Simulating innovation networks

Raumänderung: Der Vortrag wird im Raum F314 stattfinden!!!

Abstract

(Der Vortrag wird in deutscher Sprache gehalten)

In the first part of this talk, an agent-based model of innovation dynamics in knowledge-intensive industries such as the biotechnology-based pharmaceuticals will be described. The SKIN model (Simulating Knowledge Dynamics in Innovation Networks) allows the representation of heterogeneous agents that have individual and varying stocks of knowledge.  The simulation is able to model uncertainty, historical change, effect of failure on the agent population, and agent learning from experience, from individual research and from partners and collaborators. The interactions between the agents occur on two levels: through a market with firms supplying and consuming goods for a price, and through the exchange of knowledge. 

Since in the meantime extensions of SKIN are used for innovation policy modelling at various scales (sectoral, regional, national and European innovation systems), the second part of this talk will introduce a few of the past and current applications, e.g. using the model for simulating the R&D project networks which arose under Framework Programmes of the European Commission (NEMO), or using the model to investigate the role of science-industry links for innovation performance and economic benefits. 

Biographie

Petra Ahrweiler is Professor of Innovation and Technology Management at University College Dublin, Director of UCD´s newly established Innovation Research Unit IRU at the Complex & Adaptive Systems Laboratory, and a permanent Research Affiliate of the Engineering Systems Division at MIT.

She studied law, sociology, journalism and political science at the University of Hamburg finishing with her Ph.D. in the area of science and technology studies at the Free University Berlin where she was supported by the German National Merit Foundation. Since her habilitation thesis at the University of Bielefeld on social simulation of innovation processes she worked as a Heisenberg Fellow of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG and as a Professor of Economic Sociology at the University of Hamburg where she built up a new research programme on innovation research.

Petra Ahrweiler has long experience as principal investigator and co-ordinator of international projects on innovation networks, e.g. the EU project on Simulating Self-Organizing Innovation Networks (SEIN) or the international project „Cyber-enabled innovation in regional networks“ (INRE) which she currently leads for MIT. She holds various research awards and is member of various advisory boards in both governmental and academic organisations. Since November 2006, she is workpackage leader on agent-based modelling (ABM) in the EU project „Network Models, Governance, and R&D Collaboration Networks“ (NEMO) coordinating the ABM groups of Germany, Uk and Ireland.