FabLab – a new space for commons-based peer production

International audienceOver the last 20 years, companies’ innovation practices have been revolutionised with the emergence of Web 2.0 and the possibilities offered by digital technology. Having paved the way with the concepts of open innovation (OI), Chesbrough (2003, 2006) and Von Hippel (2006) have conceptualised a trend that radically alters our classic design and research model. Challenging the traditional principle of innovation, which is internal and “closed”, the concept of OI has shed light on brand new practices that aim to boost a company’s innovative capacity through its relations and exchanges with the exterior. Even though this concept alone does not cover completely new tools (licence agreements or partnerships and networks are well-known mechanisms), it nonetheless remains that Open Innovation promotes new mechanisms that enable companies to open up to the outside world (in the widest sense of the term). Internet-based digital tools make it possible to create intermediation platforms and websites for companies whose aim is to seek out knowledge, skills and expertise beyond their own borders and beyond their well-identified circles of more or less direct partners (Liotard & Revest, 2017). The great strength of Web 2.0 is, then, to open the company up to the exterior, in the broadest sense because the “the exterior” now includes everyone (Internauts, students, employees, etc.), with the unprecedented characteristic of their having no previous connection with the company in question. Crowdsourcing now gives access to a great number of innovative proposals , and contributes to bottom-up forms of innovation. However, these new practices are not the only ones to emerge, and other formats are now radically transforming innovation’s traditional foundations. In particular, spaces known as FabLabs (FL) are currently springing up all over the world. This wave, instigated in 1998 by MIT professor Neil Gerhenfeld, has become widespread, and has led to the constitution of a network of FabLabs in both developed countries and the Global South . Notably, these collaboration spaces, stemming from a desire to share knowledge and openings, call into question production (which becomes local), intellectual property (more open, based on open source files and pooling material), hierarchy (peer communities enable projects to be carried out and FabLabs are emerging as non-hierarchical, horizontal spaces), and lastly, the role of the individual in a certain number of initiatives. These digital manufacturing spaces make digitally-controlled machines and 3D printers available, representing not only a possibility for decentralised production and design for individuals but also offering open production spaces for both small and large companies, which also go there to seek training. The aim of this paper is to shed light on this new type of space and to define the different business models. It is based on a series of interviews we conducted between January and April 2017 with FabManagers from the Paris area and other regions in Franc