Paper to be presented at the EMNet-Conference on
"Economics and Management of Franchising Networks"
Vienna, Austria, June 26 – 28, 2003
Innovation management within the plural form network
Gérard CLIQUET
IGR-IAE, 11 rue Jean Macé
CS 70803 RENNES Cedex 7
FRANCE
Tel : +33 02 23 23 78 51
Fax : +33 02 23 23 78 00
Email: gerard.cliquet@univ-rennes1.fr
And
NGUYEN Minh-Ngoc
IREIMAR - Campus de Beaulieu,
Bât 1, 263, av. du Général Leclerc
35042 Rennes, FRANCE
Tel : +33 2 23 23 51 49
Fax : +33 2 23 23 63 05
Email: nguyenminhngoc@netcourrier.com
CREREG, UMR CNRS 6585
University of Rennes 1 (France)
Abstract:
Nowadays, most retail chains are organized in a network structure, which operates under the principals of
mutual communication and cooperation for lower overhead cost, increased responsiveness and flexibility, and
greater operational efficiency (Lozenzoni and Baden, 1995). In addition, thanks to interfaces between many
units, the network is a powerful tool to foster innovation. However, networks can also block innovation because
of the divergence of interests among units (Hagedoorn, 1995). A franchised network is an illustration of this,
due to the fact that franchisees, as independent entrepreneurs, have the right not to adopt all the modifications
proposed by the franchiser. A solution is to use the plural form, associating franchise and company
arrangements. In reality, the plural form is increasingly used in retailing; it has advantages over the pure
franchised and wholly owned chains in terms of innovation.
This paper deals with innovation management within the plural form network. Firstly, we point out difficulties
in managing innovation that network operators have to cope with. Secondly, we explain why the plural form
could facilitate innovation. And finally, we study the innovation process and build the process models for how
innovation is made and managed in the plural form network. Data for analysis are obtained by interviews with
network operators in France.
On the whole, this work tends to show the superiority of the plural form and has a practical purpose that is to
help the plural form network to optimize the management of innovation projects.
Key words :
Franchising, plural form network, retail and service sectors, innovation process, innovation management
1
Introduction
Innovation is increasingly seen as a powerful way of securing competitive advantage
and one of the key factors in a firm’s strategy for survival (Drucker, 1985). Innovation is not
easy to manage due to its characteristics of complexity, change and uncertainty. For a
network organization that possesses geographically dispersed business units, the management
of innovation is more complex and thus requires more effort. The purpose of this paper is to
investigate how innovation is made and managed within business networks, especially
focusing on the retail and service sectors. Retail and service networks may operate as unique
forms chains (i.e. franchised pure and wholly owned chains) or plural form networks
associating frequently franchise and company arrangements.
Overall, this paper deals with innovation management within the plural form network.
It is hypothesized that the plural form could be a better organizational option for point-of-sale
network in terms of developing innovation. Firstly, after a brief summary of the literature on
advantages and disadvantages of network structure, we point out difficulties faced by retail
network operators in the innovation management. Secondly, we explain why the plural form
having both franchise and company arrangements could facilitate innovation. Our analysis is
based on interviews with French franchisers in various sectors of activity and on the results of
past research (Bradach, 1998; Lewin-Solomons, 1998). We finally propose the models of
innovation process, which are expected to help the plural form network operators to optimize
the management of their innovation projects.
I, Innovation and network organization
A. Advantages of the network structure
The term “network”, by its definition, refers to a set of business units and
relationships which connect them (Fombrun, 1982). Networks operate under the principals of
mutual communication and cooperation for lower overhead cost, increased responsiveness
2
and flexibility, and greater operational efficiency (Lozenzoni and Baden, 1995). They allow
companies to gain access to complementary resources and competence, which are not
available internally. Networks are dynamic and flexible structures subject to change
(Hagedoorn, 1995).
Innovation could be more fostered thanks to interfaces between two or more parties.
In other words, innovation could be seen as an efficient process stemming from a network of
several actors. Various network’s attributes which influence the innovation capability can be
considered such as flexibility, speed and network learning system.

The network structure provides chains with the flexibility to respond to continuous
evolution and revolution in products, technologies and markets. Empirical investigations
have shown that alliances of small firms can archive higher flexibility and efficiency than
a single-plant enterprise (Semlinger, 1993). A greater organizational flexibility permits
greater abilities to adapt to the changing market conditions (Cliquet, 2000), and so a
better accommodation of novelty, innovation and local responsiveness.

