Parametering Knowledge Networks in Clusters and Business Process Networks

Industrial cluster are widely recognised as an economic viable entity, which is more innovative and more competitive than the market average of non-clustered competitors. Business support agencies and local governments recognise cluster formation as a sound strategy for economic growth. However, clusters are self organising and thus, it is difficult influence their growth and viability directly. Instead, it is more appropriate to create a sound cluster environment and infrastructure in which the self organisation process of clusters triggers well.

The self organising process takes place along the structural layers of a cluster, i.e. cluster management and cluster organisations, political, financial and academic institutions, as well further training centers. For the formation process these layers have to connect with each other through a network. Since networks enable the exchange of knowledge, the denser a network is, the higher the knowledge density is within that network. Using knowledge means applying it to a context, which constantly changes in a cluster just as much as it does within a network. As competencies are regarded as “dispositions of self-organising knowledge” (cf. Erpenbeck), a cluster with a high density network allows for a freer flow of competencies than a cluster with a low density network.

These “network competencies” demand from the structural layers to produce, offer and process the knowledge required by the network. Thus, instead of “pushing” knowledge into this system and trying to convince receiving entities of its necessity, it is required to “pull” the appropriate knowledge off this network thereby signalling its utility and making visible the value added by that network. The accumulation of this knowledge pull by the network structural layers maps the network’s knowledge preference.

In fully established business process networks there are plenty of network service providers with one network process orchestrator effectively coupling the available network resources. Network service providers are required to excel in their core competencies while network process orchestrators need to have detailed knowledge about each service provider as well as having the competency of utilising the network resources in the most effective way. By having a high degree of competence in organising the knowledge flows within the network, network orchestrators can offer on-demand highly diversifiable services, as a result of the complexity the network is able regulate, while supporting service providers in most effectively contributing towards the business process network. BPN and clusters have in common that through their network an emergent value is created.

Variety supporting institutional innovation?

Along the progress of the project: Integrated Competency Management (Integriertes Kompetenzmanagent), we developed a modell and a questionnaire to test it against (if interested please comment and I will send them to you). The modell centers on our primary focus: How can diversity be a source for innovation? Diversity in a wider context is regarded as being aspects of variety. However, it is still being misunderstood as trying to offer equal chances to everyone in an organisation in Germany.

We want to focus on variety as a source and vehicle for innovation. To achieve this, we have designed a questionnaire in a first attempt to get an overview of diversity:

• As a source for innovation


• As an enabler for innovation


• In the development of innovation


• For the distribution of innovation

Each section has a set of up to 8 questions with a six dimensional scale to enable a definite position whether to support the statement or not. By looking at the entire process we hope to understand how much of an innovation culture has been established and how well formed institutional innovation is.

Without a doubt product innovation or business modell innovation still remain very important to stay competitive, but there has been a lot of pressure to increase the speed of innovation itself. The pressure comes from cultures, such as Chinese understanding of intellectual property, to the surfacing of global players from emerging markets such as India (IT, Cars) and China (Electronic, Cars). While Open Innovation has been heralded, it just adds another pillar to innovation management already dealing with product innovation and business modell innovation by optimizing the knowledge supply chain to the research and development department. Institutional Innovation, however, is strategic, in a sense that it is a long term goal since it requires a constant reinvention of the organisation from top to bottom. This only works if there exists an innovation culture in which emotions drive employees to discuss ideas, share and exchange their knowledge, receive support from management for the development of ideas. Whereas it is the management's foremost objective to maintain these emotions by boldly living the culture driving innovation as well as having the instruments at hand to manage the development progress of the ideas. This is by no means an easy tasks, as emotions are soft while decisions have to be made on hard facts.

So it is our attempt to classify how diversity as a soft variable can be put to use as indicating the progress of institutionalised innovation. Ultimately innovation cannot be planned. One only provides a channel in which the ressources can flow and self-organise.