Complexities And Dynamics Of Innovation Networks:A Triple Helix Focused Study

Optimal resource utilisation,competitive advantage,economic growth,national and institutional development are major concerns of the practical business world.Captains of industry and national systems are in constant strife to develop approaches that provide better and or alternate solutions to existing national problems.National systems have relatively similar concerns,with a special focus on regulating industrial activities towards the achievement of national goals.The relevance of industry-government interaction is very important to emerging in economies.This is because the overwhelming consensus supports the premise that industrial action is the catalyst for national growth and economic development.Industry runs on competitive advantage as a means of attaining sustainability,thus a constant search for and need for innovation.Higher Education institutions are renowned for churning out innovation through research,patents and skilled labour.Sub-Saharan Africa,for all its successes in the past decade still faces a major challenge in generating relevant research to innovate its internal industrial and economic space.National systems have tried several approaches to review and resolve these challenges.The synergy between academia,industry and government,is proposed to provide the catalytic change towards innovating national systems.Several research postulations have been formulated around this expectation with the prevailing one being the Triple Helix Theory of Innovation.The Triple Helix Theory is largely successful in the European and Western Economies with several evidence-based research and publications.The dissertation extends the core principles of the Triple Helix Theory to sub-Saharan Africa as it seeks to review the existing complexities and dynamics that prevail within the innovation network that exists therein.On the basis of this,the thesis postulates that,appreciation of the relational dynamics and impact of actor activities in innovation networks is relevant in determining the conditions of partnership,the mechanisms of sustaining the network as well as the role of actor activities(for example imitation)is critical to the overarching success of innovation networks.Methodically,this dissertation has adopted modified and adapted principles of complex networks to highlight the topology of the innovation networks that exist in sub-Saharan Africa.Further,using numerical deductions the endogenous and exogenous complexities and dynamics of interactions within innovation spaces were assessed to explicate multi-criteria decisions making of actors,the effects of diverse funding on sustainability as well as the impact of imitation on innovation within highly competitive but resource-starved innovation networks.Thus,the dissertation has at its core the desire to investigate and make policy suggestions towards the restructuring of interactions between actors within the innovation networks of subSaharan Africa.The structure of the dissertation begins with the first chapter conducting an expose' of the prevailing characteristics of innovation networks in relation to the principles of the Triple Helix Theory.The second chapter provides an in-depth theoretical review and foundations upon which this dissertation finds support.Chapter 3 concentrated on developing a multi-criteria performance measurement model as a means of predicting partnership selection within innovation networks.The fourth chapter,building on the multi-criteria performance model,conducts an analysis of how innovation partners provide requisite conditions in sustaining research networks as a means of innovation sources.The dissertation in Chapter 5,conducted an analysis of how government policy affects the evolutionary dynamics of innovation networks and how this affects two core objectives of innovation networks that is funding and generation of innovation.Chapters 6 and 7 were dedicated to the analysis of the dynamics of imitation on the innovation process as well as innovation banks of actors in the innovation network.Finally,the eighth chapter provided a conclusion and policy implications of the dissertation as a whole.Categorically,the findings of this research show that: using a simple multi-criteria performance model coupled with smart search algorithms helps industrial actors in an innovation network predict globally best sources of innovation as potential partners.Secondly,the dissertation finds that the combined impact of government and industrial participation in research helps establish researchers relatively faster than when they operate in isolation.Further,the study provides evidence that research institutions are more likely to be sustainable if they are able to source funding through diverse sources.Another major finding of this dissertation is that when the policy process is allowed to flow and develop,the affecting spaces tend to be positively impacted.This finding further shows that collaborating institutions and subsequently their individual attributes,at both the system and individual levels assist in policies having a positive influence on innovation spaces growth,evolution,and possible sustenance.Finally,the dissertation observes that imitation and subsequent dynamics of adoption conditions are critical when firms are considering partnering innovation sources as partners in the innovation space,as these will determine the length of the innovation process for firms.Further,this research provides relevant support for multi-criteria decision making in dynamic innovation networks.In addition,though the analogy relies strongly on emerging economies,generally,there are strong significant implications for researchers,innovation practitioners,and policymakers as they seek to enhance on innovation systems within which they operate.The possible innovations introduced by this dissertation finds credence in the following areas:As previously stated,this work had as a major novelty,to make a constructive contribution to research pertaining to innovation networks.By resorting to strong numerical analysis,that provides a general logic for explaining innovation within a network and the subsequent test of these analogies with empirically supported investigations as a means of establishing,analysing and reviewing the complex and dynamic relations within an innovation network generates interesting,and novel approaches for studying innovation within networks.Again,using empirically developed graphical representations of innovation networks with strongly diverse actors,coupled with their clearly defined individual impact on the system(actor weights)the research helped provide a revolutionary approach for displaying how government intervention can catalytically influence the evolution of innovation networks.Further,the dissertation,based on research evidence has provided explanatory solutions to three major questions that prevail in typical innovation networks.However,knowing how;the role of actor performance,industrial influence and government regulation affects innovation networks sparks the search for how the adoption of innovation is affected by some defined condition.The Triple Helix principle and its affiliate complexities require researchers to develop robust approaches that help inform policy as well as general decision making within the network.Using the approaches developed helps to show that industry-universitygovernment interactions help sustain innovation but require extensive research in order to identify the critical points and factors that assure and sustain competitive advantage for actors.Last but not the least,the findings of this research offers the opportunity to make recommendations on policies that maybe be specifically constructive and appropriate to understanding,managing,and improving on innovation activities within emerging economies.Specifically,policies that focus on improving higher education and research institutions as pivotal actors in the innovation space.