Managing innovation networks in the knowledge-driven economy

Abstract

Innovation has been widely recognized as the key driver of economic growth. However, in the knowledge-driven economy, the nature of innovation is changing. Both technologies and innovations are becoming more complex as the knowledge content has increased. Due to the amount of different knowledge domains, individual players cannot develop anymore all the competencies necessary to create innovation in the knowledge-driven economy. Successful innovators therefore join to form innovation networks that allow them to source flexibly competencies and to offer innovations that are complete solutions and not just products. The traditional linear model from research and development as a basis of innovations is thus shifting to a model with a wide network of sources and partners integrating complementary competencies. Managing innovation in such a network poses new challenges for companies as they need to adapt their way of working and develop 'networking' competencies. In this paper, success factors are derived that networks and companies need to adopt to create innovation. For the support of the management of such networks, the innovation roadmapping methodology is proposed. Previously only applied for innovation management in individual organizations, innovation roadmapping should be used as a means to identify and exploit ideas and to align the innovation efforts in the network.