Networks as Facilitators of Innovation in Technology-Based Industries: The Case of Flat Glass

Abstract

In this chapter, I question the extent to which the networks of the flat glass industry facilitated innovation in the past and continue to do so now. So far, students of technology-based industries have focused their attention on a number of high-technology industries including, for example, biotechnology. Since the manufacturing and secondary processing of flat glass require the application of a degree of technological expertise, the flat glass industry is also considered a technology-based industry, though not a high-technology industry in the sense that biotechnology is. This particularity of the industry enables me not only to provide a reasonably complete account of the extent to which the networks of the flat glass industry facilitate innovation, but also to explore whether or not we need a different sort of network thinking for this particular industry—different from the thinking that the students of high-technology industries subscribe to as they study, for example, biotechnology.