Academic discipline: Innovation policy, evolutionary economics, complexity science, data science, public policy

Methods: Graph theory, citation networks, tech mining, machine learning, grounded theory

Research question: Do existing models of innovation hold for contemporary innovation? 

Description: Models that dominate the expectation and analysis of innovation policy, particularly the linear and chain-linked models, have not been quantified or updated since the 1940s. This is because knowledge and the flow of it are understood as intangible. The availability of relational databases, citation data, innovation markers, computational resources to analyze them allows the quantification of variables within incumbent models of innovation and place a value and frequency on knowledge transmission.

Implications: Revisiting and validating models of innovation through statistics would assess the utility of these thinkings for contemporary innovation. This will test whether innovation policies are aligned with the right expectations.