Innovation through trade shows concertation

Concertation is a process that allows firms (particularly, small and medium-sized enterprises) to effectively cooperate in developing dominant product designs and styles. Concertation is centered upon the activities of trade shows that provide a platform for collective action by providing commercial and promotional benefits to participating actors. Like standard-setting committees, these collective marketing events may be understood as commercialization networks that, particularly in the context of fragmented industries, are able to mobilize and coordinative the individual innovative effort of a great number of competing firms towards common trajectories. Specifically, we report the case of Première vision, the leading clothing fabric trade show in Europe. In this chapter, after a background description of the key features of innovation processes in the textile-clothing sectors, we describe Première Vision and analyze the concertation process and the key actors involved in each of its phases. We conclude by discussing the contextual characteristics that make concertation processes possible and our contributions to the literature on innovation and standard affirmation.