ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on innovation, the direction of communication and knowledge transfer in an organization, showing that when unit boundaries are crossed, individual innovation increases. Brokerage is essential to innovation, as brokers have access to a broader range of information and receive that information earlier than others do. Theory and evidence advocates an organizations gain from an internal social structure rich in brokerage. The recent work on network brokerage has led to the identification of an additional, crucial brokerage role to be taken into account: the executive broker. Management needs to balance between the various brokerage profiles identified, the externally oriented broker, the internally oriented individual and the board level executive broker as agents of innovation. The chapter addresses the way in which organizations manage to leverage their internal networks to absorb external knowledge to enrich it, then to interpret and translate it into innovative and feasible solutions.
