (outsourcing, e-business, delocalization, globalization, new
internal division of labor …).
One phenomenon is synthesizing these shifts: the “libre and open source” software organizational, innovative,
and industrial dynamics. Our thesis is that this new ICT paradigms carries out the affirmation of new (and longtime neglected) productive and innovative actors (communities of user-innovators), organizing according to new
Cost 298, Moscow, May 2007
“The good, the bad, and the unexpected”
“User as innovator” theme
modes of governance (peer to peer governance), which are structured by new economic “laws” (Increasing
Returns of Creative Adoption). These new social and productive behaviours question traditional categories of
political-economy (the market, the firm, the state) and strategic management practices (secret, hierarchy,
capacity sub-contracting): consumption in non longer synonym of destruction but of creative-adoption, and the
user is no longer a passive consumer but a co-producer of innovation, that the firm needs to “mobilize”. .
The thesis is founded on the above mentioned theoretical arguments, and empirical original materials, among
which a field work on trust and security socio-technique industrial project, driven in partnership with a leading
European nuclear energy centre.
Conclusions are deducted concerning socio-economics policies and firm
strategies for stimulating innovation and diffusion of competitive ICTs with empowered users in Europe.
.