Speed is viewed as an advantage of networks; speed is also essential for a successful
innovation. With the co-operation’s mechanism in the strategic development, networks
have generally an ability to respond to customer’s needs faster than a single unit does.
Hence, networks promote a means to reduce the time of the innovation process.
Moreover, speed offers three majors payoffs (Cooper, 1993.)
- Speed yields competitive advantage. The ability to respond to customers’ needs and
changing markets faster than competitors and to beat competitors to market with a new
product is often the key to success.
- Speed yields higher profitability. The revenue from the sale of the product is realized
earlier, and the revenues over the life of the product are higher, given a fixed window of
opportunity and hence limited product life.
3
- Speed means fewer surprises. The short timeframe reduces the odds that market
conditions will change dramatically as development proceeds.
Speed appears to be really a competitive weapon of the network structure.

Co-operation offers companies the availability of a wide range of resources almost
immediately. Under the current competitive circumstances, the two basic resources are
knowledge and relationships. Pooling those resources is necessary for a business network
to get stronger. The network organization form increases learning (Hakanson et al, 1999),
by providing linkages with external learning partners in long-term relationships that
facilitate information sharing. The diversity of information that resides in a network is
greater than that in a single firm. In fact, the network as a learning system provides skills
to organizations by creating, acquiring and transferring knowledge and modifying their
behavior in order to figure out new perspectives (Garvin, 1993).
Networks are powerful tools to foster innovation in company and industry-wide
(Gomez Arias, 1995). As for the retail and service sectors, it is observed that this type of
organization is more generally used and also enhances many activities including innovation.
In this paper, we concentrate on retail and service sectors. There are various network
structures that are popular in retailing. Bradach (1998) has proposed three types of network: a
centralized company-owned system, a decentralized franchise system and a plural form
network that associates both franchise and company arrangements. The first kind of system is
the basic hierarchical network where there is a center (operator) with dependent units.
Managers of these units are employees of the chain operator and they work under the
instructions of that operator. On the contrary, the franchising system is a decentralized
business network, which incorporates elements of both market and hierarchy (Williamson,
1991) and was called by Shane (1996) the hybrid organization. Indeed, the franchiser retains
the ownership and authority over the use of a trade name, the know-how in contracting with
4
independent franchisees. The operator-franchisees relationship is a partnership between
owners. Thirdly, the plural form network associates the strictly hierarchical mechanism of the
company arrangement and the hybrid market/ hierarchy of business format franchising.
Today, many retail chains adopt this organizational structure because the plural form
provides a significant number of advantages in terms of marketing (Cliquet, 2002), of
management (Bradach, 1997, 1998), of network performance (Sorenson & Sørensen, 2001)
and survival ability (Cliquet, Perrigot, 2002).
B. Some problems related to innovation faced by retail networks
However, networks have some major drawbacks. The more units with different
objectives and strategic agendas are involved, the more time consuming is the process of
decision making. Therefore, close attention must be given to the trade-off between faster
implementation and slower decision making. Required relationships and norms entail
drawbacks and hazards such as increasing complexity, less autonomy, information
asymmetry (Hagedoorn, 1995).
If network structure can promote innovation, it can also block it. It will be more
complicated for the network to manage innovation. In reality, the operators of retail networks
frequently have to confront this problem. We will explain it hereafter.
The network management is different from the management of a single unit in the fact
that the network operator has to control the set of geographically dispersed units. Many
difficulties result from this characteristic of the network organization. First, the operator
hardly knows the events, which happen at local units; so, may lose some control, especially
over remote units. When an innovation occurs, the problematic is how to implement the
innovation in maintaining the uniformity of the network. Bradach (1998) defined uniformity
as a key element of the business format chain. The objective of every chain is to build the
good image of its concept and keep it identical across all units (Lafontaine & Shaw, 1999).
5
The evolution of the concept is essential for the network to survive in competitive
circumstances, but it also makes the maintenance of uniformity a major challenge for network
operator.
It is difficult for the franchiser to have his concept deeply evolved in a pure franchised
chain when this evolution requires an important investment of franchisees. The franchiser can
not impose everything on his franchisees but rather persuade them to follow innovation. In
reality, implementing an innovation at company-owned units does not cause problem.
However, that requires efforts to diffuse innovation to franchised units. One of the drawbacks
of franchising is the fact that franchisees have the right not to adopt all the modifications
