Networks of innovators: A synthesis of research issues

This paper will first summarise some key findings of empirical research in the 1960s on the role of external sources of scientific, technical and market information in successful innovation by business firms. This work demonstrated unambiguously the vital importance of external information networks and of collaboration with users during the development of new products and processes. Moreover, the dilemmas of cooperative research in competitive industries were recognised and studied long ago [35,62,76]. What then is new about the present wave of interest in “networks of innovators”? Are there new forms of organisation or new technologies or new policies which justify renewed research efforts since they go beyond those developments already analysed in earlier empirical and theoretical work? Section 2 reviews the evidence of new developments in the 1980s in industrial networks, regional networks and government-sponsored innovative activities. It shows that there has indeed been a major upsurge of formal and semi-formal flexible “networks” in the 1980s, including some new types of network. It also shows that some older forms of research cooperation have been modified and transformed. The papers at Montreal largely concentrated on the role of regional supplier networks, which are a good example of such “new wine in old bottles”. This paper attempts to locate the regional network discussion within a wider context of new developments in networking. Section 3 discusses the causes of these new developments and whether they are likely to remain a characteristic of national and international innovation systems for a long time to come, or prove to be a temporary upsurge to be overtaken later by a wave of take-overs and vertical integration. Finally, section 4 sums up some of the other key issues which require further research and debate, and the implications for social science theory.