Developing technological innovations within networks

Abstract

Innovation-led growth demands the creation and development of effective relationships between the manufacturers, users, universities, polytechnics, research institute, government departments and quasi-government organizations at the various stages in the innovation cycle. The effective management of the networks ensures that the differing opportunities for sustain-able cost advantages and/or product or process differentiation at the different stages in the innovation cycle are more clearly identified and grasped. In delineating the strategically relevant activities associated with creating, developing, manufacturing, marketing and the re-innovation of medical equipment innovations, evidence suggests that the innovation cycle could be usefully divided into ten stages for more effective and detailed analysis. The degree and nature of the networking in each of the stages was examined. The sample of innovations studied in the research described here was from the medical equipment industry, there being thirty four innovations from eleven companies, twenty six (76%) of which were developed through multiple and continuous interaction between the manufacturer and the other actors in the networks, resulting in twenty two (65 %) being successful, one being too early to judge and three being failures.