Systems of systems: The Innovation phase - How are they born?

In the last ten years there is an increased interest in System of Systems (SoS). The availability and affordability of communication made many systems to connect to each other and create networks with different stakeholders who collaborate to achieve common goals. There are many examples of SoS around us and they are part of our everyday life such as: Net Centric Warfare (NCW) System, transportation, electric grid, hotel chains, navigation, banking etc ... are all Systems of Systems. Communication, computers and miniaturization are the key enablers which are driving the evolution of systems into SoS. Those technologies are accelerating the high connectivity between many types of systems, data bases, processes and stakeholders. The medium and large systems integrators industries have a growing interest in SoS. As they are always trying to move upwards the value chain in order to maintain their survivability and growth. Since systems are part of SoS even small companies must understand the new environment of SoS. To maintain growth companies must seek for introducing new systems, capabilities or processes to the market. Today this innovation phase is done in the environment of SoS. Shumpeter claims that companies and even societies must innovate and introduce new systems in order to survive. This leads to the following most critical questions: How a System of Systems is born? What are the innovation processes the industry has to exercise in order to develop a new SoS? Are those processes similar to system\´s innovation? Or there are differences? - Those are important issues to be addressed by the academy and also by the industry in order to maintain their growth in a new world of complex SoS. Despite its importance and criticality there is not much in the literature about the innovation phase of SoS. In this paper we will discuss how Systems of Systems are born and in what aspect they are differ from Systems from the innovation point of view. We will introduce the "g- ue layer" concept as a new layer of SoS for engineering focus and innovation.