Technological innovation and organizational learning: A case study on dynamics of a technological innovator network

Understanding the role of knowledge and organizational learning in fostering or inhibitinginnovation becomes crucially important (Lam, 2005). Innovation is not an isolated processof neither individuals nor firms. Innovation is a process which happens in a system whereinteraction between firms, customers, suppliers, competitors and various other private andpublic organizations is important (Fagerberg, 2005). It is impossible to understandinnovation processes without going deeper into the understanding of learning andknowledge and it is blind to explain economic performance without bringing into theanalysis of social relationships and organizational structures (Lundvall and Christensen,2004). Knowledge creation, knowledge sharing and knowledge application which arecrucial to technological innovation highly depend on social interaction in the circumstanceof technological uncertainty and complexity. Now the time has come to open up the blackbox of social interaction through focus on how learning takes place in the real world(Lundvall and Christensen, 2004).Social context and economic environment should be highly recognized when studyinginnovation and organizational learning. Researches have been done according to variousobservations, explanations have been made in the light of diversified theories. But do theyfit Chinese context? Powell and Grodal (2005) argued that when science and technologydeveloped rapidly and the sources of knowledge are widely distributed, networks can fosterinnovation. But when technology doesn't change very quickly, will networks help toinnovate? Pavitti (2005) identified two generic processes of innovation that is coordinatingand integrating specialized knowledge and learning under conditions of uncertainty. Butthis conclusion is also deduced from his research which focuses mainly on large firmswithin the USA, Europe, and Japan. Will the underdeveloped area has any different processof innovation? When talking about challenges for innovation theory and research, Lundvall and Christensen(2005) considered one implication of the important role of innovation'ssocial dimensions is that it is difficult to develop a general theory of innovation and interactive learning. They pointed out that the processes involved are highly contextdependent and the best we can do is to develop models that bring to the fore differences incontext as different patterns.This paper is about the dynamics of technological innovator network (TIN) in the past tenyears in a state-owned company named Grace Corporation in southwest China. It tried tounderstand the pattern and process of organizational learning for technological innovationin the perspective of social network. The social context and economic environment ofrelatively underdeveloped southwest China were considered as important background andinfluencing factor of what has happened.This paper focuses on technological innovation and organizational learning of a state-ownedcompany in relatively underdeveloped southwest China. We try to find out how theTIN evolutes in the ten years of technological innovation and how to accelerateorganizational learning across functional and organizational boundaries to fosterinnovation. We adopted Social Network Analysis (SNA) to map and measure therelationships between different departments and organizations inside and outside of thecompany. Case study was used as our main research method. We hope this research canshow us a picture of the dynamics of TIN in this firm in order to get deeper insights intohow organizational learning impacts technological innovation. We also hope it can providesome 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 organizationalboundaries to foster technological innovation at present?