Innovation Ecosystem Mapping

Technology Interdependency Mapping

This section will examine how technical systems connect and enable each other:

Component Technology Relationships

Mapping connections between technologies at different scales, from specific components to entire infrastructures, to identify critical dependencies and potential cascade effects. This includes analysis of supporting, complementary, and competing technologies that shape development trajectories.

Technical Bottleneck Identification

Methodologies for locating rate-limiting components that constrain overall system development, understanding material constraints, manufacturing limitations, and technical challenges that create impediments to innovation across multiple domains.

Enabling Platform Technologies

Analysis of general-purpose technologies that enable innovation across multiple domains, including their unique characteristics, diffusion patterns, and transformative effects on technological ecosystems. Examples include electricity, computing, internet protocols, and machine learning.

Knowledge Flow and Network Analysis

This section will explore how information and expertise moves through innovation systems:

• Knowledge network mapping: Visualizing information flows between research institutions, companies, government agencies, and other actors
• Tacit vs. explicit knowledge transfer: Understanding different mechanisms for different types of knowledge
• Cross-sector knowledge spillovers: Tracking how innovations in one domain enable advances in others
• Geographic knowledge clustering: Analyzing spatial patterns in innovation and their causes
• Formal and informal collaboration networks: Examining both institutional and personal connections
• Digital platform effects: Assessing how virtual environments transform knowledge sharing

The analysis will include case studies of successful innovation ecosystems and their distinctive knowledge flow patterns.

Strategic Technology Roadmapping

This section will examine approaches for planning innovation pathways:

Development Timeline Projection

Methods for creating structured visualizations of anticipated technology development sequences, including critical dependencies, parallel development paths, and expected performance improvements over time.

Cross-Sector Integration Planning

Approaches for coordinating development across traditionally separate domains (e.g., energy, transportation, information technology) to capture synergies and prevent bottlenecks through anticipatory planning.

Institutional Alignment Assessment

Techniques for evaluating whether policy frameworks, funding mechanisms, educational systems, and other institutions are aligned with innovation needs and goals, identifying points of friction and opportunities for better alignment.

Innovation Policy Intervention Points

This section will explore strategic approaches to accelerating beneficial innovation:

• Research funding allocation: Strategic targeting of resources toward high-leverage areas
• Regulatory framework design: Creating enabling environments for innovation while managing risks
• Standard-setting interventions: Strategic use of technical standards to shape development trajectories
• Public procurement leverage: Government purchasing as market creation for emerging technologies
• Education and training development: Ensuring skills availability for emerging innovation areas
• Intellectual property policy: Balancing protection incentives with knowledge sharing needs
• Risk capital mechanisms: Developing financial tools appropriate to different innovation stages

Each intervention point will be examined through historical case studies of both successful and unsuccessful attempts to accelerate innovation.