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Centre for Employment Studies
Modelling innovation networks: a two-level approach Petra Ahrweiler * Abstract The authors have been developing a simulation model of innovation networks over the past five years. The aim of the model is to encapsulate a complex theory of innovation (i.e. the successful exploitation of new ideas) in a form that is clear, precise, extensible and capable of empirical testing. A multi-agent simulation embodying an initial theory of innovation networks has been built and used to suggest a number of policy-relevant conclusions. It has been reported elsewhere (see for example, http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/4/3/8.html). Agents in the model representing firms, policy actors, research labs, etc. each have a knowledge base that they use to generate ‘artefacts’ that they hope will be innovations. In the original model, the success of the artefacts is judged by an 'oracle' that evaluates each artefact using a criterion that is not available to the agents. Agents are able to follow strategies to improve their artefacts either on their own (through incremental improvement or by radical changes), or by seeking partners to contribute additional knowledge. It has been shown though experiments with the model's parameters that it is possible to reproduce qualitatively the characteristics of innovation networks in two sectors: personal and mobile communications and biotechnology. In this paper, we shall briefly summarise this previous model and then describe work in progress to extend the model to cover market behaviour as well as the knowledge level behaviour that we focussed on previously. In the new model, firms can trade knowledge as well as collaborate. The 'black box' that was the oracle in the previous model is replaced by the activities of the other firms in the market. This means that firms are having to operate in a changing environment in which innovations made by one firm affect the opportunities available to the others at both the knowledge and the market levels. *
University of Hamburg, Arbeitsstelle Medien und Politik
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