DIMETIC
April 11th 2011, Strasbourg
“Innovation and knowledge communities”.
Patrick Cohendet
HEC Montréal (Mosaic)
Université Strasbourg, BETA
References
• 
Cohendet.P; Héraud. J.A; Llerena P. (2011) : «Une dynamique de l innovation: une
interprétation de l approche de Michel Callon en termes de communautés de
connaissance», in M. AKRICH et al. (eds), Débordements. Mélanges offerts à Michel
Callon, Presses des Mines, Paris.
• 
P. Cohendet; D. Grandadam; L. Simon (2010), “The anatomy of the creative city”
Industry and Innovation,, vol7, n1, pp 91 – 111
• 
P.Cohendet; D. Grandadam; L. Simon., (2009) “Economics and the ecology of creativity:
Evidence from the popular music industry”, International Review of Applied Economics,
vol23, n6, pp709 à 722
• 
P.Cohendet; L.Simon, (2007) “Playing across the Playground: Paradoxes of knowledge
creation in the video-game firm», Journal of Organizational Behaviour,, p 587-605
• 
A. Amin; P.Cohendet (2004) Architectures of Knowledge: firms, capabilities and
communities,, Oxford University Press, Oxford UK.
Overview
q  Prelude: Fleming and the case of Penicillin.
q  Reminder: The Traditional Arrovian vision.
q  Questioning the traditional dynamics of Invention
q  On knowledge communities
q  Applications.
q  Application to the process of idea generation in creative firms
q  Application to the “creative city”.
1. Prelude: Fleming and the case of the Penicillin
1.
Penicillin: the discovery 1928
After the war, Fleming actively searched for anti-bacterial agents having
witnessed the death of many soldiers from septicaemia resulting from infected
wounds.
Fleming was already well-known as a brilliant researcher, but quite
careless lab technician; he often forgot cultures that he worked on, and his lab
in general was usually in chaos.
Source: Cohendet, Héraud, Llerena (2011).
2. Facing general indifference: Trying to Convince/
translate and looking for allies
• 
Fleming published his discovery in 1929 in the British Journal of
Experimental Pathology, but little attention was paid to his article.
• 
In the 1930s, Fleming’s trials occasionally showed more promise. In
particular he treated one of his assistants, Keith Rogers, who was probably
the first patient to be treated clinically with penicillin ointment to cure severe
conjunctivitis. However, Fleming faced considerable obstacles to replicate
and extent his inventive ideas to an industrial stage. Many clinical tests
were inconclusive, probably because he was thinking that penicillin should
be used as a surface antiseptic..
• 
Facing scepticism, doubts, misunderstandings, refusals to consider the
interest of his ideas from his own community of bacteriologists, he
undertook considerable efforts to alert other communities (chemists,
biologists, medicine, etc.) in order to convince them of the usefulness and
potentials of their discovery
3. The building of the “codebook” by the communities
• 
Fleming continued, until 1940, to try and interest some chemists skilled
enough to further refine usable penicillin. Florey (pathologist) and Chain
biologist) took up researching and tried mass producing it with the funds of
the U.S and British governments help.
• 
Within Oxford Dunn School, Ernst Chain and his team worked out how to
isolate and concentrate penicillin. He also correctly theorised the structure
of penicillin. Shortly after the team published its first results in 1940, Florey
Chain's head of department validated with Fleming Chain’s team results
• 
In the same school, Norman Heatley’s team suggested transferring the
active ingredient of penicillin back into water by changing its acidity. He
suggested trying the fermentation route instead of the chemical one. This
fermentation route produced enough of the drug to begin testing on animals.
4. Results of the innovative process
Fleming, Florey, and Chain jointly received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1945.
Sir Henry Harris said in 1998:
"Without Fleming, no Chain; without Chain, no Florey;
without Florey, no Heatley; without Heatley, no penicillin.“
2. Reminder: The Traditional Arrovian vision
The Traditional Arrovian vision (Arrow, 1962):
•  The development of innovation is reduced to a two step static process. The
first step is the phase of invention, the second step is the phase of a
generalised diffusion. The dynamics of creation and the pace of evolution
of innovation are « crunched » in the representation of the static process.
