ABSTRACT
In management literature, innovation leans on two long-standing traditions. The first is psychological and refers to analogy, intuition, improvisation, imagination, and metaphors; to crazy, uncertain ideas; and to concepts. In this case, innovation is associated with creativity and with mental states of creative individuals, with organizations and tools that provide and allow the emergence of innovative concepts and objects with renewed identities. The second tradition is that of science and knowledge. Contrary to the first one, its goal is to ensure the conformity of objects, to stabilize them and guarantee their reproductibility. And so there are “creative people” on the conceptual side and “scientists” on the knowledge side. There are “creative organizations” and “regulated ones.” These two traditions have always co-existed without their interfacing or connecting with one another-in other words, the reconciling of concept with knowledge has nothing to do with intuition or spontaneity. And that is why it is necessary to formalize this intertwining and C-K Theory; a rigorous way of reasoning does exactly that.