Despite their crucial role, innovation intermediaries are being weakened. A paradox that hinders the scaling of ecological solutions.
The ecological transition is not just hindered by a lack of scientific advances, new technologies, or capital. It also often stalls when it comes time to transform a prototype into a truly deployed solution.
This requires close coordination between laboratories, industry, funders, administrations, associations, users, and field operators. Such coordination can only be built through experimentation, continuous adjustment, collective learning, over a long period.
However, innovation intermediaries created for this purpose, especially “living labs” that are increasing worldwide to bring together actors with different constraints around a common project, face recurring difficulties that often prevent them from fulfilling this mission.
Take the example of water, a topic on which over a hundred Living Labs work internationally. Their actions show how complex technologies can be transformed into operational devices usable by farmers. In Senegal, a technology for earth observation enabled the prototyping of an irrigation visualization platform through multi-actor workshops. The project, considered a success, was presented at COP26 and reviewed by the World Bank for scaling up.
Yet, as soon as the solution is deemed technically “mature,” the living lab is often excluded from the following phases. Actors retain the technical elements but remove what made collective use possible: the ability to orchestrate, mediate, and continuously adjust. It is precisely at the scaling stage that this function becomes crucial.
Disseminating innovation does not just mean replicating a technical solution; it also requires adaptation, supporting its adoption, balancing divergent interests, and maintaining cooperation in the long run.
By removing this continuity, innovation as a whole becomes fragile. In the case of the Senegal River, stakeholders acknowledge that the technology is not yet fully utilized to measure, for example, the extent of climate change or control the spread of invasive plants.
It is a real paradox: the more successful the intermediary, the more its contribution becomes invisible. Once the innovation is deemed credible, the focus shifts to the technology, funder, or institution behind it, and much less on the assembly, mediation, and adjustment work that allowed very different actors to progress together.
The problem is that this contribution remains difficult to highlight and recognize. Worse, situated at the intersection of project tensions, the intermediary often attracts criticism from stakeholders. Because it must deal with conflicting expectations, it sometimes ends up as a convenient receptacle for collective frustrations. The intermediary is thus often removed too early from the project.
If we truly want to accelerate the implementation and deployment of innovations for the transition, two changes are necessary.
First, explicitly measure the contribution of intermediaries, not just projects. This requires suitable criteria: their ability to structure actor coalitions, ensure solutions are truly adapted and maintained in the field, facilitate their dissemination from one project to another, and enhance organizational competence.
Second, finance these intermediaries over the long term. Most still operate under constraints of short and fragmented funding. Mediation requires time to build trust, consolidate methods, develop networks, and accumulate hybrid skills. Without continuity, we achieve punctual successes but fail to build the collective capacity to generalize, maintain, and evolve solutions.
Innovation policies focused on impact can no longer view these actors as mere “project structures”. They are strategic links in scaling up. Weakening them means accepting that promising innovations shine at the pilot stage only to falter during deployment.
(*) Quentin Plantec is a Researcher in Strategy and Innovation Management at TBS Education. A graduate of Ecole Normale Supérieure and Ecole Polytechnique, he holds a Ph.D. in Management Sciences from Mines ParisTech-PSL. His work mainly focuses on the role of science in innovation. Cylien Gibert is a Researcher in Strategic Management at TBS Education. His work focuses on legitimizing innovation activities and organizational dynamics at play.
