ABSTRACT

Analysing Distributed Innovation Processes

CRIC Discussion Paper No. 43

Rod Coombs, Mark Harvey & Bruce Tether

This paper is concerned with improving our conceptual understanding of the fact that processes of innovation often, even typically, involve several contributing and co-ordinated firms or organisations. This brings to the fore the significance of innovation processes that are distributed between firms or organisations. We contend such relationships have received inadequate attention in the literature. The distributedness of innovation varies in degree, and takes a variety of (dynamic) forms, but in arguing that greater attention should be paid to 'distributed innovation processes' (DIPs) we introduce to innovation studies the more general concept of 'instituted economic processes', of which DIPs are an instance, in order to analyse how differently distributed modes of innovation become instituted (and de-instituted) in time and space. The dynamics of change in distributed networks of relationships are thus a central concern, and in drawing attention to these we emphasise the significance of the formation of new classes of economic agent, and the (dynamic) relations of mutual dependency and (qualitative and quantitative) power asymmetry between classes of economic agent. Finally we discuss the 'scale' of these distributed innovation processes. 'Scale' refers to both the familiar problem of grading innovations and production configurations by their radicalness and complexity, which is partially a matter of empirical perspective, but also relates to the extent to which the agents and their inter-relations are transformed, either as a precursor to innovation, or as a consequence of innovation.

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