A social network analysis of built environment national research centres in a national innovation program

![CDATA[This research seeks to describe the characteristics of the relationships within the clusters of academic-industry collaborative centres that contribute to built environment research through a longitudinal study. The creation and transfer of knowledge within such research collaborations is analysed over an eight-year period. The national institutional instrument of a program of Cooperative Research Centres supports collaboration between researchers, industries, communities and governments to solve major challenges facing Australia. The program purports to fund and seek participation from all sectors and disciplines. There is always conjecture from various disciplines that they are under-represented. In particular the built environment research community claims that although they have a large footprint on the GDP they are poorly resourced and supported financially through the CRC program and across all research funding programs in Australia. There has been no study specifically on the built environment cluster and there has been few broader empirical studies that explore past simple descriptive statistics. Various research questions were posed in the study with the aim of identifying strong and weak built environment research clusters over the eight-year period using social network analysis techniques. The research is seeking to explore the depth and scope of interdisciplinary research relationship capacity in the national innovation system. The analysis is in the early stages and preliminary results are presented in this paper. The CRC for Construction Innovation was explored in terms of level of interdisciplinarity and linkage strengths in the clusters. Interdisciplinarity and academic-industry and academic-academic linkage strength is a key structural characteristic of this particular built environment innovation cluster and this is not unexpected. However we challenge the traditional rhetoric, assumptions and beliefs on built interdisciplinarity and develop a much more informed discourse based upon empirical results and the theoretical discourse of academic-industry linkages with cross and trans disciplinary debates. The outcomes of this research can contribute to developing and managing future directions of research funding towards creating a more innovative built environment. This paper will be of interest to academics and various stakeholders in other countries seeking to lobby at a national level.]]