Future Perspectives: Innovation Networks Beyond Traditional Management

Taking new challenges of increased complexity, dynamics and division of labour of innovation processes into account, this book has presented the new concept of “innovation communities” as well as first results from the empirical and practical work on innovation communities carried out within the framework of the research and implementation project InnoCo. InnoCo is part of the research programme on “Innovation strategies beyond traditional management”, funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research and the European Social Fund. Section 6.1 summarizes the key insights from the InnoCo project that have been presented in detail throughout the book. The following Sect. 6.2 discusses the implications of the innovation community concept for managerial practice and future implementations. This is based on empirical findings and practical experience from the InnoCo project, as presented in Chap. 2–5. The research and implementation project InnoCo has demonstrated the relevance of cross-organizational and cross-level networks of promotors for the success of radical innovation endeavours, and has generated many important new insights into the evolution and management of innovation communities. Nevertheless there are important research questions that are still unanswered and call for further investigations. The final Sect. 6.3 discusses the limitations of present research and the resulting pathways for future research.