A Proposal for a Standard With Innovation Management System

Aurelie Delemarle and Claire Auplat
markets are not sustainable. These and the existing lack of structuration of markets may lead to a
period of disillusion which can repel investors and hinder the future of the industry, leading to an
unsustainable future.
We are here interested in the conditions for creating a sustainable market for radically new products
such as nanotechnology ones, and our hypothesis is that the entrepreneur plays a fundamental role in
it. Building on the current literature in entrepreneurship developed (Shane (2003), Casson (2005),
OECD (2009)), we consider not only the entrepreneur as discoverer and inventor but also as an
evaluator and exploiter of opportunities. We postulate that the entrepreneur contributes to the
transformation or manufacture of market structures to enable innovations to find their place and it may
well be part of designing a new regulatory framework for its products. Our concept of
entrepreneurship is part of the theory of intrapreneurship (Basso 2004, Pinchot and Pellman 1999) by
expanding the scope of the business strategy (Kim and Mauborgne 2005, Christensen and Raynor
2003). In situations of uncertainty, the work of marketing is made more difficult because the markets
are not structured to allow emerging products to find a place. We are working on the assumption that
the contractor can act to facilitate the marketing of its products and it takes the role of institutional
entrepreneur to change the institutional context in which it operates (Auplat 2009, Delemarle 2007,
DiMaggio 1988).
Using Callon’s concept of framing and overflowing (1998) to better understand market structure, we
argue that some elements in nanotechnologies cannot be handled by the existing structure of the
market. They are externalities that overflow. These externalities that are linked to sustainable
development issues give opportunities to entrepreneurs to act strategically, to act as institutional
entrepreneurs by organizing new frameworks or reorganizing old ones to favor the development of a
sustainable market. We argue that two types of strategies are possible for them: (1) Developing new
frameworks to face the overflowing. The cases of code of conducts or voluntary standards are
examples of such strategies; (2) Mobilizing elements of existing but unconnected structures and
rearrange them into a coherent normative structure which can be recognized by all stakeholders as
that in which the market can develop. Indeed the overflowing might have already handled by another
industry framework. Our paper is organized in the following manner: we first review specificities of
radical innovations and introduce Callon’s concept. We then point to the specificities of nanosciences
and technologies and present existing frameworks. We then discuss them and present our argument.
2. Organizing markets
Architectural or radical innovations as they are called by Abernathy and Clark (1985) refer to two
central dimensions (Noori et al. 1999, Colarelli O'Connor et al., 2001): (1) they generate uncertainty
as to the uses of innovation (market side) and (2) they question scientific and technological
capabilities to produce them (production side of science and technology). There is first in this
definition the need for consumers to "learn these new products" that are satisfying needs not yet
recognized as such or not expressed, and secondly, the development of scenarios by firms as a tool
to manage uncertainty. Sociologists of innovation emphasized the need for actors to share their vision
of the industry to others and to align around a vision of the future market (Callon, 1992, Rip et al.,
2001). Courtney et al. (1997) in strategy point to several strategies to face uncertainties. Among the
three strategies, we find shaping the market, taking options or following. The first one consist to
impose one’s preferred scenario, one’s preferred vision of the market to others and using terms uses
in sociology of innovation, it consists in aligning actors and creating coalitions.
Recalling the story of Edison, we can illustrate how, to impose its innovation, this entrepreneur acted
to create the physical infrastructure to have it works: he demonstrated the use of its innovation, he
organized the physical infrastructure in specific quarters before extending it, he convinced city majors
to have the technical infrastructure set up etc. Thus following this way of reasoning, we support the
idea that markets can be organized and that actors can develop strategies to do so.
We mobilize Callon’s concept of “framing and overflowing” (1998, 1999). This concept is derived from
the sociological use of the economic concept of externalities (Callon 1998 and 1999). The concept of
framing was originally developed by Erwing Goffman (1971). Frame defines what counts for the
actors engaged in a collective action. Thus the action of framing consists in defining what is important
and what should be the focus of actions. It results also in understanding the externalities (that are not
taken into account because there are outside of the frame): for Callon, it is these externalities that
lead to the overflowing: indeed the frame as it is does not allow any more issues to be solved. An
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