The science of graphs and networks has become by now a well-established tool for modelling and analyzing a variety of systems with a large number of interacting components. Starting from the physical sciences, applications have spread rapidly to the natural and social sciences, as well as to economics, and are now further extended, in this volume, to the concept of innovations, viewed broadly.

In an abstract, systems-theoretical approach, innovation can be understood as a critical event which destabilizes the current state of the system, and results in a new process of self-organization leading to a new stable state.

The contributions to this anthology address different aspects of the relationship between innovation and networks. The various chapters incorporate approaches in evolutionary economics, agent-based modeling, social network analysis and econophysics and explore the epistemic tension between insights into economics and society-related processes, and the insights into new forms of complex dynamics.

Inhalt

Innovation networks in economics.- Knowledge Networks: Structure and Dynamics.- Death of Distance in Science? A Gravity Approach to Research Collaboration.- Evolution and Dynamics of Networks in #x2018;Regional Innovation Systems#x2019; (RIS).- Agent-Based Modelling of Innovation Networks #x2013; The Fairytale of Spillover.- Structural Holes, Innovation and the Distribution of Ideas.- Introduction: Network Perspectives on Innovations: Innovative Networks #x2013; Network Innovation.- Innovation networks in complex theories.- Tools from Statistical Physics for the Analysis of Social Networks.- Modeling Evolving Innovation Networks.- Propagation of Innovations in Complex Patterns of Interaction.- Sensitive Networks #x2013; Modelling Self-Organization and Innovation Processes in Networks.