Dynamics of Technological Innovator Network: A comparative Case Study on Manufacturing Companies in China, Denmark, and Switzerland

Proceedings of the 5th International Ph.D. School on Innovation and Economic Development, Globelics Academy 2008, Tampere, 2nd of June 13th of June, 2008.This paper focuses on technological innovation and organizational learning of a state-owned company in relatively underdeveloped southwest China. We try to find out how the TIN evolutes in the ten years of technological innovation and how to accelerate organizational learning across functional and organizational boundaries to foster innovation. We adopted Social Network Analysis (SNA) to map and measure the relationships between different departments and organizations inside and outside of the company. Case study was used as our main research method. We hope this research can show us a picture of the dynamics of TIN in this firm in order to get deeper insights into how organizational learning impacts technological innovation. We also hope it can provide some valuable views for firm managers and policy makers. We addressed four research questions: 1. What stages did technological innovation in Grace go through in the past ten years? 2. How did the TINs of Grace look like in these stages? 3. How did the TINs of Grace evolve over the stages of technological innovation? 4. How to accelerate organizational learning across functional and organizational boundaries to foster technological innovation at present