Title: Managing and shaping innovation
Description: • How do we define innovation and novelty?

• In what ways can social and organisational networks shape the innovation process?

• How is innovation managed within organizations?

• What role do informality and serendipity play in the innovation process?

• What role do users, suppliers, competitors, & universities, play in the innovation process?

• How can government policy shape innovative capacity? 

Managing and Shaping Innovation tackles these questions by drawing upon literature from a variety of disciplines, including economics, management, sociology, and psychology. Through an examination of the patterns of innovation, and of the strategies, structures, and processes of innovative organizations, the reader is equipped with a broad understanding of the innovation process. A particular emphasis is given to the network perspective, which is used as a lens for discussing and exploring innovative activity.

The authors take an analytical and critical approach, presenting seminal and cutting-edge academic research throughout, and encouraging students to evaluate this material and reflect upon their own assumptions and experience. The text contains a wide array of boxed examples and mini case studies to illustrate innovation in practice across a variety of sectors; examples range from Napster and e-Bay, to Formula One and virtual reality.

This major new text is specifically aimed at postgraduate (MBA and MSc) and final-year undergraduate students undertaking core or elective modules in the management of innovation, as well as informed practitioners, and bridges the gap between the theoretical and the practical.

Content of Book

PART I – Building the Foundations

Chapter 1: Introduction – Key Themes, Concepts, and Definitions in the Study of Innovation 
Chapter 2: Tensions, Paradox, and Contradictions in Managing Innovation 
Chapter 3: Innovation From a Network Perspective 

PART II – Strategy and the Mapping of Innovation and Technological Progress

Chapter 4: The Patterns of Innovation Within the Life Cycle of a Technology 
Chapter 5: Technological Regimes, Trajectories, Transitions, Discontinuity, and Long Waves 
Chapter 6: Innovation Strategies 

PART III – The Management of Innovation Within Organizations

Chapter 7: Organizing for Innovation – Organization Structure and Culture 
Chapter 8: Managing the Innovation Process 
Chapter 9: Social Networks and Informality in the Innovation Process 

PART IV – The Impact of Context on the Management and ‘Shaping’ of Innovation

Chapter 10: The Sources of Innovation 
Chapter 11: The Transformative Capacity of Innovation and Innovation Systems
Subjects: Diffusion of innovations, Organizational change, Organizational behavior, Management, Social networks, Technological innovations, Business networks, Social interaction