A preminary analysis of knowledge flows: The case of structural composite materials in aeronautics.

Johannes van Der Pol (1) , Jean-Paul Rameshkoumar (2) , David Virapin (2) , Bernard Zozime (2)

1 GREThA - Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée
2 UB - Université de Bordeaux

In this paper we study the evolution of the collaboration network of structural composite materials in aeronautics between 1980 and 2013.The network is generated using patent and publication data and analyzed following a macro to micro level methodology. All results and interpretations were discussed and validated by engineers and executives from the relevant sector. The macro analysis shows that the evolution of the network is correlated with the life-cycle of the technology. During the research phase, the network structure converges towards a small world. The network becomes a small world when the development stage of the technology is reached. At this point the newly developed technologies diffuse. The structure then diverges from the small world structure once the technology has been integrated. On a micro level the network shows that two diverging strategies in terms of preferential attachment (Barabási and Albert, 1999) lead to a significant difference in terms of innovative performance.

Mots clés: knowledge diffusion; collaboration network; patents; publications; bibliometrics; dynamic network

Domaines: Economies et finances

Johannes van Der Pol, Jean-Paul Rameshkoumar, David Virapin, Bernard Zozime. A preminary analysis of knowledge flows: The case of structural composite materials in aeronautics.. 2014. ⟨hal-01284991⟩