Introduction to Special Issue on innovations and networks : innovation of, within, through and by networks

The focus of this special issue is on the wider context of innovation" this includes the innovative capabilities an organisation's network provides to it (innovation through a network), the ways networks can be built and nurtured by its participants (innovation within or of a network) and the way networks can operate to facilitate innovation (innovation by a network). The strength of these various network perspectives is that they allow us to consider simultaneously the nature and interdependencies of: (1) evolution of actors and the innovation roles they play in networks, (2) the activities that can determine the form innovation takes, these evolve as a result of innovation and/or are themselves the core of innovation (i.e. process innovations), (3) the widened scope of resources that networks leverage and produce and (4) the ideas that emerge from, guide and direct network actors. Thus a network perspective allows us to consider the ways innovation emerges from changes within each of these domains (i.e. changes to actor bonds, activity links, resource ties and idea couplings), the ways it results from the interactions between domains (e.g. how actor bond changes impact on activities' changes and activity links' changes) and the ways innovations in turn change these domains and their interactions.