Camille Jutant
email: camille.jutant@ensci.com

Annie Gentes
email: annie.gentes@telecom-paristech.fr

Cédric Mathias Béjean
email: mathias.bejean@u-pec.fr

Annie Gentès

Cédric Mivielle

Design, meaning making and constructive fixation Conceptualizing semiotic conditions to the process of designing

Keywords: fixation, semiotics, design process, meaning making, interpretant, Peirce

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Design, meaning making and constructive fixation: conceptualizing semiotic conditions to the process of designing

Introduction: design research and meaning making

In the field of design research, a number of scholars have focused on how designers make sense of things and produce new meanings. In his book on design and the semantic turn, Krippendorff combines a theory of sign with a model of our relationship to tangible things that comes from anthropology. He comes up with a design methodology that is called semantic design. Semantic design is in fact based on a pragmatic of design. Product semantics is "a study of the symbolic qualities of man-made forms in the cognitive and social contexts of their use and the application of the knowledge gained to objects of industrial design [START_REF] Krippendorff | On the Essential Contexts of Artifacts or on the Proposition That "Design Is Making Sense (Of Things)[END_REF]". Designers and users make sense of things out of specific situations that lend meaning to a particular object and a particular activity. The design methodology therefore consists in listing the different elements that contribute to the meaning of the object in situation, when it is actually acted upon. Though partly using semiotic methods of analysis, Krippendorff considers that "traditional" semiotics are limited in scope to the analysis of linguistic and non linguistic signs that stand for "something other than themselves" or to the understanding of information displayed by media. Close to this train of thoughts, is system theory [START_REF] Baudrillard | The System of Objects[END_REF][START_REF] Jonas | Research through DESIGN through research -a problem statement and a conceptual sketch[END_REF] that sees the product as a component of social interaction and therefore part of a global meaning making process. From a slightly different angle, researchers in design have focused on how this meaning making in situation implies a communicational model of producer and receiver. The product can therefore be seen as a message or medium in a sender-receiver process: communication process perspective [START_REF] Fiske | Introduction to Comunication Studies[END_REF]. Following Dennet's intentional stance (in addition of the two other stances : Physical : how it works, Design: what is it for) [START_REF] Dennet | The Intentional Stance[END_REF], Crilly contends that people make sense of things because they elaborate an understanding of the designer's intentions [START_REF] Crilly | The Design Stance in User-System Interaction[END_REF]. Meaning making is then from the user's perspective this social culture of material artifacts and the way and reasons why they are made. Design as communication has also been understood as the process by which design embeds ideas in objects and therefore communicates these ideas through features. The product is seen as an instrument of persuasion or argument as in the rhetorical perspective [START_REF] Buchanan | Declaration by Design: Rhetoric, Argument, and Demonstration in Design Practice[END_REF][START_REF] Buchanan | Design Research and the New Learning[END_REF].

These theories are based on how people make sense of things out of their interpretation of affordances and conventions, as pointed by Norman [START_REF] Norman | Affordance, conventions, and design[END_REF]. Products are part of a sign system with which users construct meaning.

Research from management science and originally from the sociology of consumption have pointed out the role of symbolic values to understand design semiotics [START_REF] Holbrook | The Semiotics of Consumption: Interpreting Symbolic Consumer Behavior in Popular Culture and Works of Art[END_REF][START_REF] Mick | Consumer Research and Semiotics: Exploring the Morphology of Signs, Symbols, and Significance[END_REF][START_REF] Vihma | Products as Representations: A Semiotic and Aesthetic Study of Design Products[END_REF].

These models are particularly efficient to explain why people make sense of existing things through material and social interactions, cultural knowledge, and communication skills. These contributions help define design methods that are going to anticipate these patterns of meaning making. On the other hand, it is less clear how they account for the capacity to create new meanings for things designers create or things that people discover. This particular creative process of meaning making has attracted the interest of design researchers who reconsider the contribution of Peirce's semiotics to understand design. In particular Chow and Jonas [START_REF] Chow | Case Transfer: A Design Approach by Artifacts and Projection[END_REF] consider how in Peirce's semiotics there are certain dynamics of signs that open the creative process because they point to qualities of things, situations, feelings and therefore are not fixed in a solid definition of what this thing is, either in an actual situation or by habits or laws. This new trend in design studies follows scholars from anthropology of material culture who after a first phase of structural studies that aligned objects on the linguistic models, have strongly advocated for a consideration of artifacts as specific objects with which human beings interact before using them as signs in a symbolic system of representations [START_REF] Keane | Semiotics and the social analysis of material things[END_REF]. When semiotics is limited to the analysis of signs, part of the design research, following anthropological studies, contends that material objects cannot always be considered as signs for something else.

The other part of the criticism is that on an empirical basis semiotic analyses do not concentrate on the user's actual reception but rather on the production of sign from the designer's perspective [START_REF] Krippendorff | The Semantic Turn: A New Foundation for Design[END_REF]. Following Chow and Jonas [START_REF] Chow | Case Transfer: A Design Approach by Artifacts and Projection[END_REF], we think that a close reading of Peirce's semiotics allows us to account for meaning making as a truly creative process rather than the recognition of known traits in artifacts or situations.

We think that Peirce's semiotics includes our relation to tangible artifacts as well a symbolic representation, as we use and as we interpret them.

To account for the transition from Peirce analysis of the semiotic process of interpretation to a semiotic model of design, this paper focuses on the question of fixation as being both part of the semiotic process and a specific issue of design. Fixation, whether it is considered as a negative outcome of design constraints or the positive starting point of a design process, is here considered as part of a dynamic making meaning process. The authors want to consider how the semiotic process as defined by Peirce can account for the ambivalent concept of fixation in the design literature and how this concept is related to several design operations that we qualify as: to expose oneself, to combine and prototype, to establish.

Contrasting views in the design literature: positive or negative fixation?

