Companies, in the broad sense of productive organisations, are actors of social innovation and of territorial development. They act more or less in coordination with the others actors of the territory and sharing a common language is a determinant of collective action. From a multidisciplinary review of literature on territory and social innovation and from the textual content analysis of 50 interviews with managers of firms considered as socially innovative, a special language appears. One conception of territory is associated to each three stages of the process of social innovation: an individualy "interpreted territory" for the emergence of idea, a collectively "constructed territory" for concretization and an "institutionalized territory" for diffusion. The common language appears more present and easier to implement, on the third step than on the others.
