The management and evaluation of technological programs and the dynamics of techno-economic networks: The case of the AFME

The process of innovation and diffusion requires more and more interactions between the world of science and technology and the marketplace. In order to describe these dynamics, we define a techno-economic network (TEN) as a coordinated set of heterogeneous actors (public laboratories, technical research centers, industrial firms, users) who participate collectively in the development and diffusion of innovations and, via numerous interactions, organize the relationships between scientifico-technical research and the market. Although the word "network" is not systematically used, there have been during the last years many more government interventions (that we call technological programs) aimed at supporting the emergence, constitution and growth of TENs which can attain the objectives corresponding to the program's pre-defined goals. Based on an empirical study of the French Agency for Energy Management (AFME), this article presents a series of concepts and tools which are designed to describe the morphology of TENs (are they incomplete or chained, convergent or dispersed, long or short?) and to analyse their dynamics. Notions like anticipated networks, breakthrough actions (versus continuing operations), intermediate results are presented. Examples of their use for the management and the evaluation of the technological programs are given.