The Social Dynamics of Innovation Networks

May 29, 2014

I work out of the Cambridge Innovation Center, one of the supposedly largest such places in the world with over 400 startups and early-stage technology companies that collectively claim a couple of billion dollars in funding.

The core idea of such a place is that not only does it make the startup process easier, but the fact that you have so many of these entrepreneurs in a phycial setting that encourages serendipitous encounters and complementary partnerships, actually accelerates the innovation process and likelihood of success.

The idea of creating such places is no longer novel. There are many such places that have sprung-up in Boston itself and more such places are coming up in the US. Frequently visitors from other countries come to learn how to replicate the success of CIC in their own neighborhoods.

(Image: http://noduslabs.com/tag/sociology/ )

The idea that you need physical proximity at all in a world where technology has made it possible for people to work remotely and collaborate with anyone in the world is what is interesting.

A recent report from the University of Twente titled ‘The Social Dynamics of Innovation Networks‘, caught my attention.

…why are governments across the world investing billions of euros in developing ‘innovation campuses’ that are justified precisely on the grounds that they help build up dense inter-personal networks that can help drive innovation processes?

I have been at CIC and other co-working locations before. There was a time when I worked out of offices and not remotely from home. In all those situations, there are a social dynamic that never happened once I increasingly started working from home. Not, that I did not build relationships remotely, but they did not have that opportunity to accidentally bump into each other, sometimes in the presence of a third person, or in the context of a discussion or an artifact.

There is nothing surprising here of course – those chance encounters, did not always spark something, but they laid the ground for a possibility, that sometimes built up over time. On one among many such occassions, all the accumulated tinder of ideas would catch fire and something novel would spring in our minds.

There is much attempt to de-skill, and deconstruct the magic of innovation. There is even talk of an ERP package for Innovation Management. There are certainly aspect of orchestrating large-scale innovation that can indeed be systematized, but underneath them all is this intangible layer that is formed by social relationships, and the unpredictable, unforeseen tipping points that happen through unexpected encounters in social networks.