Over the last decades, many design theorists have analyzed the issue of "design fixation." This attention was mostly raised and influenced by experimental results in "creative cognition", namely the field of research that focuses on the cognitive processes and structures which underlie creative thinking [START_REF] Smith | Paradoxes , Principles , and Prospects for the Future of Creative Cognition, The creative cognition approach[END_REF]. The term "design fixation" was indeed first introduced by cognitive psychologists Jansson and Smith [START_REF] Jansson | Design fixation[END_REF] in their seminal work on the existence of "fixation" in design processes. Before this work, the phenomenon of "fixation" had rather been studied in the context of problem-solving and defined as "people tendency to focus on specific characteristic of a problem that keep them from arriving at a solution" [START_REF] Goldstein | Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience[END_REF]. Such understanding of fixation was also related to the concept of "functional fixedness" brought by experimental cognitive psychology since the 1950's. In that perspective, fixation was thus considered as a cognitive phenomenon that would carry negative effects on human reasoning in general. As for design fixation, Jansson and Smith demonstrated the existence, in the particular context of conceptual engineering design, of "a blind adherence to a set of ideas or concepts limiting the output of conceptual design." While their work aimed at extending prior research on fixation in problem-solving to design and creative thinking, they acknowledged that on the basis of their results it was not clear "whether fixated behaviour [was] only detrimental or whether there [were] some beneficial effects to such phenomenon." This point was not clarified in subsequent studies. In other words, experimental cognitive psychology identified a phenomenon of fixation in conceptual design processes but did not definitely state on the value of this phenomenon for the creative work, which could be either negative or positive, or even simply just necessary to the design process.

Likewise, in design studies, the issue of fixation is still an open question. For instance, Purcell and Gero [START_REF] Purcell | Design and other types of fixation[END_REF] have pointed to the fact that presenting visual examples might either provoke too premature commitments to a particular problem solution or stimulate creativity, depending on the type of examples and their distance with the existing knowledge base of the designers. This twofold effect of examples, either restrictive or expansive, has recently been investigated by Cassotti and Agogué [START_REF] Agogué | The impact of examples on creative design: explaining fixation and stimulation effects[END_REF] further. Moreover, as recalled by Visser [START_REF] Visser | Design: one, but in different forms[END_REF] "designers often tend to generate, at the very start of a project, a few simple objectives in order to create an initial solution kernel to which they then are sticking in what is going to become their global design solution". Many design studies have demonstrated that such "early fixation", "premature commitment" or "early crystallization" [START_REF] Ball | Cognitive processes in engineering design: a longitudinal study[END_REF][START_REF] Cross | Design cognition: results from protocol and other empirical studies of design activity, Design knowing and learning: cognition in design education[END_REF][START_REF] Goel | A comparison of design and nondesign problem spaces[END_REF] were needed to the design work. According to Visser, the role of the initial solution kernel, first qualified by Darke [START_REF] Darke | The primary generator and the design process[END_REF] as a "primary generator," has then received much attention as well as various labels such as "kernel idea," "central concept," "early solution conjecture," "primary position," or "guiding theme" [START_REF] Cross | Design cognition: results from protocol and other empirical studies of design activity, Design knowing and learning: cognition in design education[END_REF][START_REF] Cross | Expertise in design: an overview[END_REF][START_REF] Ullman | A model of the mechanical design process based on empirical data[END_REF][START_REF] Guindon | Empirical studies of programmers: second workshop[END_REF][START_REF] Kant | Understanding and Automating Algorithm Design[END_REF][START_REF] Lawson | Design in mind[END_REF][START_REF] Rowe | Design Thinking[END_REF]. According to design theorists Hatchuel and Weil [START_REF] Hatchuel | C-K theory: Notions and applications of a unified design theory[END_REF], any design reasoning starts with the formulation of an initial "concept" that must be undecidable. As a conclusion, both theoretical and experimental research works lead to contrasting views on the effects of design fixation. While some results suggest that design fixation can have negative effects on the creative work of design and provide ways in which to reduce them [START_REF] Youmans | The effects of physical prototyping and group work on the reduction of design fixation[END_REF], other results, sometimes based on the same experimental study [START_REF] Purcell | Design and other types of fixation[END_REF], reciprocally suggest that design fixation can also have positive effects and even be necessary to start any design work.

In this paper we develop the viewpoint that the origin of such contrasting views on design fixation originates from the fact that past research only considered the cognitive aspects of this phenomenon. This focus on the cognitive processes and structures that underlie creative thinking has tended to overlook how designers make sense of things and create new meanings. While not being contradictory with the creative cognition approach, we here explore an alternative approach to design fixation that is based on semiotics, namely we focus on the semiotic operations and structures that underlie design processes. Our aim is thus to understand design fixation from the viewpoint of meaning making. To do so, we rely on Peircean semiotics which the next section presents.

Peirce's theory of meaning making

Peirce's semiotics is a pragmatic theory that considers how "signs" are used and produced in situations of meaning-making. In particular, Peirce conceptualizes categories or "modes of being" of signs through which individuals necessarily rely on to make sense of reality. According to Peirce there is no such a thing that could be named "thought" without a "sign" that renders it possible and signs exist along three modes of being: firstness, secondness, thirdness. Firstness is the mode of being of a sign as a full "potentiality." In terms of individual experience, this relates to the subjective and emotional life and how we make sense through perceiving and experiencing qualities. Each of these experienced qualities is a sign that exists in the realm of Firstness.

Secondness is the mode of being of a sign as an "actuality." In terms of personal experience, this relates to the relational and practical experiences and how we witness facts or events. It is the realm of actualization, the here and there of elements in tension or interaction. Thirdness is the mode of being of a sign as a "Symbol." In terms of personal experience, this relates to the social and intellectual life and how we generalize through norms, rules, or habits. It is the realm of generalization. Though the three categories are into play at all times [START_REF] Keane | Semiotics and the social analysis of material things[END_REF], Peirce and Peircian scholars identify examples that show how they can be distinguished as different modes of being.

In the following section, we will describe, first the way a "sign" can be described (as it exists as a potential concept, representing something, in relation to other experiences and concepts), second we will emphasize the role of the interpretant in the potentially unlimited semiotic process.

Description of the triadic model of sign: unlimited semiosis

The Peircean theory of signs articulates three elements. A representamen (or physical sign) denotes an object (which is an object of thought or a real object) through an interpretant (which is the mental representation of the relationship between representamen and object). The interpretant organizes the dynamic meaning relationship between object and representamen. "A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign." [START_REF] Peirce | Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce: Pragmatism and Pragmaticism and Scientific Metaphysics[END_REF] The relation between the object and the representamen generates an interpretant, which in turn becomes a representamen by generating another interpretant which refers to the same object as the first representamen.

