The Innovation Network as a Complex Adaptive System: Flexible Multi-agent Based Modeling, Simulation, and Evolutionary Decision Making

The literature rarely considers an innovation network as a complex adaptive system. In this paper, theories of complex adaptive systems research are employed to model and analyze intra-organization networks, inter-organization networks as well as their interaction mechanisms in the whole innovation context, with a conceptual framework proposed and presented. Flexible multi-agent based modeling, smart simulation, self-survival and adaptive intelligent software agents, expert systems, analytic hierarchy process, hybrid decision support approach, and statistical methods are integrated to deal with the innovation network problem and support evolutionary decision making in the open and dynamic environments.