Loet Leydesdorff - In Search of a Network Theory of Innovations (NetGloW 2014)

Loet Leydesdorff’s (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands) talk “In Search of a Network Theory of Innovations: Relations, Positions and Perspectives” suggested studying innovation networks using an interesting synthesis of theoretical perspectives – Luhmann’s social-systems theory, on the one hand, and Latour’s “sociology of translations”, on the other. According to the speaker, the common focus on communications of these two approaches allows researchers to combine them and extend methodological opportunities in three dimensions, which should be developed as interconnected: relations that can be studied using graph-analytical tools; organization that can be studied factor-analytically as relational events; and self-organization as hyperspace of “horizons of meaning”.