Innover de façon plus juste ? De la place des connaissances dans un dispositif de coopération sciences sociales – industrie

This article analyzes a cooperation program between social sciences and industry, which aims to develop alternative approaches to design innovation within a food company. We question the ways in which socio-anthropological knowledge about food consumers are produced as part of this partnership, and are mobilized within the company to design more accurate innovations, in terms of responsibility and fitness to market. From a field survey at the interface between action and critical research, we first analyze the origin and the issue of the partnership between the company, social sciences and the kind of knowledge they generate. We then show the inherent difficulties of this cooperation, in terms of contrasted temporality between knowledge production and product design, boundaries of the methodology, and in the latter, emphasis put by the company on the socio-anthropological knowledge. JEL Codes : Z1, L66, O15, O32, O35