A model of innovation network formation

Abstract

In the field of innovation and entrepreneurship, scholars have addressed the strategic question of how innovation networks can be formed mainly in a descriptive fashion. As a result, general models of innovation network formation are still missing in the literature. We contribute to filling this important gap by putting forth a first general model of innovation network formation. Distilled from several cases of innovation network formation, the model allows policymakers and practitioners to implement innovation network formation strategies that can be applied not only in developing and transition countries but also in developed countries.

Keywords:

• Entrepreneurship
• innovation networks
• embedding
• innovation network formation strategies

Notes

1. We refer to these attempts as ad hoc cases of distal embedding as there was no formal model of innovation network formation on which such an implementation could be based.

2. The Israeli Office of the Chief Scientist.

3. This is to be compared with the VC industry in Silicon Valley, where this sort of co-opeting behavior takes places in a more decentralized way.

4. This last milestone is to be compared with the development of the hardware industry in India, which that same year had only 31 firms with a total annual turnover not exceeding $ 0.31 billion (Manimala, 2006, p. 250).

5. Although the potential to do so was there in many of the joint ventures fostered by the BIRD Foundation, as the successful commercialization of the Israeli digital signal processing technology shows.

6. Degree centrality is defined as the number of nodes “at distance one” and gives an indication of the importance of a node based on the number of its connections.

7. Betweenness centrality quantifies the number of times a node acts as a bridge along the shortest path between two other nodes. Betweenness centrality is associated with the ability to grant access and exert control in a network.