required by the franchiser in their own stores. The franchiser sometimes has to persuade his
franchisees and stays very flexible. In reality, there are many solutions: Catena (French do-ityourself network) provided financial help for its franchisees to set up a new commercial
brand with a new logo; Sweetlit (French home furnishing network) gave its franchisees a
certain period to completely implement an innovation. In the worst case, as in the case of
Galler Chocolat (Belgium confectionery network), if franchisees do not want to implement a
new concept, they can stay as they are and continue to work as they used to do. So, in chains
that have a rigid concept and where uniformity is highly required, it is necessary to maintain
a right proportion of franchised and company-owned units, which can influence the chain
performance (Sorenson & Sørensen, 2001).
The same thing happens with the systemwide adaptation. When an innovation is
proposed, the network operator has to adapt it in all different contexts, particularly while
there are points of sale abroad. The adaptation of a given innovation must be different from
one country to another, from one region to another or even from one unit to another. We
agree with Bradach (1998) in stating that systemwide adaptation is the most complex and
difficult of all management challenges facing retail networks.
6
We state that, in retailing, the plural form organizations, composed of franchised and
company-owned units, can more or less deal successfully with the obstacles mentioned
above. The next section will show how the plural form could facilitate innovation. Our
qualitative analysis is based on results of past research in the fast-food industry by Bradach
(1997) and Lewin-Solomons (1998) completed by our interviews with number of French
franchisers in various sectors of activity.
II, Influence of the plural form on innovation
The plural form seems to enhance the network's ability to innovate, explicitly in three
following aspects of the innovation process: innovation generation, innovation programming
and innovation implementation.
Idea generation
Generating ideas is the first stage of any innovation process. The plural form seems to
produce a greater variety of ideas than either arrangement could do by itself. By mixing a
company arrangement with expert staff and a franchise arrangement with its businessexperienced franchisees, the plural form benefits from two possible sources of information.
Ideas for new products or services can be developed in two ways: by the franchiser and his
company staff and by individual franchisees.
Within a plural form network, the franchise arrangement positively affects the systemwide development. With their experience in local markets, the franchisees play an important
role in the ideas generation stage. They are regularly in contact with consumers. They can
give local information feedback, if they want to, in order to help the chain’s operator to make
decisions.
“Yes, franchisees are a significant source of innovation because, thanks to them, we have the
feedback on consumer behavior. This enables us to adjust our concept of product or service
according to the consumer’s demand”. (French franchiser Sweetlit, home furnishing)
7
“If franchisees come up with an idea, it should be taken. Franchiser and franchisees always
work in groups. There are not two separated entities”. (French franchiser Sweetlit)
“We appreciate franchisees ideas because these ideas came from the local market. We have
some franchisees of high level who can reason, seek for and bring innovation ideas. It is one
of the great forces of franchising”. (French franchiser Feu Vert, car accessories)
Bradach’s study has shown that local managers in the company arrangement, as a
franchiser’s employee, rarely came up with innovative ideas. By contrast, everyone agreed
that franchisees were an important source of ideas, regarding the quantity of information and
the quality as well. Explanations for this can be found while analyzing two fundamental
differences between a company unit and a franchisee: incentives and initiatives (LewinSolomons, 1998). Franchisees have strong incentives to manage their own business as well as
possible because they are independent entrepreneurs who keep profits produced by them,
once the royalty payment is made. They are responsible for the results of their units, so take
part in the network management and innovation activities. On the contrary, the company
manager’s incentives are lower-powered because they operate as employees within a standard
corporate hierarchy. As far as initiatives are concerned, franchisees are much more
independent than company managers are. They exercise a great deal of initiatives to make
their business successful. Whereas company managers have to obey to authority, do not like
taking risk and depend on the chain operator’s decisions, franchisees have freedom in acting
on their own. These kinds of incentives and initiatives demonstrate that a franchised outlet
tends to perform better than company unit in generating innovations. For their own profits,
franchisees regularly think about making the network more efficient. Ideas from franchisees
once shared and accepted by other units will be converted into true and profitable projects.
Sometimes, owing to the presence of franchisees, company managers become more dynamic
8
and motivated. Through a mutual learning process, company units will be aware of their
responsibility to daily develop the network (Bradach, 1997).
Bradach (1998) cites franchisers’ arguments as illustrations. “If franchisees see a
competitor doing something, they will quickly call us and want to do it themselves.”
(Franchiser Hardee, fast food). According to the Kentucky Fried Chicken CEO,
franchisees accelerated the process of identifying opportunities for innovation:
