Innovation Management and Temporality

The importance of temporal issues is rarely considered directly in the literature on innovation management. The study of the temporalities of innovation can be observed at the individual, organizational, inter-organizational and societal levels and three questions are linked to it: the rhythm of innovation, the temporal dialectic in innovation, and the values of time of the actors in innovation. What is the capacity of actors to adjust the pace of innovation in order to cope with different situations that may be sudden and unpredictable (market hazards, organizational changes)? Moreover, the same phenomenon can be considered according to different natures and intensities of time. The values and norms attached to time and their articulation across different levels (individuals, project, organization, society) can influence innovation processes.

Time in innovation and time of innovation are studied in this special issue of Innovations, Revue d’économie et de management de l’innovation.