Organizational network research focuses on formal and informal structures in and between organizations as well as on the processes of institutionalization of initially loose networks of individuals and organizations. Questions arise about the association between networks, organizations, and innovation, such as the interplay between formal and informal relations, or the effect of the structure of these relations on the performance and innovativeness of organizations and industrial clusters.

Furthermore, a better understanding of the governance of networks and the transfer of knowledge and resources in networks is necessary to achieve collective goals. Simultaneously, debates on power asymmetries and favorable positions in global value chains, networks, and production networks (GVC, GVN, and GPN) lead to the question of who benefits from innovative activities in such structures. Whereas the use of the term network in organizational contexts has become increasingly inflationary, there is still a deficit in the theoretical and empirical examination of the conditions, mechanisms, and consequences of network properties in specific organizational and spatial contexts that trigger innovation. Although it is widely acknowledged that communication, support, and exchange networks of employees in and between firms affect the innovative performance of firms, empirical research rarely covers such networks of employees in larger organizations. Similarly, analyses of global network structures among cities, regions, and countries often build on bi-partite networks without the possibility to measure the exact content of relationships, exchange, and flows among people and firms. Finally, we face the challenge in network and innovation research to develop socially meaningful and context-sensitive theories while using the universal methodological language of graph theory. This creates a gap between formalistic and relational approaches explaining the occurrence of innovation in social network structures.