Les acteurs intermédiaires dans le développement de l'innovation : une comparaison intersectorielle dans la région de Montréal

Research in social sciences has shown that innovation has a territorial dimension that determines the dynamics of the process and, therefore, companies may be more or less innovative depending on the characteristics of the territory in which they are embedded. The role of intermediary organizations has also been highlighted by some researchers. In this paper, we focus on three sectors, namely those of information and communications technology (ICT), aerospace and garment, and we study the roles of intermediary organizations in these sectors. We also determine their relationship with the necessary inputs to the innovation process. Building on the innovation systems approach, we identified several actors who perform intermediation functions in the innovation process and have been targeted for case studies. Our research uses a mixed methodology, that is, qualitative and quantitative. Our results show that intermediary organizations perform different functions which contributed primarily to the corporate knowledge base.