Abstract

How can a “technological gatekeeper” stimulate a small or mid-size business’s dynamism by helping it overcome its difficulties in matters of innovation? During an intervention research conducted for five years in a small robotic firm, we were able to improve, thanks to a gatekeeper’s activities, this dynamic capacity in three respects: a) the capacity for establishing lasting relations with the world of research; b) the capacity for fostering and managing projects of open innovation; and c) the capacity for making money with innovations in the marketplace. As this study’s experimental results show, a small or midsize company can develop in a context of open innovation through a technological gatekeeper’s actions.