"Finally, the interpretant is nothing but another representation to which the torch of truth is handled along; and as representation, it has its interpretant again. Lo, another infinite series. " [START_REF] Peirce | Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce: Pragmatism and Pragmaticism and Scientific Metaphysics[END_REF] Therefore, the process of semiosis is theoretically unlimited.

Processes of meaning analyzed by Peirce consist of three major trichotomies related to the three elements of the sign presented above. First the semiosis is concerned by the type of signifier/representamen: it can be either a quality as a sign, an event as a sign, or a repetition as a sign. Second the semiosis is concerned with the relations established between the representamen and the object: it can be a relation of similarity, an iconic relation; a relation of contiguity, an indexical relation; or a conventional arbitrary relation, a symbolic relation. Within the detailed system of trichotomies, we focus on the third trichotomy which looks at what kind of interpretant is triggered by the relation between the sign and the object. The interpretant is this "third party" that borrows from other experience and situation to make sense of the specific relation between an object and its representamen. In Peirce's semiotic system the interpretant is the fundamental element of meaning making. Interpretation is the movement that explains why we do not live in signs only (in representamens or signifiers). It also explains why we are not resumed to a material entity in a material world. The interpretant forces us to distance ourselves from material life but also from an interpretation of reality that would be pure impressions by considering our personal or social experience and the situation as part of the meaning itself. Neither totally subjective, nor totally objective, the interpretant merges the here and now (Secondness) and feelings (Firstness) to other experiences (Thirdness).

To use Umberto Eco's expression, the semiosis is an encyclopedic experience rather than a dictionary experience [START_REF] Eco | Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language[END_REF]. One sign does not have only one single meaning, but refers to and broadens into a diversity of meanings.

However, this diversity is grounded in personal and social experience.

Two things need to be underscored in this model: there is always a "third party" involved to make sense of things. This "third party", the interpretant, is based in the wealth of personal and social experience. It structures the way we make sense by gathering elements from other experience to deal with a new one. By the same token, it expands the way we look at things by connecting the actual experience (the here and there) or the subjective experience (our feeling and sense of potentiality) to other experiences. This capacity to enlarge the immediacy of feeling and actual experience to other qualities, traits or regularities allows us to come up with new interpretations and new concepts. The semiotic process is therefore always creative.

Unlimited semiosis and fixation

While the semiosis is in practice creative and infinite, Peirce argues that the process of meaning making is limited in practice. Habits, norms, eventually end the process and stabilize meanings. The « final logical interpretant » is the name Peirce gives to our habit of attributing a certain signification to a certain sign in a certain context with which we are familiar. The power of habit temporarily fixes the unlimited movement from one sign to other signs. The final interpretant in the theory of Peirce follows two other states:

-the immediate interpretant is related to the impression or the potential as we experience it: the feeling of red before anything red is under our eyes. As Nicole Everaert-Desmedt says, it is almost like perceiving an empty case that we feel should be filled with-in this instance-red [START_REF] Everaert-Desmedt | Le processus interprétatif: Introduction à la sémiotique de Ch.S. Peirce[END_REF].

-the dynamic interpretant is related to the actualization in a specific fact or object : the actual red light that we distinguish from other present colors: green for example. Both colors compose an image of contrasts.

-the final interpretant is related to a law (of nature or habit) that can settle the discussion for good : the traffic light where red means "stop" and green means "go."

In this respect, Peirce points out that the dynamic interpretant tends towards a final interpretant, in other words a certainty in our interpretation that would be brought about by a law. The fixation by belief is such a final interpretant that he describes as being extremely comfortable though rather fragile as it can be contested more easily than a scientific law.

Belief, habits, and laws, all have in common to give a social group the certainty of its ways and understanding of the world. They support a common horizon between all members of a social group. This fixation is a condition of our social interactions. Theorist of translation, who work precisely on a possible disjunction of world of references between the text of origins with readers of a same culture, and the text of arrival that is addressed to readers with a different culture contend today that translation should be oriented towards the targeted audience "skopos theory," [START_REF] Reiss | Towards a Genereal Theory of Translational Action: Skopos Theory Explained[END_REF] in other word it should recreate a similar experience for the new audience. But in doing so, it always creates a new text, and potentially an infinity of texts as time and space always change the way people are going to understand things.

In the analysis of the semiotic process, the need to stabilize the meaning of things is central to the situated practice of meaning making. In a whirlwind of possible interpretations, to choose one meaning more or less arbitrarily is the only way first to be able to communicate with others and also to get an understanding of our own feelings. It is also a starting point to deconstruct the established meaning in the face of new emotion, or new events (Peirce speaks of the "outward clash" [START_REF] Peirce | Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce[END_REF] that destabilizes a temporarily achieved fixed meaning). Peirce's model is dynamic in the sense that it is potentially infinite but more to the point because it describes a system that strives to both stop and go.

Fixations and design situations

We want to see if this model can be further developed to explain how, in design, we establish a relationship to a world that has to be invented. Our hypothesis is that we can define a semiotics of the unknown on the basis of the semiotic operations at work in the interpretive work of design.

Constructive fixation

"Semiosis" is an unlimited interpretative process that occurs through successive operations that construct meaning. "Fixations" are therefore the basic semiotic operations through which human beings make sense of the world. Thus, this model explains why fixation needs to be explicit both in their constructive and negative forms:

-the necessity of feeling: it supports the fact that design is expressed also in terms of intuition, hunch, subjective sensitive experience.

-the necessity of actual compositions, confrontations, interactions. It supports a model of design that is not only sequential -ideas preceding realization -but also compositional with what happens here and now and therefore supports a model of design as a model of tensions.

-the necessity of cultural frameworks : The design project challenges values and habits in society and at the same time take into consideration the social, institutional, cultural side of human activities.

This model leads to qualify several semiotic regimes in the design process. Firstness is the regime that addresses the feeling of quality. It is the regime in which individuals experiment chances, possibilities. Therefore, as a design process the meaning making consists in feeling things, letting oneself opened to possibilities.

