Innovation process in a diversity context: diffusion of material innovations in packaging industry

This paper tries to analyze the configuration of technological learning in a diversity context, in the case of the French packaging industry. It suggests an analysis based on the concept of learning-by-connecting, which tries to illustrate, within a sectoral system of innovation, the determinants of the technological learning mechanisms. The innovation process in a diversity context seems to be increasingly dominated by the logic of complementarity, and therefore by the interdependency relationships. The complementarity of knowledge is able to generate a counter-effect to “technological inertia”, through the multiplication of the ways of association of knowledge. The development of learning-by-connecting is largely related to this increasing diversity in technological knowledge and the pre-eminence of logic of combination