•  The phase of invention is initiated and achieved by a solitary inventor
facing the opportunistic behaviours of the other agents.
•  The new knowledge produced by the solitary inventor is assimilable to
information which possesses the generic properties of a pure “public
good” (non-rivalry and non-exclusion). The new knowledge produced
has also a high degree of generality (all the agents of the economy have
the full capability to absorb the innovative idea emitted by the producer of
knowledge)
The Traditional Arrovian vision (Arrow, 1962):continued
•  In such a context, the production of new knowledge faces the key problem
of appropriability: it is difficult for the inventor to appropriate the benefits
which flow from it.
•  At the level of society, the trade-off between incentives to invent and
diffusion of innovation is raised, and the main solution for solving this
issue is to build a strong system of property rights.
•  Thanks to these mechanisms, the second phase of the process, the
(controlled) phase of generalised diffusion can start
3. Questioning the traditional Arrovian vision
Revisiting the dynamics of invention
•  In Arrow’s perspective, the producer of knowledge acts in isolation:
nothing is said about the complementary forms of knowledge necessary for
the producer of knowledge to invent, and nothing is said about the
community of agents who supported him in the process that lead to the
invention. The main risk is the risk of being copied (at no cost).
•  Evolutionary view: The group of agents who succeed in expressing and
formalizing an innovative idea is confronted to the risk of being
misunderstood by others (including agents belonging to the same
institution). It is therefore the risk that their procedures and experience will
not be reproduced by others.
–  Without a collective effort to reach a critical mass of common understanding
between the different actors committed in this emerging phase, the innovation
process can not be viable.
–  The group of agents at the origin of an innovation must undertake considerable
efforts to alert other actors or communities in order to convince them of the
usefulness and potentials of their discovery
Revisiting the dynamics of invention (2).
• 
As Callon (1999) emphasised, in the phase of emergence of creative ideas, the
production of knowledge tends to exhibit exactly the reverse properties than the one
postulated by the traditional approach:
–  knowledge is essentially rival (it is extremely difficult to reproduce the new
knowledge in a place that is not the place where the invention has been first
realised)
–  Knowledge is essentially exclusive (the novelty relies heavily on the tacit
knowledge of inventors).
–  Knowledge is also essentially specific (it can be absorbed and used only by a
few other agents
• 
The logical conclusion therefore is that in the phase of emergence, there are
important reasons to support a hypothesis of strong appropriability.
• 
It is not the issue of appropriability that matters the most during this phase, but the
issue of the building of a quasi-public good: the critical mass of understanding
between inventors or more precisely communities of inventors, from which codes
and grammar of usage of the novelty will progressively be developed, in order to
reproduce, extend, and make the initial creative ideas viable.
Revisiting the dynamics of invention (3).
• 
In this emerging phase of production of knowledge, besides institutions and some
talented individuals, the active units are the knowing communities of agents that
are committed to the creation and accumulation of the new forms of knowledge:
• 
The fundamental cognitive building of the codes and grammar that will equip the
novelty requires the active functioning and interactions of knowing communities.
They achieve a process of progressive codification of knowledge, starting from a
phase where the actors do not know the characteristics of the novelty, do not know
each other, and do not possess the capabilities to communicate in order to reach a
phase where the novelty is equipped with sufficient shared understanding and codes
to become economically viable.
• 
Thus, the development of invention requires the progressive building of a common
base of knowledge, a model and a “grammar” (a”codebook”) to be able to
interpret tests, experiences and contexts of usage.
Revisiting the dynamics of invention (4)
• 
An essential part of the process of production of knowledge can be interpreted as
resulting from the dynamics of interactions between knowing communities. These
interactions can be approached through the principle of ‘translation/
enrolment’ (Callon, Latour, 1991). The innovative diffusion of ideas can be seen as
a process of progressive contagion of communities, where each community makes
efforts to ‘command the attention’ of other communities to convince them of the
relevant interest of the knowledge it has elaborated.
• 
This essential process of progressive codification is not a linear one. It generally
involves an early phase during which the innovators encounter misunderstandings,
conflicts and difficulty to convince. The first steps in the emerging phase can be
long and painful. It generally requires boundary spanners, boundary objects, etc. to
facilitate the dialogue between knowing communities.