“Ultimately we would identify these issues, but franchisees sometimes enable us to see
things earlier. “Franchisees are good at focusing on things that really hit the bottom
line”. From our own study on French franchisers, we can also notice: “Sometimes,
franchisees come up with ideas that we have never thought of before” (Franchiser Feu
Vert, car accessories).
In short, within the plural form structure, franchisees will develop their capabilities to
influence network performance in terms of innovation. For instance, franchisee’s local
responses push company units to be more dynamic, encourage the chain operator to develop
more new products/services or evolve the existing concept. Franchisers often rely on the
information, which comes up from local markets to define their policies. This flow of
information is rich qualitatively speaking because its stems from the direct contacts of local
units with consumers.
Testing and evaluating ideas
After having innovative ideas, it is important for the operator to evaluate whether the
innovation projects work as expected. Franchisees rarely participate in the formal testing and
evaluating process, mainly because the characteristics of a franchise contract have nothing to
do with field-testing. They are not ready to bear the risk of testing new ideas in their units.
Therefore, it is easier to work with company units. In every network we studied, innovation
ideas are conceived by the franchiser before being realized and diffused in the whole
9
network. Franchisees rarely participate in this stage because the project’s programming is
part of the network operator’s mission and tests for a new concept will be firstly carried at
company-owned outlets. Still, franchisees do play a certain role in testing and evaluating
innovation ideas. The independent thinking of franchisees is very valuable for the franchiser
to check and balance before making decisions. In other words, the franchiser listens to his
franchisees and acts according to their feedback. Franchisees tend to say exactly what they
think, either good or bad things. These obvious and frank opinions are helpful to the
franchiser to adjust the new concept and make good decisions. “We have franchisee
committees for many aspects like advertisement, information… We cannot do anything
without their opinion” (according to the director of Catena’s expansion department).
Implementation stage
In a plural form network, each arrangement has an effect on the way the other
arrangement works. A reciprocal influence positively affects the behavior of local units
toward innovation. The chain operator can persuade franchisees to adopt an innovation by
firstly implementing it in company units. The company’s adaptation will directly affect the
decision making process of franchisees. The network operator can also use the company’s
data to demonstrate the viability of the proposed innovations. When new ideas are
successfully adapted to company units, why not implement them in franchised stores? So, the
convergence of interest created by the plural form can encourage the franchisee’s acceptance.
In his turn, the franchisee also provides feedback. The chain operator can use the franchisee
performance to put pressure on company units or to set performance benchmarks for them.
In short, the relative weakness of a pure company arrangement is a function of few
locally generated innovations, low-powered incentives to innovate, the absence of initiatives
and experience, and the low level of local pressure on the franchiser to develop innovation. A
franchise arrangement provides these four things lacking in a company arrangement. First,
10
franchisees are an important source of local ideas. Second, franchisees have strong incentives
to generate new ideas for the network’s competitive advantage. Third, franchisees are
someone who has a good intuition based on their experience. Finally, franchisees serve as a
strong constituency pushing forward company managers and the chain operator to be more
dynamic and to generate more ideas. Generally, the innovation programming (comprising
innovation test and evaluation) is not composed of formal tasks for franchisees but it is at the
franchiser’s charge. However, the franchisee feedback is valuable for the network operator to
check and adjust an innovation project. The speed of implementing an innovation is very high
in pure company chains, but low in pure franchise arrangements, and considered as medium
in plural form networks. Actually, the plural form enables to accelerate the decision and
implementation processes in franchised units, mainly because of the use of company units as
screens for persuading franchisees to adopt innovations. In sum, the plural form seems to be a
better option in terms of supporting innovation, in comparison with the pure franchised and
wholly owned chains.
III, Innovation process modeling
A. A literature review on innovation process research
There are two streams of research on the innovation process (Wolfe, 1994). The first,
called stage model research (Ettlie, 1980; Perl, 1983), conceptualizes innovation as a series of
stages that unfold over time. The purpose of stage model research is to determine whether
innovation process involves identifiable stages and, if so, try to nominate and place these
stages in the right order. The second approach involves in-depth and longitudinal research
conducted to fully describe the sequences of innovation process and the conditions that
determine the innovation process. In this paper, we deal with the first approach.
11
An impressive number of innovation process models have been described in the
literature. A typology has been proposed according to various types of innovation (Saren,
1984):

