Résumé
The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between the adoption of freelance as organizational form and innovation as activity. This exploration fills a research gap as freelancers rarely feature in studies on innovation and entrepreneurship. The approach taken link self-declared innovation activity with criteria associated with freelance activity among responses to the survey of new firms carried out by INSEE in France in 2002 and assess the relative success of those who innovate. In order to analyze the data we recursively partition the survey population into subgroups with a similar inclination to innovation on the basis of the criteria that define freelancing. We then test for correlation between respondents' preference for innovation and the number of criteria for freelancing they meet. We repeat this exercise for a subset of respondents from firms in the innovative sector. We find that features associated with freelance organizations do not usually translate into a higher propensity to innovate. Among firms active in an innovative sector the effect is even stronger.