Innovation and migration

a research proposal

For introduction, a common question

Lets examine -for the sake of the coming pages argument- a rather common question: “where this idea of yours came from?” As from any other common sentence used frequently, basic concepts alive in our society can be distilled right away from it. In first place, people seems to consider new ideas with some awe, with some respectful surprise. The question is never asked in a neutral tone, but rather with some scepticism, some little emphasis in the tone, that mark the fact that inventors are not common, and important. In the question we can also read the ownership issue, my second point to be made here. I have almost never heard that question phrased without the “yours”. Ideas, at least in our collective thoughts, belongs to somebody. And being ideas entities that are possible to own, they do have economical value, and we can develop and test economical theory on them. Finally, and perhaps more importantly for the purpose of this proposal, a third point can be distilled from the question, the issue of the origin of an idea. In this question of ours, perhaps in this society of ours, ideas come from somewhere. And from somewhere that is mysterious enough to ask about it, even if in an almost rhetorical way. We do know today plenty of geography, and our world -perhaps sadly- do not have any more maps in which areas far away are entitled with “here live monsters”. Nevertheless ideas seems -still- to come from somewhere else... from other land, perhaps.

So looking at a common question I hope to have sketched for you the three motives of this research proposal. In three sentences: The creation of new ideas is an important process. The result of this process is of economical value, so it makes sense to consider ideas as ruled by market dynamics. And innovation is associated -at least in the vernacular- with migratory processes. These three sentences lead me to pose the following: If ideas appears to be migrants... could one question the connection in between migration and innovation? One can always ask, so people say. Accordingly, the purpose of the following pages is to sustain this particular question, and transform it in a research program that can offer results in few years term.

From the vernacular to the academic jargon:

Other explorations in related ideas

Papers on migration, papers on innovation, papers on economical dynamics of networks

Paper on migration and innovation, papers on innovation and networks

Traditional arguments on the advantage of open societies as creative societies. Gerke's book

Rejoinder: holes in the existing literature: my concrete questions

-Relation in between network architecture-innovation dynamics and migration-networks

-Dutch economical branches, their internal architecture, their migrants, their innovation dynamics.

-Dutch newcomers: do they innovate at all?

Concrete ideas to be tested

Main theme: do more migrants in a firm mean more innovation?

First question: does the structure of a firm mean anything for migrants and innovation?

Case study: Look for correlations in between migrant participation and innovation across different economical branches. IT at one extreme, construction in another and perhaps university in the middle. Is there any correlation? Is there a gradient regarding innovation and migration if we order it by branches? Id est: do the structure of a firm make it more migration-innovation/friendly?

In this case study I need to explore the idea that different branches have different structures inside the firm, at least in NL. Maybe the branch is irrelevant for firm structure, but there is diversity of structure inside branches. I'll develop a “firm-structure” index, or set of statistics. An apply it to different firms. This work will be done in the context of the project “diversity in firms” currently going on in collaboration with Ditter Blom.

To support and use the data collected from real existing firms, I intend to model my hypothesis. The question to be addressed by such a model is the dynamics of innovation in networks with different architecture. Check that mutations growth differently in hierarchical, flat, fully connected or small world networks. Associate those architectures with economic branch per se (IT is less hierarchical than building), and innovation growth (mutations spread faster in a fully connected network than in a small world one). Using the results of the model it is possible to predict which real firms are innovation prone, and to what extend.

The relation with the migrant is that in the project “diversity in firms” the main question to be answered is how the structure of a firm interacts with the migrant employee of it. Using a broad array of known and new analysis of firm culture and structure, we intend to analyse the reasons that make a firm more friendly, or more able to employ migrants.

Second question: does the migrant mean something for innovation?

Second -field- case study: interview newcomers doing their inburgering, and reinterview them a year later, and a year later. Run similar interviews in universities and check with foreigners and nationals that stay in NL. Get from them the kind of company in which they would like to work. Rank these companies regarding their innovative scores. In posterior interviews check if people is employed at all in what they hoped to, and further if they do any innovation at all. Consider the possibility of doing this research “backwards”: with the support of the gemeente, send questionnaires to people that already did their inburgering. Use data from the CBS to anchor the results that I can produce at national level statistics.

Model: same approach than previous model... but the network that is explored is the one of hiring. Compare business run by families (a relatively small hiring network) to other small business that hire people that they know (bigger but still small), to big business that advertise in mainstream media. Do different hiring strategies get different levels of foreigners? and if so, correlate.