ABSTRACT

Throughout this book, networks have been regarded as having a crucial contribution to innovation capacity. In this chapter, we present the empirical material from the survey that relates specifically to the social networks of the people we surveyed. As in the other chapters of Part II in this book, which examine the effects on innovation capacity of innovation environments, innovation drivers and supports, and leadership qualities, here we investigate social networks. Openness and diversity in whole network structures, as well as the presence of external contacts, are expected to have a positive effect on innovation capacity. So are the social networks that connect particular individuals into micro-level structures of brokerage and support, which are seen to be crucial to innovation. To make progress in understanding innovation capacity, we need to embed our analysis in “the routine dynamics of actively self-reproducing social context, where constitutive elements and relations are generated and reinforced” (Padgett and Mclean 2006, 1464).