This article aims to understand what are the managerial challenges to enable multistakeholder' network to emerge as structured and efficient innovation community and how to meet them. We developed a theoretical framework which seeks to link managerial action with innovation as a process and outcome of inter-organizational and organizational level, using network, learning and innovation management perspectives. Our assumption is that strategic innovation management can be a resource for the emergence as well as the strengthening of innovation community. Based on six innovation case studies in Burkina-Faso, we identified four types of innovation situations that we defined as locus where different organizations interact with each other around activities and results that feed the innovation process, and where innovation management practices are developed. The four types are discriminated against intensity of innovation management practices, organizations' capabilities and network structure. They face different managerial challenges focused either on issues at the level of organizations (disaggregated innovation situations) or on issues at the inter-organizational levels (dispersed innovation situations) in order to fill network functional gaps. In each case, our results question the proclaimed feasibility of innovation network facilitation at the sole inter-organizational level. They call for more strategic management not of the innovation process itself but of multi-organizations regarding innovation process.