Evolution of the Industry’s Innovation Network

Abstract

At the very heart of this book is the analysis of RD Degenne and Forse 1999; Carrington et al. 2005; Borgatti et al. 2013). These methods can be used to analyze both network snap-shots at a particular point in time, and evolving network patterns over time. This chapter is divided into three sections. Section 8.1 gives an overview of the organizations involved in publicly funded R&D cooperation projects from various angles. Based on these findings, we explore the proportion of LSMs and PROs participating in two types of publicly funded research projects – “CORDIS” and “Foerderkatalog”. Then, we take an initial look at the large-scale topology of the German laser industry innovation network. Next we focus on the evolutionary change patterns of the German laser industry innovation network. In Sect. 8.2 we start our longitudinal exploration by analyzing a set of basic node-related and tie-related network measures over time. In Sect. 8.3 we provide an in-depth analysis of the network topology by testing for the existence of three distinct large-scale network properties. First, we analyze the overall degree distribution and check for the emergence of scale-free properties (Barabasi and Albert 1999). Then we test whether the German laser industry’s innovation network exhibits small-world properties by applying the method proposed by Watts and Strogatz (1998). Finally, we use different but complementary methodological approaches to check for the existence of a core-periphery structure (Borgatti and Everett 1999). We finish off the descriptive analysis by visualizing the evolution of the German laser industry innovation network over time.