• 
It is only at the end of the process, at a stage which can be described as the “phase
of stabilisation”, when the characteristics of the novelty are fully understood, and
described in codes and procedures that every agent can access and use, that we
reach a situation which corresponds to the traditional context of production of
knowledge as described by Arrow.
Revisiting the dynamics of creative ideas (5).
•  Phase of emergence
Phase of stabilisation
–  Knowledge: rival
–  Knowledge non-rival
–  Knowledge: exclusive
–  Knowledge non-exclusive
–  Knowledge: specific
–  Knowledge general
–  Strong appropriability
–  Weak appropriability
–  Active units: communities
–  Active units : firms.
The process of creation of ideas = “Self-organised RD consortium”,
Cassier and Foray (2002, p.124)
- The dynamic process of creation of ideas the precedes the innovation process is
often characterised by stronger economic motives to pool and share knowledge
than to delineate private domains of knowledge and keep secrecy
- 
It allows agents to develop concerted actions by organizing the division of labour to
explore a certain domain and providing an institutional framework to assemble
divided and dispersed knowledge.
- 
It creates spaces for sharing knowledge, in which there is a break from
technological secrecy and the retention of knowledge by private agents. It
generates a new economic category of knowledge called collective or pooled
knowledge, which is shared among participants during the period of research.
- 
It can enable agents to create a more consistent and coherent initial endowment of
intellectual property rights, which does not fragment the knowledge base. When the
knowledge is initially fragmented (anticommons property), the consortium provides
a space in which rights can be exchanged at a low cost, because partners are well
identified and some collective learning can occur.
Knowledge
Creation
Innovation
Individuals
Communities
Organisations
Markets
Science – Technologie - Société – Usagers Milieu
The social dynamics of innovation
Cohendet, P., Grandadam, D. et Simon, L «Réseaux, communautés et projets dans les processus créatifs», Management international, vol. 13, no 1, 2008.
4. On knowing communities (Boland, Tenkasi, 1995)
Properties of knowing communities (1)
•  1) Members of the community accept to exchange voluntarily and on a
regular basis about a common interest or objective in a given specialised
field of knowledge.
•  2) Through their repeated interactions and common practice, members
build progressively a shared identity and social norms « The shared
identity does not only lower the costs of communication, but establishes
tacit and codified rules of coordination ».
•  3) Communities have no clear boundaries.
•  4) There is no visible or explicit hierarchy at the top of them that can
control the quality of work or the respect of any standard procedure
•  5) The notion of contract is meaningless within the members of the
community. Traditional incentives do not apply. But reputation matters
(Lerner and Tirole, 2002).
Benefits of K communities for the organisation
• 
Support (at negligeable costs) the fixed costs of building and accumulating
knowledge in a given domain (common language, methods, models, etc..)
• 
Help drive strategy, build core capabilities and knowledge competencies
(local units of competence).
• 
Brings on a permanent basis ideas from the outside world (units of
absorptive capabilities). Transfer best practices.Support faster problem
solving both locally and organisation wide
• 
Aid in developing, recruiting and retaining talent. Helps knowledge workers
stay current.
Benefits from communities of practice at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNCb7QsAb3I
2
3
Limits of K communities
• 
Risk of parochialism
• 
Risk of emergence of a « guru »
• 
Risk of lack of interactions between communities
• 
Risk of conflicts between communities
• 
Fragility: risk of destruction
• 
Risk of « leakeages » of strategic corporate information
• 
etc.
Different types of K communities
Principal activity of knowledge
Type of community
Accumulating knowledge in a given
practice
Communities of practice
Creation/production of new knowledge
Epistemic communities
Problem solving
Communities of experts
Accumulating knowledge in a given
domain of interest
Communities of interest
Continuous updating of knowledge in a
given profession
Communities of
professionals
Types of communities (Amin and Roberts, 2008)
Social interaction
Activity
Type of
knowledge
nature of
communication
Temporal
aspects
Nature of
social
ties
Innovation
Organisational
dynamic
Craft/task based
Aesthetic, kinaesthetic and
embodied knowledge
Knowledge transfer
requires co-location –
face to face
communication,
importance of
demonstration
Long-lived and
apprenticeshipbased
Interpersonal
Customised,
trust –
incremental
mutuality
through the
performance of
shared tasks
Hierarchically
managed
Open to new
members
Professional
Specialised expert knowledge
acquired through prolonged
periods of education and
training.
