Abstract (EN)

In many companies, communities are viewed as pools of valuable innovations. The challenge for these companies is to capture and exploit these innovations without disturbing communities. Starting from an overview of the different forms of relations between innovation communities and companies, as well as their possible constraints to the diffusion of innovation, this article proposes an alternative form based the conception of organizations as “communities-of-communities”, inspired by the work of American pragmatist philosophers. Applied to a digital startup, this perspective reveals other facets of the innovation process: the duality between company and innovation communities fades and it is a social process, enabling to build a community within the company, that comes to light.