Networks and Innovation : A Survey of Empirical Literature

Networks are now understood to be an important mechanism to change economic and social outcomes through non-market means, and one of these outcomes is the contribution of networks to innovation and technological change in general. This survey covers the recent literature on networks as far as they have implications for knowledge transfer among actors, innovation and technological change. We present a recent survey of empirical research, covering inter-firm and intra-firm networks, since these are accepted to have the most important impact on knowledge dissemination and innovation. One important conclusion that can be derived from the survey is that, although there exists a tremendous increase in network research, it is still difficult in most cases to draw robust conclusions and generalizable results. Therefore, one of the aims of this survey is to highlight those areas in which some consensus has been achieved in the literature, and others which need more attention and research in the future.

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