Secondness is the regime of reaction, resistance, dyadic relation between things in context. As a design process, the meaning making is to combine objects and relations (as is done in prototyping). Finally, Thirdness is the regime of representation, mediation. Individuals experiment it as habits, laws and beliefs. Design activities can be qualified as challenging social institutions and establishing a new set of values and uses.

Fixation and design operations

For each semiotic regime (Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness), various examples can be given about design actions in relationship with positive and negative fixations (see the figure below).

First, the "kernel idea", or the "primary generator" [START_REF] Visser | Design: one, but in different forms[END_REF] are examples of fixations that correspond to the Firstness category and that can be qualified as getting inspiration or seeing the potential of something by fixing a sensation. Reciprocally, to be overwhelmed by sensation or to have "blind adherence" [START_REF] Jansson | Design fixation[END_REF] can also be considered as Firstness operations. The case study of a French garden design agency described in [START_REF] Béjean | Le management des entreprises à prestations artistiques : activités de conception, régimes de signification et potentiel de croissance[END_REF] llustrates such type of fixation. To start a garden design project the designer-in-chief needs to get immersed within the place of the future garden. Before drawing any sketch, she takes a long time to walk across the place to get a driving sensation. This early fixed feeling is used to start the design project but can also be revised afterwards when discussing with clients.

Second, working in physical design environments that facilitate prototyping, and/or working in design groups [START_REF] Youmans | The effects of physical prototyping and group work on the reduction of design fixation[END_REF] are examples of situations where fixations effects are limited. It shows how designers proceed with composition, modularity, combination and/or confrontation that are based on the Secondness category. The experience described in [START_REF] Gentes | Making sense of constellations of objects: a case study of computer-aided writing practices in theatrical staging[END_REF] of writing a show with stage director and new media artist, Michel Jaffrennou, supports this conclusion. Jaffrennou experiments with theatrical forms and to do so he uses a multiplicity of writing tools (software such as word, excel, director, or html) that reveal other possible formats of shows [START_REF] Béjean | Looking through tools and situations: organizing exploration in artistic practice[END_REF].

Jaffrennou's use of excel is a point in case as the spread sheet decomposes the narrative in random elements to be aggregated. The show is produced by recombining units such as characters, places, objects, sounds. The elements are loosely associated and tried for effects. The element of surprise [START_REF] Shank | It's Logic in Practice, My Dear Watson: An Imaginary Memoir from Beyond the Grave[END_REF] is supported by the combinatory proprieties of the table .   Finally, some designers present their work as critical design [START_REF] Dunne | Hertzian Tales: Electronic Products, Aesthetic Experience, and Critical Design[END_REF][START_REF] Dunne | Design Noir: The Secret Life of Electronic Objects[END_REF]. What matters for them is that design questions social assumptions and engages citizens in a public debate. They place their design initiatives in the line of the artistic and political movement: the "Situationist International" [START_REF] Gaver | Design: Cultural probes[END_REF]. These artists created subversive artworks -collages but also performances -that questioned people's relationship to the world and in particular the Society of the spectacle [START_REF] Debord | Society of the Spectacle[END_REF]. In this respect, critical design produces objects that tread a fine line between on the one hand being overtly controversial as some art pieces can be. In this instance, Dunne and Raby fear that these artifacts could scare away people. On the other hand, they want to trigger an interpretive process but then they risk being too open and ending up empty. "Things have to be not-quite-right; this awkwardness is a way into the object, an invitation to explain why it is the way it is, why it's not quite right. If it was too correct and as expected, they would glance once and move on." [START_REF] Dunne | Interpretation, collaboration, and critique[END_REF] The design action is based on an analysis of what constitutes habits, or laws, or beliefs, and a subversive production: objects "not quite right". Designers need people to know the rules (implicit or explicit) and they use this competence based in Thirdness to question them.

Probes are a case in point [START_REF] Gaver | Design: Cultural probes[END_REF]. Defined by Gaver and Dunne as ways to spur the imagination of the designer, they rely on how people question their own representations and habits. In this respect, they rely on what Garfinkel defined as breaching experiments, that is to say experiments that produces unexpected interactions in order to see how people try to restore the situation by calling up rules, habits and norms of situations of everyday life [START_REF] Garfinkel | Studies in Ethnomethodology[END_REF].

Conclusion

Designers operate in a world that does not exist yet but has to be invented by means of imagination and interpretation. The so-called phenomenon of « design fixation » therefore gains in being investigated also from a semiotic point of view, namely by considering the interpretative processes underlying the creative work of design.

Design can be considered as a process of closure of meaning and not only of opening of meaning. In this article, based on a Peircean understanding of semiosis, we classify observations and practices that have thus far appeared paradoxical or heterogeneous by giving them a theoretical basis. For instance, in this model, the concept of "design fixation" is extended to an understanding of the different modalities of meaning making, either as quality, as event or as norm. These different modalities also account for the rich set of individual, inter-personal and social dimensions that designers bring into play during their creative work.

This analysis still needs further research. For instance, an ethnographic study of design situations could provide interesting insights by extending our work to collective creation, which is often shaped by institutional tools and frameworks. This would make it possible to confront our semiotic analysis to a communicational analysis and investigate implications for the creative process of design in those collective situations. Such an analysis could necessitate the investigation of material artefacts, representations and devices which instantiate or sustain some of the design operations that we describe in this paper (e.g. prototypes, mock-ups…). Finally, our study also calls forth a new understanding of the situation of reception that is at stake when users participate to the design process.

Table 1 .

 1 Semiotic understanding of design operations

	Peirce's categories	Typical characterization	As universe of experience	As design operation
	Firstness	Quality of feeling	Chance, possibility	"Expose onseself"
	Secondness	Reaction resistance, (dyadic) relation.	Brute facts, actuality	"Combine"
	Thirdness	Representation, mediation.	Habits, laws, beliefs	"Establish"

Table 2 .