Declarative knowledge.
Mind-matter and
technologically embodied.
Co-location required in
the development of
professional status for
communication
through
demonstration. Not as
important thereafter
Long-lived and
slow to change.
Developing formal
regulatory
institutions
Institutional
trust based on
professional
standards of
conduct
Large hierarchical
managed
organisations or
small peer managed
organisations
Restrictions on the
entry of new
members
Expert/
Creative
Specialised and expert
knowledge, including
standards and codes,
(including meta-codes).
Exist to extend knowledge
base.
Temporary creative coalitions;
knowledge changing rapidly
Spatial and/or
relational proximity.
Communication
facilitated through a
combination of faceto-face and
distanciated contact.
Short-lived
drawing on
institutional
resources from a
variety of expert/
creative fields
Virtual
Codified and tacit from
codified
Exploratory and exploitative
Social interaction
mediated through
technology – face to
screen. Distanciated
communication
Rich web-based
anthropology
Long and short
lived.
Developing
through fast and
asynchronous
interaction
Incremental or
radical but strongly
bound by
institutional/
professional rules.
Radical innovation
stimulated by
contact with other
communities
Trust based on High energy, radical
reputation and innovation
expertise,
weak social
ties
Weak social
ties;
reputational
trust; object
orientation
Incremental and
radical
Group/project
managed
Open to those with a
reputation in the
field
Management
through
intermediaries and
boundary objects
Carefully managed
by community
moderators or
technological
sequences.
Open, but self
regulating.
Differences between
a community and a project team
•  Project team
–  Common goal within a time
and cost constraints
–  Under the explicit supervision
of hierarchy
–  Newcomers are chosen by the
team leader.
–  Difficulty in replicating routines
• 
Community
–  Common passion without time
constraint. Cost matters but
not as a constraint.
–  No explicit hierarchy
–  Newcomers are introduced to
the community by « learning
periphery participation ».
–  No difficulty in replicating
routines.
Bowles, S., and Gintis H. (2000). ‘Social Capital and Community
Governance’, Working Paper 01-01-003, Santa Fe Institute,
www.santafe.edu/sfi/publications/Working-Papers/01-01-003.pdf.
•  ‘Community’ better captures the aspects of governance that explain
the popularity of ‘social capital’, as it focuses attention on what
groups do rather than what people own.
•  …. By community we mean a group of people who interact directly,
frequently and in multi-faceted ways. People who work together are
usually communities in this sense, as are some neighborhoods,
groups of friends, professional and business networks, gangs, and
sports leagues. The list suggests that connection, not affection, is
the defining characteristic of a community.
The ideal-typical organizational forms
Markets
Organisations
Communities
Historically, the focus on communities has changed
1. Early 90 s Communities of practice (Brown, Duguid, Wenger, Lave,
Boland, Mc Dermott, etc ..), then on epistemic communities (KnorrCetina, David, Foray , Cowan, etc.).
2. Mid 90s, early 2000s: Virtual and open communities (Rheingold,
von Krogh, von Hippel, Tirole, Lerner, Lakhani, etc.)
3. From early 2000s, communities of users (von Krogh, Dahlander,
Magnusson, Jaeger, etc.)
Brown, J. S., and Duguid P. (1991). ‘Organizational learning and communities
of practice: toward a unified view of working, learning and innovation',
Organization Science, 2, 1: 40-57.
(Organization can be seen) « as a collective of communities, not
simply of individuals, in which enacting experiments are
legitimate, separate community perspectives can be amplified by
inter-changes among communities……
Out of this friction of competing ideas can come the sort of
improvisational sparks necessary for igniting organisational
innovation.
Thus large organisations, reflectively structured, are perhaps well
positioned to be highly innovative and to deal with discontinuities.
