The use of Social Network Analysis in Innovation Research: A literature review

The purpose of this paper is to review the innovation research literature which has made an explicit use of social network analysis methodology in order to provide empirical support to innovation theories or conceptual frameworks. The review introduces social network analysis then discusses why and how it has been used in innovation research so far. This paper argues that studies using social network analysis tend to focus too much
on change in the relationships between interacting units or nodes of the network to the detriment of change within units/nodes. Therefore, a combination of case study and social network analysis can offer a solution to that problem by providing the best of both methodologies.