 2 A semiotic understanding of design fixation

	Peirce's categories	As design operation	Example	As design situation
	Firstness	"Expose onseself"	Walking in a garden	Flash of insight
	Secondness	"Combine"	Combining random elements in a table	Outward clash
	Thirdness	"Establish"	Probe	Debate


Mary Gregory

Book review for the Journal of Evolutionary Economics

The economic and socioeconomic literature has produced many major works on tertiary growth, opposing supporters and critics of the service economy and society. The so-called neo-industrial analyses (the heirs of Adam Smith) have not stopped warning about the processes of de-industrialisation, by comparing the service economy to an economy of decline. As for the post-industrial theories originated by Jean Fourastié and personified by Daniel Bell, these conveyed an optimistic and evolutionary idea of tertiary growth.

The book edited by Mary Gregory, Wiemer Salverda and Ronald Schettkat fits into this postindustrial perspective. Indeed, it becomes apparent from this book, which we would highly recommend reading, that the problem of contemporary developed economies is less their degree of de-industrialisation than their gap in servicisation. Such a gap exists when one compares employment in Europe and in the United States. This book, which is devoted to this gap, its nature, its mechanisms, is important not only because of the interest (theoretical and political) of the question addressed, but also because of how it is dealt with. Indeed, it compares the innovative results from a recent empirical study (the European DEMPATEM project, which brought together teams from five countries in the European Union and the United States for two years) and the contributions of four of the most eminent international experts in the role of services in employment and the growth of productivity (Baumol, Freeman, Fuchs, Gordon).

The problem subjected to analysis is the following: the difference in the employment rate between the United States and Europe is now about 10%, which represents a gap of 25 million jobs mainly, (if not exclusively) in the services. How can this difference (this employment gap, which is a services and employment gap) be explained? Each of the contributions in this book sheds a particular light on this question, while re-evaluating a certain number of traditional arguments (for example, that of the rigidity of the employment market). However, generally one could say that the main contribution of this work is to highlight the major role of differences in the levels and patterns of demand (mainly involving services) in explaining this gap.

Chapter 1 (Wiemer Salverda and Ronald Schettkat)) provides a clear diagnosis of the employment gap between the United States and Europe. It illustrates the central position that on the one hand the services, and in particular distribution, hotels and catering, and, on the other hand, community and personal services, occupy in this. It is a general introduction to the different factors explaining the gap that are present in the literature (cost disease, outsourcing, wage compression, female participation, the marketisation of household services). But it emphasises the demand factor: the main explanation for the employment gap lies, in fact, in a demand gap (gap in per capita expenditure), which is mainly related to services.

In chapters 2 and 3, two authors who are highly influential in the services field undertake a particularly interesting exercise: that of reassessing the laws that bear their name. Thus, by using updated data, Victor Fuchs confirms the famous Fuchs law, established in the 1960s, which makes a positive link between the share of services in employment and per capita GDP. He believes that the continuity of this law is explained by two arguments: a productivity argument and an argument of differential growth in demand for services, due to their higher income elasticity. In the same way, William Baumol confirms and develops the theory of « cost disease » to better take into account changes in services. In his contribution to this book he is interested in the behaviour of a group of basic services (linked to R&D and to innovative activity in general) and he shows that they belong to the « asymptotically stagnant » category of sectors. Indeed, they combine two kinds of input: 1) a stagnant input: mental work (intellectual work) and 2) a progressive input: technological equipment (in particular computers). This kind of service thus also ends up by suffering from cost disease, given the limits on productivity imposed by the nature of intellectual work. The relative increase in this kind of service should lead to a fall in their demand, which should have a negative influence on innovation throughout the whole economy and slow down productivity growth in progressive sectors (agricultural and industrial).

The first major results of the DEMPATEM project are outlined in chapter 4. By using data from the input-output tables, Mary Gregory and Giovanni Russo apply an original and innovative empirical framework to analyse the impact of demand patterns on employment in the United States and in the five European countries concerned. The originality of their approach is that they are not interested, as is often the case, in the employment intensity of the end product (in the final phase of the production process), but in the total employment generated to supply a product, by taking into account all the stages in the supply chain. The analysis shows that i) the final demand for services, as for goods, generates an increasing number of jobs in services, ii) European consumption patterns are less employment-friendly than those in the United States, iii) but above all that the main explanation of the transatlantic gap is a stronger growth in demand in the United States, which is the source of job creation… Chapter five (Adriaan Kalwij and Stephen Machin et al.) limits the analysis of demand to the consumption of services. Kalwij et al. try to homogenize the data supplied by national surveys of household budgets, to conduct a comparison of national patterns of household expenditure during the 1980s and 1990s. The chapter reassesses the main explanatory factors for the changes in patterns of demand, particularly by focusing on changes in households' demography and employment, changes in their budgets, variations in relative prices. A certain number of general results can be mentioned. There is strong growth in expenditure on certain services: particularly spending on accommodation, eating out, private transport, communication services. An increase in the relative price of services can also be noted in all countries. The growing share of services in the budget seems to be largely explained, first of all, by the level of total household expenditure, then, by the change in the demographic composition of households (in particular the increase in the share of two-earner households).

Chapters 6 and 7 are devoted to the service sectors, which appear to play a particularly important role in employment dynamics. These are the distribution sectors (retailing, hotels, catering). The comparative analysis of the retail sector in the United States and Europe reveals a certain number of interesting results. It questions the explanation of the gap using arguments of differences in salary models, and the idea by which European economies would be held back by the rigidity of the employment and goods markets. Indeed, the detailed examination of the structure of earnings seems to indicate that American retailing does not take advantage of its greater flexibility to pay lower wages. The main explanation of the gap in retailing is again an argument of demand: the volume of per capita consumption of goods is in fact much higher in the United States. Also in chapter 7, Robert Gordon introduces more general explanations relating to life style (preference for the « big box » format in retailing), to societal choice (earlier independence of young Americans) and more ambitious American policies on innovation.

Another explanation of the gap is dealt with in chapter 8 (Richard Freeman). It concerns marketisation, which means the market replacing traditional household production. This marketisation is stronger in the United States than in Europe, as time-use surveys show. The marketisation of household production is an important factor in creating jobs because it operates on both the supply and the demand side of the labour market… Indeed, marketisation releases time and helps to integrate women into the labour market. This marketisation creates a demand for labour (in services), to support domestic activities transferred to the market. Marketisation is considered here in a post-industrial perspective (of increased recourse to services). It could have been compared with a neo-industrial marketisation such as that defended by Jonathan [START_REF] Gershuny | After Industrial Society? The Emerging Self-Service Economy[END_REF] in his theory of the self-service society.

