Fab Labs and the Extension of the Network Form: Towards a New Industrial Dynamic?

By Paul Bouvier-Patron
English

From the point of view of the theory of the firm, both analytically and practically, the managerial turn of the 1980s, in highlighting the network form of firms, contributes to the virtualization of exchanges via Internet and/or other new technologies: virtual form. Beyond, creation-fabrication is made possible by digital technologies as suggested by the development of experimental tools like the Fab Lab. The network of firms coordinating complementary expertise is found to be fit to solicit and enhance this new potential that is the Fab Lab, either as an intra-organizational creative space, of as a professional space of rapid prototypage in the inter-organizational context. This new original organizational way of combining the Fab Lab within the network of firms, by reducing design and innovation costs is, potentially, the foreseeable source of a new industrial dynamic. JEL Codes : D20, L10, L20, M10, O30

Keywords

  • FabLab
  • innovation
  • inter-organization
  • network
  • new technologies
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