Introduction: Network perspectives on innovations: Innovative networks - Network innovation

Abstract

The idea for this book started when we organized a topical workshop entitled "Innovation Networks - New Approaches in Modeling and Analyzing" (held in Augsburg, Germany in October 2005), under the auspices of Exystence, a network of excellence funded in the European Union's Fifth Framework Program. Unlike other conferences on innovation and networks, however, this workshop brought together scientists from economics, sociology, communication science, science and technology studies, and physics. With this book we aim to build further on a bridge connecting the bodies of knowledge on networks in economics, the social sciences and, more recently, statistical physics. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.