Towards a co-evolutionary framework for innovation management

The number of empirical descriptions of co-evolution phenomena in innovation management and more generally in organizational sciences has increased considerably in the last decade. A large part of this work however pertains to strategic management and forgets to define co-evolution. In addition, the rare references theorizing it do not present a constant definition of the concept. The seminal definition being biological, its application in organizational sciences implies its importation. However, available analogical transpositions generate ontological, epistemic, structural and semantic weaknesses. Analysis of the ontogenesis of co-evolution in organizational sciences reveals that the defining attributes and related objects vary according to the import choices of the authors. The paradigmatic fragmentation of the concept in the source domain associated with the limits of the analogical transposition process leads to partial and disparate borrowing whose scope and limits are variable. A metaphorical transposition is proposed to overcome these difficulties.