If their internal communities have a reasonable degree of
autonomy and independence from the dominant worldview, large
organisations might actually accelerate innovation”.
5. Applications.
Knowledge
Creation
Innovation
Individuals
Communities
Organisations
Markets
Science – Technologie - Société – Usagers Milieu
The social dynamics of innovation
Cohendet, P., Grandadam, D. et Simon, L «Réseaux, communautés et projets dans les processus créatifs», Management international, vol. 13, no 1, 2008.
Application 1: understanding the use of patents
Application 2: process of ideas generation/ versus process of
innovation in the firm in creative industries
Application 3: innovative territories
6. Application on « creative firms ».
The Crea(ve Economy 36
The UNO report on creative economy
(UNCTAD, 2008)
United Na0ons Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) United Na0ons Development Programme (UNDP) Special Unit for South-­‐South Coopera0on United Na0ons Educa0onal, Scien0fic and Cultural Organiza0on (UNESCO) World Intellectual Property Organiza0on (WIPO) Interna0onal Trade Centre (ITC)”. “The interface among crea0vity, culture economics and technology, as expressed in the ability to create and circulate intellectual capital, has the poten0al to generate income, jobs and export earnings while at the same 0me promo0ng social inclusion, cultural diversity and human development”
Since the beginning of the 90s, the economic growth of creative industries is
two times bigger than the growth of the service activities and four times
bigger than the growth of manufacturing industries. 37
The Drivers of the Economy of Creativity:
The Creative Industries
The creative industries comprise advertising, architecture, arts &crafts, design,
fashion, film, music, performing arts, publishing, software, toys and games, TV
and radio, and video games (Howkins, The Creative Economy, 2001, p. 88-117).
They integrate science, technology and arts, and use creativity and intellectual
capital as primary inputs.(Creative Economy Report, 2008. p. 13.)
- Few intensive formalized R&D activities, very small R&D
unit/laboratories
- No subsidiary dedicated to R&D
- Few direct contracts with universities or academic research
centers
- Very little involvement in international research alliances,
consortia…
Conceptual research issues and
challenges
The established economic theories of the firm (Agency, Transactional,
Evolutionary, Knowledge-based approach, etc.) and organizational theories have
been significantly inspired by the manufacturing industries.
To what extent can they offer pertinent and consistant frames of
interpretation of the creative industries?
In particular, could creative industries be seen as mere «nexus of
contracts»
industries ?
(Williamson, Aoki, etc..) as the traditional
A Stylized Case: Ubisoft Montreal
Firm’s ID: Ubisoft: French based video-games developer (80%) and publisher (20%),
established in 1985. Ranked: 3rd independant publisher in the US (2008, 7,2 % market
share), 2nd in Europe (2008, 9.5 %). Results: euros 1, 058 M ., net cash position: euros 155
M. (2008-9).
Montreal Studio (established 1997, localized in the Mile-End area)
-  1800 + employees (2009), 1600 of which in the same building
-  Demographics :
Employees average age : 27, management average age : 32
Most of them active as cultural creatives and consumers of
creativity
-  Projects portfolio :
20 + products developed in parallel / 10+ new products a year
Blockbusters (2 to 3 / year), casual, licenses
Main Mtl. brands: Splinter Cell, Assassin’s Creed, Prince of
Persia…
Montreal video game cluster: 5500 game developers, 10000+ employees (Gvt. grants from
1997). Historical players: Softimage, Discreet Logic, Kutoka Interactive, DTI …
Main players: EA, Activision, Warner, Eidos, A2M, Ludia…
Empirical sources: - Organizational ethnography (Simon, 2002, PhD dissertation)
-  Regular updates through constant interactions with managers and
employees.
Organization of the Ubisoft Montreal Studio
-  Formerly a functional matrix structure (97-98) and balanced matrix structure
(99-00)
-  Projects-led firm, (since 2000) based on interdisciplinary, modular projects,
involving diverse creative communities (or communities of specialists in Ubisoft
jargon) : Script writers, game-designers, graphic artists in 2D and 3D, sound
designers, software programmers, testers, etc..(Crosby, 2000).
