Innovation Networks

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.

Rick (H.L.) Aalbers is an Assistant Professor of Strategy and Innovation at Radboud University, Nijmegen School of Management and affiliated with the Institute of Management Research, the Netherlands. He received his PhD from the University of Groningen in Business and Economics for an Award winning dissertation on managing intra organizational networks. Rick received his Bachelor and Masters in Business Administration from Erasmus University’s RSM and his second Masters in Economics from the Rotterdam School of Economics (awarded cum laude). He has published in leading international journals such as Research Policy, MIT Sloan Management Review, Journal of Product Innovation Management, British Journal of Management, Innovation: Management, Policy and Practice, Journal of Business Strategy and the Journal of Economic Issues, and others. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Management Studies. A former manager at Deloitte Consulting and a visiting scholar at Imperial College, London, he advised on strategic change to companies across Europe such as ING, ABN-Amro, Fortis, Achmea, NN, KBC, OP Pohjola, Rabobank, Philips, Atos, Deloitte and BDO. For earlier work on managing innovation networks in business he received the 2013 Richard Beckhard Memorial Prize, awarded by a jury of MIT faculty to the authors of the most outstanding MIT Sloan Management Review article on planned change and organizational development published in the previous year.

Wilfred Dolfsma is Professor of Strategy and Innovation at the University of Groningen School of Economics and Business. He studied economics and philosophy, and holds a PhD in the former from Erasmus University. He consulted with a number of different companies, including ASML, Campina-Friesland Food, DSM, and Ford. He published in, a.o., the Journal of Product Innovation Management, Research Policy, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Technology Analysis and Strategic Management, the Journal of Economic Issues, the British Journal of Management, Technovation, Technological Forecasting and Social Change. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Review of Social Economy (2005-) and Associate Editor of Innovation: Management, Policy and Practice (2012-). He authored or edited, a.o., Interdisciplinary Economics (ed., with S.Kesting, Routledge 2013), Government Failure (Edward Elgar 2013), Understanding Mergers and Acquisition in the 21st Century (with K.McCarthy, Palgrave Macmillan 2012), The Nature of the New Firm: Beyond the Boundaries of Organizations and Institutions (ed. With K. McCarthy and M. Fiolet, Edward Elgar 2011), Institutions, Communication and Values (Palgrave Macmillan 2009), Knowledge Economies: Innovation, Location, and Organization (Routledge 2008; Paperback 2009), The Elgar Handbook of Social Economics (ed., with J. Davis; Edward Elgar 2008; Outstanding Academic Title for 2009, according to Choice Magazine; Paperback 2010), Fighting the War on File Sharing. (with A. Schmidt and W. Keuvelaar, T.M.C. Asser Press &Cambridge UP 2007), Ethics and the Market (ed., with J. Clary and D.M. Figart, Routledge 2006, Paperback 2011), Understanding the Dynamics of a Knowledge Economy (ed., with L. Soete, Edward Elgar 2006), Institutional Economics and the Formation of Preferences (Edward Elgar 2004; Gunnar Myrdal Prize 2006).