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This situation refers to a classic difficulty in the social sciences: the concepts used circulate for the most part in everyday language, often in a vague manner and according to a variety of meanings (Bajoit 2003; Passeron 2006). A classic trap is to consider the categories of common sense sufficiently “meaningful” not to bother with costly terminological precautions (Duchastel and Laberge 1999).

In this opening section, we will try to avoid the frequent confusion between invention and innovation. In light of the above, it would be futile to seek a generic definition of innovation. However, all of the work in the social and management sciences incorporates a fundamental distinction made by Schumpeter nearly a century ago: invention – the inaugural discovery of a new thing – should never be confused with innovation – a process of a fundamentally social nature (Alter 2000). If the former refers to an idea, initial concept or prototype, the latter is conceived as the progressive socialization of this discovery. In a way, the condition for innovation is that the initial idea be “adopted, at least by and in a social milieu” (Gaglio 2011, p. 4). This may involve bringing the invention to market, but this step cannot be considered sufficient to make it an innovation: many commercialized products and services hardly find any takers (Teece 2010). The success of an innovation is indeed linked to its appropriation by consumers or end-users. Beyond this common denominator, the understanding of the process leading from invention to innovation (for example, the conditions of emergence or expansion), as well as the types of actors considered to play a role in it, clearly vary according to theoretical and disciplinary approaches. It should also be noted that there is an ambiguity in the term innovation, which designates both a thing and a state (a novelty that has succeeded) and a process (the actions and trajectory of diffusion of a novelty).