IDENTIFICATION ET AMÉLIORATION DES MODÈLES D’UNIVERSITÉS D’ENTREPRISE EN ADÉQUATION AVEC LES MODÈLES DE GESTION DES CONNAISSANCES

Abstract

This PhD thesis is about innovation management and the development of corporate universities. The development of corporate universities has many challenges and several projects have been major failures. Even though there are more corporate universities in the world than traditional academic universities (+ 4,000), only a small number of corporate universities have reached the third stage of development (strategic phase: Dealtry, 2001) thus enabling organizations to create competitive advantages, do research and strategic training for a better innovation management. In a time where the economy is more knowledge-based, the issue of a better knowledge management is becoming even more critical. The thesis focuses on three key issues related to the development of corporate universities that enable a better innovation management. The thesis is on the identification and improvement of corporate universities models in dealing with knowledge management models. More particularly, it focuses on the issue of the challenges of corporate universities in dealing with open innovation. It is even more important in the infocom sector. We also analyze the issue of strategy-making to build the innovation strategy, which can be the keystone in the development of the corporate university model to be retained. We then analyze how firms in the information and communication sector can deal with the issue of business model innovation to develop their corporate university. We propose a strategic framework to guide managers. A successful corporate university model must often deal with those three issues: challenges related to the adoption of open innovation, innovation strategy-making and business model innovation. The selected corporate university model must cope with knowledge management models that are better adapted to the strategic context of the firm, and particularly the industry dynamic and the unique characteristics of the firm. This will help to improve their chances of having a successful corporate university in the long-term. We used the systematic literature review approach for the methodology for the three scientific articles. The first article pinpoints the importance of corporate universities to develop a strong corporate curriculum for a better innovation management, which requires important investments in terms of resources and involvement in organizations. The second article on strategy-making pinpoints the importance to institutionalize learning and to develop meta-competencies, that which an effective corporate university can do. The article also proposes a new theoretical model for R&D resources allocation. The third article proposes a strategic framework for infocom firms in dealing with business model innovation and the development of corporate universities. A classification of business models is analyzed in order to support their innovation strategy. The selected corporate university model should try to harmonize with the three key innovation issues for a successful development. Several conclusions and recommendations still ought to be more tested in future researches. We have contributed to the advancement of knowledge on the topic of corporate universities models. There are few research on this topic and most of the work has been done by consultants. There is a need for more scientific contributions on this topic.

Date	10 Jun 2016
Original language	French
Awarding Institution	École de technologie supérieure
Supervisor	Mickaël Gardoni (Supervisor)