Proximities and the construction of a collective strategy: application to the case of two agri-food sectors.

Summary Our objective in this article is to study, based on two case studies of industries (Crémant de Bourgogne and Val de Saône vegetables), the cooperative relationships that firms establish with partners to innovate in order to create and develop a collective project. Our article thus seeks to answer the following questions: what is the capacity of firms to go beyond their individual project and contribute to the implementation of a collective project? What roles can institutions, as third-party actors, play in the construction and development of such a collective project? The mobilization of two approaches that we consider to be complementary (approach on collective strategies and analysis in terms of proximities) thus makes it possible to analyze the conditions for success in the construction of a collective project. In this context, the geographical proximity between actors is a latent resource that must be activated by organizational and institutional proximities. For this reason, the presence of a relay institution or a third party is essential for developing a collective project and ensuring its development by regulating relations between actors in a territory.