Title: On the influence of nodes' characteristic in inter-organisational innovation networks structure

Authors: Giovanna Ferraro; Antonio Iovanella; Gianluca Pratesi

Addresses: Department of Enterprise Engineering, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Via del Politecnico, 1 – 00133, Rome, Italy ' Department of Enterprise Engineering, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Via del Politecnico, 1 – 00133, Rome, Italy ' Department of Enterprise Engineering, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Via del Politecnico, 1 – 00133, Rome, Italy

Abstract: This paper studies inter-organisational innovation networks, investigating the relations between the structure of the connections among members and a given node's characteristic. Such relations are used to provide some insights into the attitude of network innovation. We propose an original methodology that considers nodes belonging to two different classes detecting the available configurations. The intensity of connections, as an additional layer of information, is also included to examine its relative influence on the network topology. We complete the analysis through the introduction of a qualitative intensity/connectance matrix that attempts to connote the innovation attitude of the network. We test the methodology on a real case study, discussing the detected configuration and the implication in terms of innovation attitude.

Keywords: inter-organisational networks; innovation networks; complex networks; node characteristics; dyadic configuration; intensity-connectance matrix; network structure; network topology.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCEE.2016.077247

International Journal of Computational Economics and Econometrics, 2016 Vol.6 No.3, pp.239 - 257

Received: 12 Nov 2014
Accepted: 04 May 2015
Published online: 25 Jun 2016 *

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