Seeking the important nodes of complex networks in product r&d team based on fuzzy AHP and TOPSIS

Abstract

How to seek the important nodes of complex networks in product research and development (R&D) team is particularly important for companies engaged in creativity and innovation. The previous literature mainly uses several single indicators to assess the node importance; this paper proposes a multiple attribute decision making model to tentatively solve these problems. Firstly, choose eight indicators as the evaluation criteria, four from centralization of complex networks: degree centrality, betweenness centrality, closeness centrality, and eigenvector centrality and four from structural holes of complex networks: effective size, efficiency, constraint, and hierarchy. Then, use fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to obtain the weights of these indicators and use technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (TOPSIS) to assess the importance degree of each node of complex networks. Finally, taking a product R&D team of a game software company as a research example, test the effectiveness, operability, and efficiency of the method we established. © 2013 Wei Zhang et al.