-  Intensive informal connections/knowledge flows between employees / communities
members:
- with the other project team members
- inside the main building, with other employees from different projects
- outside the firm, in the local area, with employees from different projects
- outside the firm, with the Underground, and other creative individuals
- outside the firm, in Montréal with other employees from the video-game
cluster, with other creative groups
Projects/Creative Communities at Ubisoft
CEO
Finance
Project
Community
HR
Artistic/creative
direction
Production &
process
Marketing
& Sales
R&D
Intensive knowledge flows, under project constraints
Loose knowledge flows
Knowledge flows inside a community
Accumulation of specialised knowledge
Creative slack
Main observations at Ubisoft Montreal Studio
“Dual” dynamics
•  Classical innovation process based on projects, mostly managed by the
hierarchy
•  Ideas management process fed by the “creative slack”, mostly fed by
communities
« Both mechanisms of exploration and exploitation are inherently shared between a
component that is internal to the firm (and control by it) and a component that is not
only largely external to the firm, but also essentially informal (which implies that the
classical means of control, such as contractual schemes are irrelevant)….
Exploitation and exploration tend to be unfolded in an organically intricate and
complementary way where they constantly fuel each other “ (Cohendet, Simon,
2007).
Creativity in “Traditional Industries”
• Ideas generation and the management of innovative project tend to be sequential.
• Once the project is decided by the hierarchy, the process of idea generation is
launched.
It mixes ideas from R&D, diverse forms of absorptive capacity (market analysis),
brainstorming sessions…
• Priority is given to the « cristalization » of the concept.
• As it unfolds, the project dynamic supposes a progressive reduction of the variety
of avalable options (traditional «stage-gate»)
• When the project is over, the accumulated knowledge is difficult to assess and to
transfer to future projects.
Classical Stage-Gate process
(Cooper, 1988)
Idea
Generation
Gate 1:
Idea screen
Build
business
case
Development
Gate 2:
Go to
development
Gate 3:
Go to tests
Testing &
valuation
Gate 4:
Go to launch
Launch
Sustained Creativity in “Creative Industries”
Idea generation and the management of projects are « parallel processes».
They feed and fuel each other.
The process of idea generation assures the sustained creativity of the firm.
It is essentially nurtured by the creative communities.
The fundamental component of idea generation is the « creative slack ».
The creative slack fosters complementarities and mutual fuelling between
explorative and exploitative activities.
The creative slack is distributed partly in the formalised codified
knowledge base of the firm but mostly in the cognitive activity of the
communities.
Projects and ideas generation at Ubisoft
Process of idea generation
Communities
Knowledge
brokers
Boundary
objects, etc.
Management of projects
Sustaining Creativity through Creative Slack
The remarkable characteristic of the process is the formation of a creative slack
viewed as a “repertoire of creative opportunities” which contribute to guide the
choice of future project and beyond the growth of the firm. The creative slack is
shaped by the culture of the firm and is essentially understandable through the
jargon of the organization.
In line with Penrose’s vision, the firm which has accumulated a creative slack is
better prepared than any other organization to derive a benefit from the creative
potential of the slack. Because of these idiosyncrasies, it is much cheaper to
valorize the slack within the firm which holds it than through any other organization
(including through any isolated communities).
Some may argue that the creative slack appears as a cushion of redundancy which
is costly to maintain. The specific conditions of formation of the creative slack in
videogames companies (which relies on the functioning of quasi autonomous
communities which naturally take in charge at negligible costs the production and
conservation of knowledge in their domain of specialization) offer strong guarantees
of the efficiency of maintaining the creative slack at low costs.
The slack is not “possessed by the firm”. It is essentially “delegated” to the
communities.
7. Application on « creative cities ».
On Creative cities.
Elbeuf, France, XIXth
Houston, Texas, XXth
Creative projects in Chicago, XXIth
51
Industrial clusters.
Territories of industrial concentration between firms, R&D units and
related institutions. (Marshal, Weber, Glaeser, Jacobs, Porter, etc.).
The main creative forces are located at the articulation of science and
industry (“invention paradigm”, Arthur, 2006).