Departmental-stage models consider the innovation process in relation with operational
department of the innovative firm (R&D, Design, Technique, Production, Marketing).

Decision-stage models are related to the series of decisions made (collecting information,
evaluating information, taking decision, identifying uncertainty)

Conversion process models deal with the innovation development like a process of
transformation of raw materials and information (input) into end product (output)

Response models are built as a function of the firm’s responses to both internal and
external stimuli (market demands, new product ideas, conception, acceptation or rejection
of innovation…)

Activity-stage models define an innovation process as the succession of stages or
activities
As we have mentioned above, stage model research places a premium on the temporal
sequence of activities in the development and implementation of innovation. The models by
activity are mostly considered. Table 1 presents different models proposed in the literature
As you can see in Table 1, many activity-stage models of innovation process are proposed
and there is significant overlap among the models. Therefore, it is possible to synthesize an
innovation process in the following general pattern: a generation of idea, a decision-making
unit becomes aware of an innovation idea, an evaluation considering a problem or
opportunity matched to the innovation, a test through which the innovation costs and profits
are appraised, a decision to adopt or reject innovation, an implementation of innovation, a
review of the innovation decision and a confirmation, a diffusion of innovation.
12
The management of innovation within networks has its specific points. It is interesting to
focus on the process for how innovation is made and managed within network structure. Until
now, no innovation process model for retail networks exists. The next section tends to
describe our attempt towards building such a model.
13
Table 1: Activity-stage models of innovation process1
Author
Zalman, Duncan &
Holbek (1973)
1
Daft (1978)
Idea
conception
2
Knowledge/
awareness
3
Attitude
formation
Ettlie (1980)
Awareness
Evaluation
Tornatsky et al.
(1983)
Awareness
Matching
/selection
Rogers (1983)
Knowledge
Meyer & Goes
(1988)
Knowledge/
awareness
Cooper & Zmud
(1990)
Initiation
(push or pull)
6
Decision
Proposal
Adoption/ Implementation
rejection
Trial
Selection
Bradach (1998)
Idea
generation
Evaluation
Composite
Ideas
generation
Evaluation
8
Adoption
/rejection
Implementation
Decision
Implementation
Adoption
Implementation
Adoption
Adapt/develop/
install
Acceptance/
usage
Development
Test/
confirmation
Test
Decision
Test
7
Initial
implementation
9
10
Sustained
implementation
Adoption/ Implementation
rejection
Evaluation /
choice
Idea
generation
1
5
Persuasion
Jallat (1994, 1999)
Awareness
4
Persuasion
Routinization/
commitment
Confirmation
Expansion
Incorporation/
routinization
Infusion
Diffusion
Implementation
Adoption Implementation Confirmation
decision
Routinization
Diffusion
Adapted from Wolfe (1994)
15
B. Innovation process model for the plural form network
Innovation in retailing: About the context of this study
Innovation in retailing refers to two fundamentally different activities: radical
innovation of the business system or sudden innovation and gradual improvements or regular
innovation within the current structure (Liebmann, 2003).
Radical innovation in retailing means the current structure undergoes fundamental
change. To a certain extent, the firm will be transformed in the future, e.g., new commercial
system like supermarket, e-business, etc.
We focus more on the second type of retail innovations: gradual and continuous
innovations. In this case, innovations mean improvements to existing operations in day-today business, i.e. new store concepts or services, new presentation and function of existing
products, new distribution channel, new marketing systems (Barreyre, 1980), cost reduction
programs, more efficient logistics processes (Leibmann, 2003). It is noted that this type of
innovation is often made in retail networks. So, we decided to choose this type of innovation
as the application field of our conceptual models.
Proposition of innovation process models
Studying the issue of innovation within a plural form network, we find that it is
possible to build an innovation process more efficiently applied to the plural form
organizations. During our interviews with franchisers, we found out the need for
communications between franchiser, franchisees and company units for more successful
innovation.
Rogers (1983) defined communication as the process by which participants create and
share information with one another in order to reach a mutual understanding. The pivotal role
of effective communication has been substantiated in many innovation studies. In fact, many
scholars in the field of innovation management have argued that innovation processes are
16
essentially communication and information processing activities (Allen, 1985; Brown and
Utterback, 1985; Ebadi and Utterback, 1984; Fidler and Johnson, 1984; Souder and
Moenaert, 1992; Tushman, 1979; Tushman and Nadler, 1980).
In a plural form network, because of the problem of divergent interests, the
communication stage is needed to make an innovation project more profitable for every unit.
Indeed, in the communication stage, franchiser, franchisees and company managers will meet
each other and discuss the feasibility of innovation ideas. When the new ideas are accepted
by a majority of people, the chance to succeed in following stages and in the whole
innovation project will be higher. So, we propose to add a communication stage in the
innovation process. Consequently, our model comprises five stages: ideas generation,
communication, innovation project design, test and evaluation, and innovation diffusion.
In principle, our model is based on the innovation process models proposed in the literature.
It essentially differs from others in the stage of communication. The position of this stage
may be changed according to where the innovation ideas come from. We distinguish two
cases:

