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Innovation, while key to business development, can be extremely complicated. The uncertainty associated with the value it can generate is often a strong disincentive. For small companies, managing a breakthrough innovation project represents a major challenge. In this thesis work, we focus on this issue. Within the framework of an action-research conducted in the SME L'Hotellier, we have developed a method to facilitate critical decision-making in innovation projects of technological breakthrough for small companies. This approach is based on the study of the values created by the innovation and on the analysis of the risks threatening this value creation. This work focuses on the study of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Through a bibliographical analysis, we highlight some of the handicaps of these structures: their weak resources (human and financial) and their difficulties in accessing certain specific knowledge. This weakness can be crippling for the development of innovation in these structures, which are also characterised by a weak formalisation of knowledge and processes. The second element of context considered is the type of innovation developed. What we call here technological breakthrough innovations are innovations that present a high degree of technological uncertainty and that involve a discontinuity with respect to the market in relation to the traditional practices of the firm. Consequently, these innovations are characterized by a lack of knowledge about the technology and the market. This analysis of the context allows us to stress that for an SME, one of the most important challenges of technological breakthrough innovation projects is the identification and access to this key knowledge. In addition to this analysis, we have listed and identified the strengths and weaknesses of the main models of innovation processes existing in the literature, both in the field of innovation management and design sciences. We highlight that these models generally describe innovation processes as a succession of activities and decisions possibly implementing feedback loops. Because of the uncertainty induced by technological breakthrough innovation projects, we underline that the management of the decision phases is an issue that is little covered by the literature. Our model aims to facilitate critical decision making in the different stages of the design process. We define these decisions as decisions having a significant impact on the innovation project (quality, costs, deadlines) and having significant uncertainty about their alternatives. These decisions can be related to the product, the manufacturing process or the market. As the objective of the innovation is to create value, we show that two pieces of information are necessary for a quality decision: the knowledge of the value that will be created for the stakeholders of the project for each alternative as well as the level of risk associated with this value creation. We derive the following hypothesis: critical decision making in innovation projects of technological breakthrough in SMEs is easier, more rational and more robust when decision makers know the impact in terms of value creation and risk of each alternative of the decision. This has led us to define a four-step model to assist decision making in such projects. One issue is to define the objectives and constraints of the decision and translate them into value creation.

Keywords:

Innovation, risk, decision making