Two main types of industrial clusters
The main distinction between different industrial clusters is
related to the nature of economic externalities arising between
institutions
On the one hand (Marshall,
A r r o w, P o r t e r, G l a e s e r )
Cluster based on « Specialization »:
knowledge is predominantly
industry-specific and the
spillovers may arise between
firms within the same industry
(localisation externalities).
Cluster based on « Diversity»:
On the other hand, Jacobs
(1969), argues that knowledge
may spill-over between
complementary rather than
similar industries since ideas
developed by one industry can
be applied to others.
The City and the Creative Class
•  Florida (2002): for cities to develop, they need to attract a creative
class of workers by providing, through investment in cultural facilities
and other related amenities, a fertile place for this population to
imagine new products, technologies, or processes..
•  Severe criticisms: Malenga (2004); Peck(2005), Scott (2006), etc.
pinpointing some major weaknesses.
•  Our view (Cohendet, Grandadam, Simon, 2010): Florida considers
who these creative people are, but he does not explain and analyse
what they really do.
The Anatomy of the Creative City.
Specific ecology of knowledge where creative ideas transit from the micro to the
macro-level, through the accumulation, the combination, the enrichment and the
renewal of distributed bits of knowledge dispersed all over the local territory.
The dynamics of creativity lie in the interaction between
three different layers of a territory:
The Upperground,
The Middleground
? ??
?
??
The Underground.
55
Creative cities: 1) the « Upperground »
•  Creative firms, as well as institutions (research labs, universities, cultural
and artistic centers). These formal organizations contribute to the creative
process by their capacity to finance and unite the different expressions
together, to integrate dispersed types of knowledge, and to test new forms
of creativity on the market.
•  They have no large R&D departments, nor any worldwide subsidiaries to tap
into for external creative ideas, neither an access to creative knowledge
through their participation in global networks of diverse partners.
•  They tap a significant amount of creative ideas in the middleground
•  They generally concentrate internally on the governance of multi-project
activities which contribute to generate, exploit and develop a “creative slack”
as a source of growth of the firm.
.
Creative Cities: 2)The Underground
•  The underground brings together the creative, artistic, and cultural
activities taking place outside any formal organization or institution
based on production, exploitation or diffusion.
•  Underground “refers to relatively autonomous processes of cultural
production that unfold in the urban environment. These are typically
processes of unpaid productive cooperation, which are present
especially in the city. experimental and cutting edge, more authentic,
rebellious and ‘cool’ than others, and thus intrinsically opposed to
the corporate logic of standardization and ‘commodification’”.
(Arvidsson, 2007)
Creative cities: 3) the Middleground
•  In the context of creative spaces or milieus, the dynamics of
creativity presuppose the existence of intermediary groups and
communities that link the informal underground culture with the
formal organizations and institutions.
•  By progressively codifying the new knowledge, these groups provide
the necessary cognitive platform to make creative material
economically marketable and viable.
• 
As a consequence, these communities are the main sources for the
accumulation of innovative micro-ideas, which may become
potential foundations for the establishment of economic applications
that may enter the market for creative goods and services.
The middleground of videogames at
Montréal
Source, Cohendet, Grandadam, Simon, « The anatomy of the creative city », 2009
5
9
How to nurture the middleground
Places: the realm of near, intimate, and bounded relations, physically
established
Spaces: the realm of far, impersonal, and fluid relations, cognitive
constructions.
PLACES
SPACES
PROJETS
EVENTS
Projects : engage local communities in conversations and work
together
Events: open the small local worlds to new global
influences.
60
An history of the process of innovation:
The case of penicillin (W. Kingston, RP 2000)
•  Originally noticed by a French medical student, Ernest Duchesne, in
1896. However his paper was not accepted by the Institut Pasteur
because of his young age. Penicillin was re-discovered by
bacteriologist Alexander Fleming working at St. Mary's Hospital in
London in 1928.
•  After the war, Fleming actively searched for anti-bacterial agents
having witnessed the death of many soldiers from septicemia
resulting from infected wounds.
Fleming’s discovery :1928
•  Fleming was already well-known as a brilliant researcher, but quite
careless lab technician; he often forgot cultures that he worked on,
and his lab in general was usually in chaos.
