  This paper advances a framework for modeling the component interactions
between cognitive and social aspects of scientific creativity and technological
innovation. Specifically, it aims to characterize Innovation Networks; those
networks that involve the interplay of people, ideas and organizations to
create new, technologically feasible, commercially-realizable products,
processes and organizational structures. The tri-partite framework captures
networks of ideas (Concept Level), people (Individual Level) and social
structures (Social-Organizational Level) and the interactions between these
levels. At the concept level, new ideas are the nodes that are created and
linked, kept open for further investigation or closed if solved by actors at
the individual or organizational levels. At the individual level, the nodes are
actors linked by shared worldviews (based on shared professional, educational,
experiential backgrounds) who are the builders of the concept level. At the
social-organizational level, the nodes are organizations linked by common
efforts on a given project (e.g., a company-university collaboration) that by
virtue of their intellectual property or rules of governance constrain the
actions of individuals (at the Individual Level) or ideas (at the Concept
Level). After describing this framework and its implications we paint a number
of scenarios to flesh out how it can be applied.
