Integrating social network concepts and game dynamics in innovation oriented collaboration systems

In recent years important contributions have emerged from disciplines such as Social Network Analysis - SNA - providing new insights on how the social fabric within organizations and virtual communities develops and evolves. At the same time we have witnessed an explosion of tools and internet sites in the social networking area and later the rise of the social dimension of internet usage, which has been often labelled as “Web 2.0”. In many of these cases these new insights have not been integrated yet in the design of effective collaboration platforms, or they have been "wired" into systems providing few benefits to its users and with a limited impact on the collaboration dynamics such systems are supposed to support and enhance. In other cases, the integration of SNA-related concepts, techniques, and tools have not met the expectations in terms of providing additional stimuli to users to engage in mutually productive relationships, and innovation-enhancing exchanges or to provide new ways of successfully growing/enlarging new groups or communities. Games have a proven record creating value in fields like learning, providing not only opportunities for networking, but also means of interaction and relevant contexts where potentially successful ideas and relationships can develop and grow. In this paper we present and discuss a research framework for the integration of concepts and tools from both SNA and network games design in the specific context of a large EU-sponsored project called "Laboranova", whose aim is to explore the features of the next generation of innovation-enhancing systems for organisations and communities.