There are still a certain number of important questions to understand and interpret the employment gap. Some have been mentioned in the book but would merit further consideration.

The first question is the absence of Scandinavian economies in the analysis. These economies do, however, seem to offer an original model of the service society, which is often mentioned in Europe as an alternative to the American model. More generally, it would have been interesting, in addition to the comparison of the 6 countries, to make the analysis more general by comparing socio-economic groups or models (or "worlds") of the service economy. [START_REF] Gadrey | National economies and the service society : the diversity of models[END_REF] achieves such an exercise by using a whole series of criteria, starting with the relative significance of the main service sectors which dominate in employment, and by applying, on the one hand, a convention of economic equality and solidarity, and on the other, a convention of family and gender. He distinguishes four groups or worlds of service economies: liberal (or anglo-saxon), nordic, continental, and familialist.

The second question is that of performance measurement. It is true that in several places one can find reflections on the difficulties of measuring, which call for caution and qualifying the results of the analyses. But as well as the warning, proposals for alternative measurements of the product and of productivity, particularly from the perspective of their consequences on interpreting the employment gap, seem to be increasingly necessary. These trials would benefit from a reference to studies which suggest alternative measurements of wealth in a post-industrial economy, of services, information, knowledge and sustainable development [START_REF] Gadrey | What's wrong with GDP and growth?[END_REF].

The question of innovation is dealt with in particular in chapter 7. But it is dealt with in a general manner, from the viewpoint of the introduction of informational technologies in the services. However, the issue of innovation in services is an important issue that has not yet been sufficiently mastered, which merits particular attention. Indeed, it also gives rise to a significant gap: an innovation gap which represents the difference between what traditional analytical tools (research-development, patents) can reveal and the reality of innovation, which is largely non technological, in these activities. Because of this innovation gap, but also the complexity of the innovation employment relationship, the link between innovation in services and employment is a question that is not investigated enough, that would merit very specific consideration in the future.


Paul Windrum
email: p.windrum@mmu.ac.uk

We have witnessed a dramatic transformation of the US and western European economies in just twenty years. Built on manufacturing, today these are indubitably services-based economies. The transformation raises a number of important issues for economists, and for evolutionary economists in particular for they have long highlighted the importance of innovation and structural change in their treatment of industrial organisation, employment creation, welfare, economic growth, and international trade. Our understanding of the innovation process, and its economic implications, were built on studies of manufacturing sectors. What needs to be changed? Are some theories and models no longer applicable? Do we need to develop new explanations, theories and models? Is innovation in service sectors fundamentally different to innovation in manufacturing sectors, or is there a set of common features? These are key questions that are now being asked.

We suggest that, by studying services innovation, scholars of innovation have an opportunity to develop an integrated account of innovation that is applicable to both services and manufacturing, and which covers all aspects of the innovative process. This requires a reassessment of established theories and models, and the development and testing of new theories and models. In other words, it requires a through review of what (we think) we know about innovation.

This, at any rate, is our contention, our belief. We do not yet know the answer to the above questions. A tremendous amount of research is needed before a set of clear answers can be proffered. One of the goals of this special issue is to raise the interest of economist not yet working in this area, and to hopefully engage them in it. As the collection of papers contained herein address important, leading edge research topics in services, they will stimulate the interest of economists who are not yet actively researching the area as well as those who are already engaged in services and services innovation research. This collection of papers is drawn from presentations made at the 2007 EMAEE Conference, which was hosted by the Centre for International Business and Innovation (CIBI) at Manchester Metropolitan University in May 2007. The editors would like to thank the DIME European Network of Excellence, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, the University of Utrecht, RIBM, and Edward Elgar for their sponsorship of this conference. We would also like to thank the International Schumpeter Society for its continuing sponsoring of the Schumpeter Prize for Best Paper by a PhD student, and the Consortium on Competitiveness and Cooperation for its sponsorship of the Best Paper by a first/second year PhD student. At the 2007 Conference these were won by Christina Günther and Karl Wennberg respectively.

The Papers in this Special Issue

The first paper, by Faïz Gallouj and Maria Savona, provides an introduction to the key issues and debates that have raged in the services innovation literature over the last 20 years. This provides a clear context for the other papers in the special issue can be placed, and brings them into focus. The Gallouj and Savona paper starts with an overview of a core debate regarding the innovative potential of services, compared to manufacturing, and the implications of this for economic growth and employment. A common concern is that this concern dates back to Adam Smith and his concern that personal services offered little or no scope for a division of labour and, hence, productivity growth. This concern resurfaced during the 1960s in Baumol's discussion of the 'cost disease'. [START_REF] Baumol | Macroeconomics of unbalanced growth: The anatomy of an urban crisis[END_REF] argues that this is due to the lack of innovation (in his words 'technological stagnancy') in services visà-vis manufacturing.

Baumol's argument has been questioned in three ways. First, his assumptions have been questioned, both theoretically and empirically. Second, a more general issue is raised regarding empirical problems of measuring services outputs and of measuring innovation within service sectors, where the 'traditional' innovation indicators of patents and R&D labs expenditures are particularly poor in capturing the extent of innovation that is actually talking place. Indeed, it is now widely accepted that these traditional measures are not particularly robust in many manufacturing sectors either. Economists continue to use them because they are the best indicators we currently have. At the same time, a lot of effort is being put into the development of new indicators. Third, a new exploration of the types of innovation found in services is underway. This debate concerns the issue of whether or not the innovation process in services differs to that in manufacturing, and if, so in what way.

The latter debate has focused around the so-called assimilation / demarcation / synthesis discussion [START_REF] Gallouj | Economie de l'innovation dans les services[END_REF][START_REF] Coombs | Innovation, measurement and services: the new problematique[END_REF]. The 'assimilation' viewpoint can be traced back to Pavitt's famous sectoral taxonomy of innovation [START_REF] Pavitt | Sectoral patterns of technical change: Towards a taxonomy and a theory[END_REF]. Like Baumol, he argued that services are innovation laggards. Indeed, he argued that, where change occurs, this is typically a consequence of the diffusion of innovations that are developed and first applied in manufacturing sectors. These are acquired through new capital investment or through suppliers (predominantly through pressure exerted by manufacturers up/down the supply chain). Though he later acknowledged computer services, telecoms, and science based services as innovators (Pavitt et al.,1989), he maintained that these were notable because they are exceptions to the rule. Pavitt's work left a second legacy: the view that insights gained through earlier studies of innovation in manufacturing can be translated to services. This assumes that service activities are generically the same as manufacturing activities. Theories and empirical indicators, originally developed with manufacturing in mind, are therefore equally applicable to services. Consequently, the study of services can be assimilated within a generic set of theories, originally developed through the study of manufacturing innovation. This is the underpinning methodological basis of the assimilation approach.

