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This caution is all the more necessary as we sometimes see the individual figure being substituted by that of the organization in studies. Following the example of the visionary entrepreneur, companies with exceptional characteristics (decompartmentalized, learning, hybrid, etc.) are designated as the driving force behind successful innovations. The Salomon company thus appears to be an ideal type of creative, even intuitive, organization, capable of managing uncertainty in order to regularly bring about innovations (Moingeon and Métais 1999; Puthod and Thévenard 1999; Desbordes 2001; Deroy 2004; Bueno Mérino et al. 2010). The Décathlon group – and one of its private labels, Quechua – are in turn analyzed as a hybrid organization capable of combining rational and turbulent processes in the service of effective innovations (Hillairet et al. 2010), in a description that seems somewhat idealized.

Moreover, Schumpeter’s brainwave leaves the concrete conditions of the success of innovations in the dark (aside from a mechanism of imitation of the innovator by follower companies). The work of Rogers (1995) would deepen the study of diffusion mechanisms, characterizing the way in which a novelty, more or less easily adoptable, spreads in a context (historical, social, technological, etc.) that is more or less favorable. The progressive adoption of an innovation by a growing number of users is done by persuasion and imitation, via a “trickle-down” movement (from the producer to the consumer, from the pioneers to the laggards, from the upper classes to other social circles). The success of an innovation is described as being linked to a double movement between certain endogenous factors which favor (or don’t favor) its progressive spread towards a market which is variably favorable (thus exogenous factors).