Model 1 is considered when innovation comes from the franchiser.

Model 2 is applied if innovation is initiated by the franchisee.
The models are composed of three parts: stage, innovation process and place. There
are 5 stages in each model: ideas generation, communication, innovation project design, test
and evaluation, and innovation diffusion. In the column of innovation process, we describe by
chronological sequence, actions that should be taken at the place as you can find in the third
column of the model.
In Model 1, communication is stage number 4. In fact, thanks to the local unit
feedback, the competitive intelligence and the market analyses, the franchiser can have some
innovative ideas. The innovation project will be then programmed by the franchiser,
17
technically and commercially. Next, the prototype will be tested at company units. If the test
gives favorable results, switch to the communication stage. If not, return to the previous stage
to review and make adjustments. The communication is made through committee meetings
and at franchised units with the purpose of informing and persuading franchisees to adopt, to
train and give technical and financial aids for the implementation. Finally, it is the innovation
diffusion where new product and services will be commercialized in all units
Model 2 differs from model 1 by the fact that communication is the second stage.
Because when the innovation idea comes from a franchisee, it must be transferred to other
units for review before it comes to the elaboration step.
The two models are particularly designed for the plural form networks, which seem to
be in the majority of retail and service networks in France. These preliminary models are
based on our observations and on what the interviewees told us. We shall, in the near future,
test and improve these models among several chain operators in France.
18
INNOVATION PROCESS IN RETAIL PLURAL FORM NETWORKS
Model 1: If innovation comes from the franchiser
Stage

Ideas
generation
Innovation process
Local unités
feedback
Competitive
intelligence
Place
Market
analyses
Franchiser
or network
operator
Innovation ideas

Elaboration
of innovation
project
Technical
preparation
Programming
Commercial
preparation
(marketing)
Franchiser’s
R&D
department
Prototype

Test and
evaluation
Unfavorable
results
Test
and
Adjustment
(If necessary)
Company
units
Favorable results

Communicat
ion

Diffusion




To inform franchisees
To persuade (if necessary)
Training
Technical & financial aids
System-wide
commercialization
Committee
reunions and
franchised
units
Franchisees
Company
units
19
INNOVATION PROCESS IN PLURAL FORM NETWORKS
Model 2: If innovation comes from the franchisee(s)
Stages
Innovation process

Ideas
generation
Contacts with clients
Place
Competitive concepts
in local markets
Franchisees
Innovation ideas

Propose these ideas
Committee
Reunions
with
Franchiser
and other
units
Communicat
ion
Reject
No
Discussion:
Is the project
profitable for all
units?
Yes

Elaboration
of the
innovation
project
Technical
preparation
Programming
Commercial
preparation
Prototype

Test and
evaluation
Franchiser
Unfavorable
results
Test
and adjustment
( if necessary)
Company
units
Favorable results

Diffusion


Training
Technical & financial aids
All units
System-wide
commercialization
20
Conclusion
This paper offers a qualitative analysis of the influence of the plural form on
innovation management. It couples different research on the plural form choice (Bradach &
Eccles, 1989; Bradach, 1997, 1998; Lewin-Solomons, 1998, Cliquet et al., 1998, Sorenson &
Sorensen, 2000; etc.) These authors have shown the superiority of the plural form over the
unique form chains in terms of management, of marketing and network performance. We
approached in this paper another advantage of the plural form regarding the innovation
ability. Actually, the idea that the plural form seems to facilitate innovation was initiated by
Bradach in 1998 and later raised by Lewin-Solomons in her studies on U.S. fast-food chains.
We have strengthened this idea by examining it in others sectors and analyzing it in the
different stages of the innovation process. Two models of innovation process have been
proposed for plural form networks. Effectively, they require more empirical examination in a
larger sample. That constitutes one of our future works.
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