The 'demarcation' viewpoint is the antithesis of the assimilation view. It proposes that services are distinct in nature and character to manufacturing. This manifests itself, for example, in the under-reporting of innovation activity within services when statistical measures such as R&D staff and patent registrations/citations are applied. However, this school of thought goes much further. It suggests that completely new, services-specific theories of innovation are required in order to understand the nature and the dynamics of innovation in services. This is the position taken by researchers, such as [START_REF] Gadrey | New models of innovationhow services benefit industry[END_REF], [START_REF] Gallouj | Innovation in services[END_REF], [START_REF] Sundbo | The Organisation of Innovation in Services[END_REF][START_REF] Den Hertog | Knowledge intensive business services as co-producers of innovation[END_REF][START_REF] Preißl | Service Innovation: What Makes It Different? Empirical Evidence from Germany[END_REF].

It is argued that some forms of innovation are services-specific. Two in particular have drawn much attention. The first is the co-production thesis. It is suggested that a distinguishing feature of services is the high degree of interaction that occurs between the user and the service provider. Here particular attention is focused on the business-tobusiness services provided by knowledge-intensive business service (KIBS) providers. Together with their clients, KIBS detect new needs, define product specifications, and act as an interface between client firms and other actors within innovation networks (e.g. suppliers and business service providers). This takes the analysis of innovation goes beyond product and process innovation -the 'traditional' focus in manufacturing based innovation studies. It highlights the importance of organisational innovation and it relationship to product and process innovation, input and market innovations, innovation networks, and the problems that service firms face in protecting their innovations. A second alleged distinguishing feature is 'ad hoc innovation'. This is a non-reproducible solution to a client-specific problem. This proposition has generated much heated discussion. [START_REF] Drejer | Identifying innovation in surveys of services: a Schumpeterian perspective[END_REF], for example criticises the proposition, observing that it does not conform to the conventional definition of the innovation process. Innovation is the introduction of a novelty that subsequently diffuses across a population. For diffusion to occur it must be possible to apply the innovation to different settings. This is precluded by the supposed specificity of 'ad hoc innovation'. Drejer argues that what is actually being described here is not innovation at all, but cumulative learning. Cumulative learning is a process of continuous adaptation to small changes -including coming up with specific solutions to specific problemsand is part of the day-to-day functioning of a business. However [START_REF] Gallouj | Innovation in services[END_REF] (see also Gallouj, 2002) argue that it is much more that, just learning. It is innovation as far as it is characterised by some degrees of indirect reproducibility.

The demarcation school of writers has forcefully put on the table the proposition that service-specific forms of innovation exist. Equally, it has also highlighted the importance of organisational innovation, which appears to go hand-in-hand with product and process innovations in services. Finally, KIBS and ICTs, and their roles in the wider in innovation proves, have become key areas of research in their own right. The 'synthesis' viewpoint, as outlined by [START_REF] Gallouj | Innovation in services[END_REF], [START_REF] Metcalfe | Evolutionary Economics and Creative Destruction[END_REF], Gallouj (2002), [START_REF] Drejer | Identifying innovation in surveys of services: a Schumpeterian perspective[END_REF], and [START_REF] Windrum | Innovation in Services[END_REF], seeks to take the recent insights of demarcation writers and to integrate these within insights gained in manufacturing studies within a unifying neo-Schumpeterian framework. This broad framework encompasses the five dimensions of innovation discussed by Schumpeter: organisational, product, market, process and input innovation. According to this view, conventional (manufacturing-based) innovation studies privileged product and process innovation at the expense of organisational, market and input innovation, while services-based innovation studies have (re)invigorated research in these other dimensions. The aim of the neo-Schumpeterian synthesis approach is not merely add one to another, but to develop an integrated account that is applicable to both services and manufacturing, and which covers all aspects of innovative activity. One aspect of this agenda is the re-testing and extension of existing theories and models, originally developed in studies of manufacturing. Another aspect is the development of new theories and models that can accommodate both the services and manufacturing innovations.

The papers in this special issue contribute to this theoretical and empirical debate about the nature of services innovation. The Faïz Gallouj and Maria Savona paper further develops Gallouj's work on extending the [START_REF] Saviotti | A theoretical approach to the construction of technological output indicators[END_REF] characteristics approach to services innovation. Their stated aim is to develop a generalisable theory that captures the innovation dynamics of both services and manufacturing sectors, and which is amenable to empirical measurement.

The paper by Nicoletta Corrocher, Lucia Cusmano, and Andrea Morrison examines the types of innovation performed by a sample of KIBS firms in Lombardy. The paper empirically tests a set of propositions that have been put forward in previous literature (discussed above). Using cluster analysis, it tests the importance of different types of innovation amongst KIBS. The authors also test whether a distinction exists between the innovation patterns of two groups of KIBS: professional KIBS (p-kibs), such as business and management services, legal and accounting activities, and market research firms, and technical KIBS (t-kibs) such as IT related services, engineering, and R&D consulting firms. Two findings are of particular interest. First, not all KIBS innovate. Many rely on their reputation and brand for business. The play that has been made on the importance of KIBS within the services economy may need to be tempered somewhat. Having said this, one should remember that the majority of manufacturing firms do not innovate either. Indeed, one of the most important lessons that innovation studies has taught us is that innovation rates are highly skewedall the action happens on the tails of the population distribution. A few, highly successful and large firms perform the bulk of innovation. 1 The second finding is that the proposed distinction between p-kibs and t-kibs is not supported by their dataset. With regards to the types of innovation, cluster analysis indicates four key modes of innovation in the sample: product innovation, interactive innovation (i.e. the co-production thesis), technological adoption (Pavitt's argument), and a link between technological and organisational innovation. The findings are intriguing, given the arguments put forward in the assimilation / demarcation / synthesis debate. It is hoped that future empirical studies will seek to replicate the analysis in other regions.

