Thesis title: The Politics of Co-construction: Post-It Citizen and Flexible Innovation
The Case of the Paris Smart Region

Supervisor: Brice Laurent

This thesis analyzes how “co-construction” is defined and implemented by the Île-de-France Regional Council’s Smart team, the regional body in charge of digital and innovation projects. Conducted between 2020 and 2023 as part of the “Smart Region” strategy (2018-2021), the survey is based on two programs: Île-de-France Smart Services, a digital public services platform based on data shared with public and private partners, and Construire au Futur, Habiter le Futur (Building for the Future, Living in the Future), which unites various actors around innovation projects related to housing and construction. The thesis demonstrates that co-construction is viewed as a flexible innovation strategy that involves various actors to pool public and private resources and identify issues that services must address. In pursuit of audiences compatible with Smart’s vision of innovation through co-construction, Smart shapes or imagines different audiences, ranging from the highly mobilizable Post-it Citizen to the highly concerned Partner, and the highly simplified Persona. The formulated policy of flexibility is based on a request for simplification that has an impact on democratic issues, ranging from exclusionary effects to the depoliticization of participation.

Publications

Carole-Anne Tisserand, « Inscrire la co-construction dans des logiques économiques. Le cas de la Smart Région », in Jérôme Boissonade, Pauline Guinard, Jodelle Zetlaoui-Léger (Dir.), Les contradictions urbaines, Le Manuscrit, 2025 (à paraître).

Carole-Anne Tisserand, Frédéric Gonthier, Camille Morio, Céline Belot (2025). Audience-targeted recommandations on promoting democratic innovations. Working paper no.9.3. TRUEDEM: Trust in European Democracies Project.

Goizauskas Jean & Tisserand Carole-Anne (2024). Material knowledge and practices in the making of a building resource out of excavated soils: a case study in the Paris Region. In Olivier Coutard and Daniel Florentin (Eds.), Handbook of Infrastructures and Cities. Edward Elgar Publishing, 366-374. doi: 10.4337/9781800889156.00036

Tisserand Carole-Anne (2023). Co-création. In G. Petit, L. Blondiaux, I. Casillo, J.-M. Fourniau, G. Gourgues, S. Hayat, R. Lefebvre, S. Rui, S. Wojcik, & J. Zetlaoui-Léger (Éds.), Dictionnaire critique et interdisciplinaire de la Participation, DicoPart (2ème édition). GIS Démocratie et Participation.

Carole-Anne Tisserand (2023). « Le Partenaire, le Persona et le Post-It : Impliquer et définir les publics de la Smart Région » Actes des septièmes journées doctorales sur la participation et la démocratie participative, GIS Démocratie et Participation.

Tisserand Carole-Anne & Brun Victoria (2022). Claude Rosental, La société de démonstration. Revue d’anthropologie des connaissances [En ligne], 16-3.

Carole-Anne Tisserand (2022). « Ethnographie d’une plateforme de crise éphémère », in Hervé Dumez, Benjamin Loveluck, Alexandre Mallard (Dir.), Innover en temps de crise. Réactions et adaptations face à la crise Covid-19, Paris, Presses des Mines, Collection Sciences sociales.

Tisserand Carole-Anne (2021). La redéfinition du rôle politique de l’entreprise à travers l’impératif public d’innovation « partenariale » Entreprises et histoire, 104(3), 129-141. doi: 10.3917/eh.104.0129.

Other publications

Frédéric Gonthier, Carole-Anne Tisserand, « Passer d’expérimentations démocratiques isolées à une transformation systémique », DémocratieS, octobre 2025.

Vincent Monadé, Entretien avec Carole-Anne Tisserand (2023). Construire le Futur. Quand un territoire réinvente la ville, Autrement, collection Sciences Humaines. 

Tisserand Carole-Anne, Morvan Aliénor (janvier-février 2023). Le citoyen-usager dans la co-conception urbaine. Horizons Publics, 31, 96-101.

Other academic activities

Co-organization and facilitation of webinars organized as part of the European TRUEDEM program (February, April, May 2025).

Co-organization and facilitation of the workshop in English on the collective book project TRUEDEM (April 2025)

Co-organization of the Dicopart study day (December 2023)

Co-organization and co-facilitation, with Aliénor Morvan, of sessions dedicated to doctoral research, I3 Summer School (May 2023)

Working group: overhaul of the research areas of the Interdisciplinary Institute on Innovation (October 2022)

Organization, with Aliénor Morvan (SES Télécom Paris), of an interdisciplinary study day entitled “Pourquoi, avec qui et comment concevoir ? Le citoyen-usager dans la co-conception urbaine” [Why, with whom, and how to design? The citizen-user in urban co-design], March 30, 2022 at Mines Paris – PSL. The event was organized with the support the Interdisciplinary Institute on Innovation (i3).

Co-organization and co-facilitation, with Abdoulaye Diaw, of the CSI Guest Seminar Series (2021-2022)

* According to the summaries present in the bibliographic database