9700797 George A clear understanding of the processes of innovation is an imperative precondition for improving performance in technology-intensive environments. The ability of researchers to analyze these processes, and practitioners to manage them, has been steadily improving over the last few decades. The confluence of multiple technologies in a single product stream and consequent cross-organizational locus of innovation is acknowledged as important in managing the processes of innovation. Such technological confluence occurs, albeit at differing intensities, in all technology-intensive fields. The objectives of this study are: the development of measurements for representing technological confluence, and related coordinational, informational and synergistic interactions within and across organizations; the adoption of available network visualization techniques for innovation studies; the development of structural parameters using a combination of algorithms for directed graphs and general heuristics, and the testing the usefulness of the visualization and structural parameters and the validity of the analytic approach using the data collected at a research site with the managers at the site. The practice of management of technological innovation is expected to be significantly enhanced by the use of technology confluence diagrams. Visualizations of interdependencies of associated processes, and parameters that characterize their structures will be of additional help in influencing these processes to one's advantage. Use of methods based on directional networks and new techniques in visualization adapted to the processes of innovation will generate a new class of literature bringing with it new insights. The linking of overall technological confluence to internal processes of the firm will encourage new trajectories in research that would bring together works of scholars who have examined separately issues internal and external to the firm. These new methodological approaches an d its insights "ill be taken into the educational process where instruction related to innovation and social network analysis will include these concepts.
