This textbook provides a theoretical and practical guide on how to manage social networks to increase innovation and improve performance.

Suitable for a one- or two-semester course for undergraduate and graduate students, this interdisciplinary textbook explains the diverse aspects of innovation and social networks, which occupy a central place in business and policy agendas. Its unified approach presents networks as nested systems that can span organisations, industries, regions, and markets, giving students a holistic perspective and reducing the amount of effort required to learn the theoretical framework for each layer. With engaging real-world examples, the text also provides a practical guide on how to manage networks to increase innovation and improve performance. Topics covered include forming teams to foster creativity, selecting partners and leveraging partnerships for learning, managing organisational change, and sponsoring technologies in communities. Students will learn the metrics used in social network analysis and how they are interpreted and applied. Suggested reading lists and online resources offer opportunities for further review and practice.

Organizations are complex social systems that are not easy to understand, yet they must be managed if a company is to succeed. This book explains networks and how managers and organizations can navigate them to produce successful strategic innovation outcomes. Although managers are increasingly aware of the importance of social relations for the inner-workings of the organization, they often lack insights and tools to analyze, influence or even create these networks. This book draws on insights from social network theory; insights sharpened by research in a number of different empirical settings including production, engineering, financial services, consulting, food processing, and R&D/hi-tech organizations and alternates between offering critical real business examples and more rigorous analysis. This concise book is vital reading for students of business and management as well as managers and executives.

This edition offers: 1. Five new chapter opening cases: Blue-Ray vs. HD-DVD: a standards battle in high definition video; From PDA's to smartphones: the evolution of an industry; Bug Labs and the Long Tail; Organizing for innovation at Google; and Skull Candy: developing extreme headphones. 2. More balance between industrial products versus consumer products. More industrial product examples (such as electronic components, medical components, aerospace, and business software) and service examples (such as search and advertising services, news services, hotels, outsourced industrial design) have been included throughout the book. 3. More extensive coverage of collaborative networks in Chapters 2 and 8, including graphs of the global technology collaboration network; richer explanations and examples for the network externality graphs in Chapter 4; and more in-depth coverage of modularity in both products and organizational forms in Chapter 10. Chapter 11 has also been expanded to include Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) to ensure that students are familiar with the most widely used new product development tools. (Back of Book)

Innovative ruptures of traditional boundaries in value chains are requiring companies to rethink how they go to market, what they need to own, what they need to retain and innovate as core competencies, and how they innovatively deal with suppliers and customers. The key message of the book is that the new knowledge-networked innovation economy requires a totally different strategic management mindset, approach and toolbox, and its major value-added is a new strategic management approach and toolbox for the innovation economy - a poised strategy approach. Designed for both managers and advanced business students, the book provides a unique combination of new management theory, selected managerial articles by prominent scholars such as Clayton Christensen, Henry Chesbrough, Sumantra Ghoshal, Quinn Mills, and Peter Senge, and a wide array of real-world case examples including GE, Shell, IBM, HP, BRL Hardy, P&G, Southwest Airlines and McGraw-Hill, within the dynamics of industries such as airlines, energy, telecommunications, wine & beverages, and computing. The authors illustrate powerful new strategic innovation concepts and tools, such as poised strategy for managing multiple business models, poised strategy scorecards (moving beyond the well-known balanced scorecard), the wheel of business model reinvention, and organizational rejuvenation methods. The book includes the concepts of: Poised Strategic Management, Organizational Rejuvenation, Business Models as Platform for Strategy, Poised Scorecards, Identifying Sources of Innovation in Business Ecosystems.

The central theme of this book series is to explore the contemporary perspectives on managing technological innovations and related strategic policy issues. Specifically, this book series open to all potential topics that need attention within the broad theme of the management of technology and innovations, and promote an interdisciplinary scholarship and dialogue on the management of innovation and technological change in a global context from strategic, managerial, behavioral, and policy perspectives. The third volume of this book series concentrates on “Technological Innovation Networks: Collaboration and Partnership” – a theme resonating with scholars and practitioners that innovation requires a network of partners to collaborate. Authors from around the world contribute to this volume by approaching this theme from many different perspectives: an institutional understanding of international R&D networks, a stakeholder centrality potential in innovation networks, the intersection between intellectual structure and M & A, the rejections of the technological opportunities due to lock?in, the policy?practice paradox of technological innovations, Japan’s national innovation strategy, immigrant entrepreneurs in patents and performance, the impact of university research parks on technology transfer, a historical narrative of cotton technology in China, and the innovative online or blended education in terms of motivation and reality. These researches have made significant attempts to address the important questions on how technological innovation touched on many aspects of our networked social life, thus I hope readers who are interested in learning the most contemporary perspectives on the technological innovation will be impressed, enriched, and intrigued by their analyses in each chapter. As the editor, I hope readers of the volume could enjoy these chapters by its global nature, the practicality orientation, the critical perspective, and the new theories and practices embedded in the selected research.

Every firm must maintain an entrepreneurial ecosystem and a coherent innovation strategy in order to stay ahead of the competition. For managers this means being able to build a vision of what innovation looks like in the context of their organization, fostering entrepreneurial behaviour, spotting opportunities and making the right decisions. Based on years of practical experience and unique insight, this handy guide identifies fundamental challenges and is rooted in concrete examples. Accompanied by a brand new app for iPhone and Android as well as a companion website (www.NavigatingInnovation.org), this is an easy dip in, dip out guide with a focus on successful execution. Navigating Innovation is a one-stop-shop, giving you a deeper understanding of the core concepts and tools to capture the right opportunities for your business.

Innovation is a vital process for any business to remain competitive in this age. This progress must be coherently and optimally managed, allowing for successful improvement and future growth. The Handbook of Research on Strategic Innovation Management for Improved Competitive Advantage provides emerging research on the use of information and knowledge to promote development in various business agencies. While covering topics such as design thinking, financial analysis, and policy planning, this publication explores the wide and complex relationships that constitute strategic innovation management principals and processes. This publication is an important resource for students, professors, researchers, managers, and entrepreneurs seeking current research on the methods and tools regarding information and knowledge management for business advancement.

Innovation, in economic activity, in managerial concepts and in engineering design, results from creative activities, entrepreneurial strategies and the business climate. Innovation leads to technological, organizational and commercial changes, due to the relationships between enterprises, public institutions and civil society organizations. These innovation networks create new knowledge and contribute to the dissemination of new socio-economic and technological models, through new production and marketing methods. Innovation Economics, Engineering and Management Handbook 1 is the first of the two volumes that comprise this book. The main objectives across both volumes are to study the innovation processes in todays information and knowledge society; to analyze how links between research and business have intensified; and to discuss the methods by which innovation emerges and is managed by firms, not only from a local perspective but also a global one. The studies presented in these two volumes contribute toward an understanding of the systemic nature of innovations and enable reflection on their potential applications, in order to think about the meaning of growth and prosperity.

This essential volume brings together contributions by leading scholars in strategic management, which analyse contemporary thought in complex, knowledge-intensive and dynamic environments. This set of scholarly articles examines the unique challenges posed in these settings and explores the logic that may be used to evaluate innovative investment proposals. It also considers how to capture value from assets in product or knowledge markets, and how to design organizations to assemble resources in innovative settings. This important collection, with an original introduction by the editors, will be of great value to academics and practitioners interested in technology strategy and innovation management.