Contributions to Conferences

Planning Distributed Innovation Processes in Virtual Organisations by Applying the Collaborative Network Relationship Analysis

Abstract

The planning of distributed innovation processes in virtual organisations is a necessary step in the development of new and advanced products and services. In the past most research on innovation processes were focused on multinational companies with an intra-organisational perspective. The phenomena of innovation processes in networks – with an inter-organisational perspective – have been almost neglected. Collaborative networks are a new application field for such distributed innovation processes where specifically the Virtual Organisation (VO) offers a high potential for new business opportunities. The Collaborative Network Relationship Analysis (CNRA) is specifically designed for such networked organisations. It is shown that a qualitative planning of collaboration intensities can support business cases by proving both, knowledge and planning data. The consolidated findings of Social Network Analysis (SNA) are used as basis for the CNRA. A formalised example shows that certain aspects used in the SNA can be re-utilized resulting in the proposal of a new indicator addressing the CNRA.