The next two papers examine the long term implications of outsourcing. Outsourcing is, of course, a key issue for services and services innovation. Not only are specialist KIBS the providers of outsourcing services, but the majority of client firms are themselves service firms. The paper by Paul Windrum, Andreas Reinstaller, and Chris Bull reviews the existing empirical literature on short and long terms costs-benefits for the outsourcing firm. These indicate that, while there are short term gains to be had, primarily in terms of reducing the wage bill, firms that heavily engage in outsourcing appears to suffer lower productivity growth than firms that do not engage in outsourcing. Windrum et al. draw a distinction between 'total outsourcing' and 'integrated outsourcing'. The co-production thesis, highlighted by demarcation writers, assumes the client and outsourcing provider have an integrated outsourcing relationship. In fact, this form of open, interactive relationship lies at one end of a spectrum of client-provider relationships. At the opposite end of the spectrum lies the 'total outsourcing' relationship. The vast majority of outsourcing contracts are total outsourcing relationships. In this relationship, the outsourcing firm has little or no control over the outsourced activity for long contractual periods. This severely limits the scope for the outsourcing firm to engage in organisational innovation because these activities cannot be reshaped and recombined with the activities that are held in house. The limits that this places on the scope for organisational innovation has a direct impact on long run productivity growth. The authors test their argument by means of a simulation model. They establish a set of results that correspond to the available empirical data.

The second of the outsourcing paper, by Lars Bengtsson and Mandar Dahbilkar, provides an excellent example of the type of empirical research that is being undertaken. Bengtsson and Dahbilkar examine a survey sample of 267 medium and large size manufacturing firms in Sweden. They distinguish between firms that outsource manufacturing activities, and firms that outsource design as well as manufacturing operations. They compare these two groups of outsourcing firms with firms that do not engage in outsourcing. Taking all outsourcing firms together, cost reduction and increased focus on core activities are cited as key drivers. Despite the emphasis placed on innovation in the KIBS literature, innovation-related drivers such as reducing time to market, accessing external competences, and learning are not statistically significant. Unfortunately, perceived short term costs are overturned y rising logistics costs and monitoring costs. These are in line with the findings of other surveys. Also in line with other surveys is the finding that outsourcing firms are neither achieving improvements in plant efficiency nor in plant innovation. A particularly intriguing finding of the paper concerns the sub-sample of firms that outsource design activities as well as manufacturing activities. Some caution needs to be taken here since this sub-sample is small in number (n=25), but there is a suggestion that these firms do experience some positive innovation benefits. This leads Bengtsson and Dahbilkar question to those who have urged firms to keep control of design, R&D, and other core competences in-house. It could be, the authors argue, that the outsourcing of related activities enables improvements to be made (the identification of the externalities discussed by Windrum et al.) that would be unavailable if piecemeal outsourcing is undertaken. Alternative, it could be that these are poorly performing firms, and so outsourcing activities to another firm improves their competitive performance. Testing this requires discriminatory analysis and a larger sample. Regardless, it opens up an interesting and important issue that demands further empirical research.

The paper by Karl Wennberg is an example of research originally developed with respect to manufacturing firms, being applied to services firms. In this particular instance, Wennberg extends and develops the work of Klepper on firm spin-outs. Klepper's thesis of entrepreneurial successthat founders that leave successful, innovative firms to start up their own businesses in the same industry have a higher probability of success than entrepreneurs without this backgroundis here combined with theories of human capital, and applies to a discussion of the role played by knowledge in new financial services ventures. Wennberg's dataset comprises matched employee-employer information on 1,077 financial services ventures in Sweden for the period 1990 to 2002. The findings suggest that larger founding teams, with more extensive knowledge gained from past employment in the financial services is a factor affecting success. But so is knowledge gained from past employment in high-tech industries. Indeed, it is this combination of knowledge which appears to be very powerful, markedly increasing the probability of survival. This idea that particular combinations of knowledge and past industry experience are important certainly extends the current discussion on spin-out entrepreneurship, and of entrepreneurship in services.

The final two papers extend the focus outwards: to services innovations in networks. Each, in its own way, takes the discussion beyond KIBS. The paper by Rebeca Mendez-Duron and Clara García addresses the importance of social capital within the open source community, and its impact on the success of open source software projects. The authors argue social capital establishes a set of ties among programmers who make up an innovation network. There are central actors, and more peripheral actors, strong ties and weak ties. Together these establish a directionality of knowledge flows, inwards and outwards, within open source projects. Data on games' software development is collected from SourceForge.net over a twelve month period. This provides dataset of 2,962 observations. By treating an individual project as one event, in a flow of such events across a network, the authors project a two-mode network into a one-mode event-by-event network. The findings indicate asymmetric knowledge flows across projects, reflecting the different roles played by core project members and by contributors. Contributors who add programming expertise (a key source of new knowledge) raise the likelihood of project success. By contrast, if core members simultaneously sign up to other projects, this tends to hinder project success. The exception is where programming activities in other projects develops new knowledge that can be transferred back.

The final paper, by Davide Consoli and Andrea Mina, provides a very exciting and promising area of services research: health. It is novel in two senses. First, it explicitly considers interactions between public and private sector organizations. With the exception of university science, innovation in the public sector is woefully under-researched, while a consideration of interactions between public and private sectors innovation networks is nonexistent [START_REF] Windrum | Innovation in Public Services[END_REF]. This paper addresses precisely this topic. Health sector innovation comprises complex bundles of new medical technologies and clinical services that are created by a highly distributed public-private competence base. Second, the paper is novel in the algorithms that are used to analyse networks. Going beyond traditional centrality measures, the methods enable one to identify chains of citations through time, presenting us with a picture of the history-dependent trajectories that develop in a medical field. The paper therefore offers up a new topic for study within services, and new, promising techniques with which to study the topic.

Faïz Gallouj Paul Windrum

See Coad and Rao (2006) for a recent discussion of the implications of this for statistical analysis of innovation and growth rates.