In what ways agro-food business strategies in rural areas can be considered as “smarts”? The case of the French department of Aveyron - Archive ouverte HAL Accéder directement au contenu
Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2016

In what ways agro-food business strategies in rural areas can be considered as “smarts”? The case of the French department of Aveyron

Résumé

Metropolis are considered as the places where innovations emerge. Therefore, they are often seen as the driver of regional development, in particular because they enable economies of agglomeration (Audretsch and Feldman 2004; Massard and Mehier 2009). This perspective lowers the role of rural areas in development processes. On the contrary, we claim that rural areas are also places where innovation can happen (Magrini and Galliano 2012). As part of the European research project “Towards a SmarT rural Europe” (TASTE), our study questions the processes of innovation that can be observed in European rural areas by examining the case of the French department of Aveyron. The purpose of this study is thus to understand to what extent these processes of innovation can be considered as an example of Smart development. The latter is not always easy to define (Steiner and Mossböck 2014). But it can be considered as a sustainable growth that relies on the specialization of a rural area based on the valorization of local resources. This specialization doesn’t refer to a Marshallian district and it’s amenities but to the related variety of local activities (Naldi et al. 2015). The relatedness support smart development by facilitating knowledge spill-overs that are key drivers of innovation processes (Frenken at al.2007; Boschma and Lammarino 2009). The main questions of our work are therefore: to what extent the innovations / eco-innovations in Aveyron have been developed thanks to local resources and local socio-technical networks? Have these innovative firms been able to benefit from specific local externalities? How did these innovative firms mobilize their networks in the innovative process, and, in turn, how the innovative processes have reshaped or strengthened firm’s network by building new or more specific knowledge and ties? Are these networks locally embedded? Therefore, our first hypothesis is that lower density is rural areas strengthen the importance of relatedness in the surrounding economic activities as a key driver for innovation. The second one is that weaker geographical proximity in rural areas is compensated by strong ties between the stakeholders. To answer these questions and test these hypothesis, we build monographs of innovations developed by agro-food firms in Aveyron. To do so, we will interview the companies as well as their partners, in order to understand the process from the idea of the innovation / eco-innovation to its implementation. These interviews will be used (i) to bring information on how the innovative idea is born and has evolved, (ii) to characterize the phases of the process and, (iii) to identify the (natural, organizational or institutional) resources used during each phase, and how and to whom they have been obtained. These materials will be used to construct a modelling of the networks.
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Dates et versions

hal-01605731 , version 1 (02-10-2017)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-01605731 , version 1
  • PRODINRA : 384809

Citer

Amélie Goncalves, Pierre Triboulet, Gaël Plumecocq, Danielle Galliano. In what ways agro-food business strategies in rural areas can be considered as “smarts”? The case of the French department of Aveyron. 3. Geography of innovation Conference, Jan 2016, Toulouse, France. ⟨hal-01605731⟩
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