The aerospace industry experiences a considerable growth in product development costs. Many research works aim at identifying evolution laws characterizing this large-scale phenomenon and at developing design strategies which could help mitigate it. This paper aims to clarify the evolution dynamics governing this phenomenon by studying how the products delivered by these costly projects evolve with time. Increasing complexity is often held responsible for surging costs. If complexity is generally defined as the price to be paid for improving product functionalities, it is rarely specified whether the improvement affects existing functionalities or involves new ones. We aim to identify the patterns of cost growth which can be associated with phenomena of existing functionalities upgrade and new functionalities introduction, and to identify the associated design capabilities that designers need to deploy in order to keep product change and cost growth under control. To that end, we introduce a model which generates curves, each of which featuring a trend of cost growth, specific to a scenario of product evolution and being interpretable as a signature of a strategy used by designers.

Si les bénéfices de l’Open Innovation ont été largement mis en avant, les recherches soulignent les difficultés de sa mise en œuvre et, notamment, la nécessité de créer de nouveaux rôles d’interface et d’intermédiation entre certaines fonctions internes et les fournisseurs externes d’innovations. Sur la base d’entretiens menés dans deux entreprises industrielles, les auteurs mettent en avant l’émergence d’une nouvelle pratique portée par des acteurs d’interface entre l’innovation et les achats : les acheteurs-innovation. Ils caractérisent ce nouveau rôle, en interface avec les fonctions achats et R&D, central dans la mise en œuvre de l’Open Innovation.