•  After returning from a long holiday, Fleming noticed that many of his
culture dishes were contaminated with a fungus and he threw the
dishes in disinfectant. But on one occasion, he had to show a visitor
what he had been researching, and so he retrieved some of the
unsubmerged dishes that he would have otherwise discarded, when
he then noticed a zone around an invading fungus where the
bacteria could not seem to grow.
•  Fleming proceeded to isolate an extract from the mould, correctly
identified it as being from the Penicillium genus, and therefore
named the agent penicillin.
The innovative process:
From a laboratory curiosity to industrial scale production
• 
Fleming published his discovery in 1929 in the British Journal of
Experimental Pathology, but little attention was paid to his article. Many
clinical tests were inconclusive, probably because it had been used as a
surface antiseptic.
• 
In the 1930s, Fleming’s trials occasionally showed more promise. In
particular he treated one of his assistants, Keith Rogers, who was probably
the first patient to be treated clinically with penicillin ointment to cure severe
conjunctivitis. However, Fleming faced considerable obstacles to replicate
and extent his inventive ideas to an industrial stage. Many clinical tests
were inconclusive, probably because he was thinking that penicillin should
be used as a surface antiseptic..
• 
However he continued, until 1940, to try and interest some chemists skilled
enough to further refine usable penicillin. Florey and Chain took up
researching and tried mass producing it with the funds of the U.S and British
governments help.
Patenting penicillin
•  By November 26, 1941, Andrew J. Moyer, the lab's expert on the
nutrition of molds, had succeeded, with the assistance of Dr.
Heatley, in increasing the yields of penicillin 10 times. In 1943, the
required clinical trials were performed and penicillin was shown to
be the most effective antibacterial agent to date.
•  Penicillin production was quickly scaled up and available in quantity
to treat Allied soldiers wounded on D-Day. They started mass
production after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. When D-day arrived
they had made enough penicillin to treat all the wounded ally forces.
As production was increased, the price dropped from nearly
priceless in 1940, to $20 per dose in July 1943, to $0.55 per dose by
1946.
•  On May 25, 1948, Andrew J Moyer Peoria Laboratories was granted
a patent for a method of the mass production of penicillin.
Was the missing element, in the 1928 to 1941
gap, the absence of patent incentive?
• 
The inducement to produce penicillin during World War II was largely driven
by the War Production Board, and far from encouraging proprietary
exclusive property rights, the U.S. Government basically forced various
pharmaceutical manufacturers to share technology, including various
manufacturing patents. There were four important factors in this story:
–  It took Florey and Chain to demonstrate the clinical potential.
–  It was very hard to manufacture penicillin in sufficient quantity, and the scientific
groups funding R&D strongly favoured trying to chemically synthesize penicillin,
rather than producing it through fermentation (penicillin is made by fermentation
even today).
–  It was a USDA government laboratory that increased yield of penicillin and made
it feasible to go to large-scale production.
–  Government grants to build fermentation capacity proved crucial to getting
companies involved, not the absence of patent incentive on the chemical
structure. The armed forces agreed to fixed contracts to buy penicillin as it was
produced. The government thus induced innovation by supply-push (subsidy for
manufacture) and demand-pull (guaranteed market). Another option for
government action - patenting the chemical structure and backing up exclusive
property rights - was not used in this case.
4. The innovative process:
From a laboratory curiosity to industrial scale production
• 
• 
Within Oxford Dunn School, Ernst Chain and his team worked out how to
isolate and concentrate penicillin. He also correctly theorised the structure
of penicillin. Shortly after the team published its first results in 1940, Howard
Florey Chain's head of department validated with Fleming Chain’s team
results
In the same school, Norman Heatley’s team suggested transferring the
active ingredient of penicillin back into water by changing its acidity. He
suggested trying the fermentation route instead of the chemical one. This
fermentation route produced enough of the drug to begin testing on animals.
• 
Sir Henry Harris said in 1998: "Without Fleming, no Chain; without
Chain, no Florey; without Florey, no Heatley; without Heatley, no
penicillin." There were many more people involved in the Oxford team, and
at one point the entire Dunn School was involved in its production.
• 
Fleming, Florey, and Chain jointly received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in
1945.