Four Network Patterns for Innovation

Many industries are challenged by very long time periods from an initial discovery to full commercialization of a product. Scientific research that eventually leads to new products in pharma, energy, biotechnology, aerospace, agriculture and other industries can take more than a decade from ideation to product distribution. How can this enormously long cycle be better managed and shortened?

Value Networks provide the key. Initial work with AgResearch in New Zealand in 2005-2006 provided initial value network insights and patterns that led the ValueNetworks.com analyst team to begin looking at innovaiton networks. Then in we participated in the 2007 an evaluative study “Effectiveness of ICT RTD Impacts on the EU Innovation System”  conducted for the European Commission, DG INFSO Evaluation and Monitoring Unit, by ALTEC SA and Edna Pasher PhD & Associates under the direction of Peter Johnston, Head of Unit, and Frank Cunningham, Evaluation Specialist. The aim was to assess how effectively EU ICT RTD and deployment initiatives are being exploited in European systems of innovation at member state and regional levels.

An analysis of project data revealed four specific types or archetypes of purposeful value networks required to bring new ideas to market. More accurately these four networks can be thought of as "stages" or "phase changes" in a single innovation network. The four value network archetypes each support a particular stage of innovation from conception to implementation in the form of commercialization or production.

Note that the roles for each phase of the network are the same basic roles - which is why it is essentially one network. However in each phase the roles are activated in different ways, the relationships are different and the nature of the deliverables between the roles are different as well. An analogy for this is the way your brain is activated differently depending on whether you are listening to music or doing advanced mathematics.  

We are now working with companies to operationalize innovation networks to ease the transitions from each stage to the next. We will next address how this work is carrying forward into regional innovation networks and intellectual capital formation.