Building Innovation Networks:
Connecting researchers, practitioners, and stakeholders

Building networks connecting researchers, practitioners, and stakeholders can support the emergence of innovation ecosystems that advance human flourishing. 

Recent research indicates that many innovation ecosystems fail to emerge because potential participants are not sufficiently connected with each other. Researchers, practitioners, and stakeholders are often organizationally and physically siloed from each other, and the transaction costs of bridging these silos can be high. University campuses are often siloed from their communities, and researchers typically lack opportunities to interact with practitioners and community stakeholders. Public, private, and nonprofit practitioners likewise often lack robust opportunities to engage with university-based researchers. The transaction costs of bridging these siloes represent a kind of market failure, explaining why innovation ecosystems often fail to emerge despite their societal value. 

Strategic interventions can reduce the transaction costs of bridging these silos, enabling innovation networks to develop and thrive. For example, across many different measures and contexts, more innovation consistently emerges when people from different backgrounds have more opportunities to interact informally (Berkes and Gaetani 2020, Roche 2020, Andrews 2023, Andrews and Lensing 2024, Choi et al 2024). Creating these opportunities can facilitate the formation of innovation networks, increasing the likelihood that research-based innovation is adopted into policy and practice (Hjort et al 2021).  

The Social Science Research Council has extensive experience designing events and programs that bridge silos and build innovation networks connecting researchers, practitioners, and stakeholders, fostering productive new collaborations that link knowledge to practice. In our innovation network projects we are supported by an efficient and responsive administrative infrastructure that excels at event planning and execution, outreach, marketing and communications, award administration, and outcome reporting.