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products and systems that allow the value, in this
case innovation, to be exploited (McKenzie & van
Winkelen, 2004). Current perspectives of the
innovation process view it as an interactive and
networked system that spans organisational
boundaries to draw on knowledge, experience and
capabilities from diverse sources to achieve
development objectives (Rothwell, 1992; Tidd et al,
2005). Moves in this direction include organisations
moving from functionally based formal structures to
matrix, team-based and networked structures
(Morton et al., 2006). Such organizations are ‘highly
adaptive entities that transcend traditional
boundaries as they develop deep and collaborative
relationship internally as well as with customers,
suppliers, alliance partners and increasingly
competitors’ (Neilson et al., 2004). It is argued that
these relationship-driven organizations are more
successful than their non relationship-driven
counterparts (Morton et al., 2006).
The social network perspective is an appropriate
lens through which to examine the interactions
among employees (both within and outside the firm)
that enable collaborative work to be accomplished
(Cross & Parker, 2004), or in this case, that enable
learning, knowledge access, transfer, absorption and
accumulation for the purposes of innovation. It
enables exploration of how collaborative social
networks facilitate knowledge management for
innovation. A social network perspective permits
conceptualizing the whole, rather than the parts
(Storberg & Gubbins, 2007. A social network is a set
of people or groups, called ‘actors’, with some
pattern of interaction or ‘ties’ between them.
2.1 Understanding the Knowledge
Management Phases
Innovation is about creating new possibilities
through combining different knowledge sets. Such
knowledge may be from the insights and
competences of individual people (the source of new
knowledge), found in experience or could be from a
process of search- such as research into
technologies, markets, competitor actions etc. This
knowledge could be codified in such a way that
others can access it, discuss it, transfer it etc. or it
can be in tacit form, ‘known about’ but not actually
put into words or formulae. A key contribution to
our understanding of the kinds of knowledge
involved in different kinds of innovation is that
innovation rarely involves dealing with a single
technology or market but rather a bundle of
knowledge which is brought together into a
configuration. Successful innovation management is
about getting hold of and using knowledge about
components but also about how these can be put
together- the architecture of an innovation (Tidd et
al., 2005). Tranfield et al. (2006) outline the phases
of the innovation process and extrapolate the
knowledge routines necessary to support each of the
innovation phases- discovery, realisation and
nurture. Taking the network perspective of
innovation necessitates understanding where and
how knowledge management routines impact the
innovation process and what characteristics of social
networks influence knowledge management and
how. For example, the discovery phase of
innovation relates to searching and scanning the
environment to pick up and process signals about
potential innovations. Thus potential sources of
knowledge in the network are scanned for items of
interest. The larger the social network, the more
knowledge sources will be scanned and thus the
likelihood of finding valuable items of interest for
innovation is higher. The knowledge sources located
are then potential members of the network to enable
any collaborative efforts. Utilisation of the actors in
the network then enables access to, capture and
articulation of this knowledge in an explicit usable
format.
The first phase of any innovation process relates
to discovery and involves searching the external
environment to identify potential shifts and
unfulfilled needs that provide the opportunity for
potential innovations. The knowledge inputs for this
phase of the innovation process necessitate the
organisation spreading as wide a net as possible to
capture information from relevant knowledge
sources. The broadness of the domain makes it
impossible for any one individual (or even
organisation) to adequately search all potential
sources. The use of social networks to search for
and access knowledge regarding emergent shifts in
the external environment improves the organisations
searching ability to identify appropriate
opportunities for innovation. The social network
literatures inform practice on how best to search for
and access valuable knowledge through social
networks. For example, Granovetter (1973) proposes
through his weak tie theory that weak tie
relationships, defined as not emotionally intense,
infrequent, and restricted to one narrow type of
relationship enable a focal individual to contact
another who resides in a different social circle and
hence access non-redundant knowledge.
Burt (1992) proposes, through his structural hole
theory, that boundary spanners, defined as those
THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS ON KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT FOR INNOVATION IN
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