Paper short abstract:

This paper is presenting a novel approach to combine Biographies of Artefacts and Practices (BoAP) with Social Network Analysis (SNA) to study the link between Innovation (Eco)System and New Product Development (NPD) in high-tech industry, based on a case study of the Scottish Space Sector.

Paper long abstract:

This project is attempting to bridge a theoretical and methodological gap (Venturini and Verbano, 2014), between the (eco)systemic macro level (Malerba, 2002; 2005) and processual micro level (Pavitt, 2004) of understanding high-tech innovation (in the Space Industry), and illuminate the role public institutions (can) play in supporting new venture creation and growth (Dosi et. al., 2006; Smits and Kuhlmann, 2004; Chesbrough, 2013). The offered solution is an enquiry into Business and Knowledge Networks and the direct effect they have on New Product Development (NPD) in firms, particularly SMEs.

Central to this work is the assumption that the gap can be bridged by studying network facilitated interaction between macro and micro level realities (or social worlds). In order to understand them better, a bi-partite approach was devised of, on one hand, biographical (Williams and Pollock, 2008) study of the NPD process as a series of "innovation moments" (developed from Edwards, 2000), and, on the other, using Social Network Analysis (SNA) (Scott, 1988; Giuliani 2007a; 2007b) to map the Business and Knowledge Network(s) inputting into this process.

So far, the deployment of this model in the Scottish Space Sector, our case study, is showing that a crucial insight in the system is indeed possible when studying direct effects networks have on the creation of new products (Vidmar, 2015). This (two-way) interaction is a starting point for future work, however, illuminating this link further and characterising its effects is not trivial - after all, who said it was not rocket science?