This article analyzes a program of cooperation, between social sciences and industry, which aims to develop alternative approaches to design innovation within an agri-food company. We question the ways in which socio-anthropological knowledge about food consumers is produced in the context of this partnership and is mobilized within the company to design more accurate innovations in terms of responsibility and fitness for market. From a field survey at the interface between action and critical research, we first analyze the origin and the concern of this partnership between the social sciences and the kind of knowledge they generate. We then show the inherent difficulties of this cooperation, in terms of dissonant temporalities between knowledge production and product design, system parameters, and the importance accorded by the latter within the company to socio-anthropological knowledge. JEL Codes : Z1, L66, O15, O32, O35