If you work in innovation, your real competitive edge isn’t your budget, your process, or even your team - it’s your network. The people you connect with, learn from, and co-create alongside determine how good your imagination is and how far your ideas can travel.
Innovation thrives at intersections. When you bring together people who see the world differently - an engineer and a behavioural scientist, a startup founder and a sustainability lead - sparks fly. Studies show that diverse teams are 70% more likely to capture new markets, and that creative groups trained to collaborate across disciplines generate 350% more ideas and 415% more original solutions. That’s not a coincidence. Networks expand our cognitive reach - they let us see around corners.
Metcalfe’s Law puts it simply: the value of a network grows exponentially with each new connection. But the real insight is this - not every connection adds equal value. Innovation networks need difference baked in. Homogeneous circles reinforce what we already know. Diverse ones challenge our blind spots, introduce new metaphors, and stretch our thinking beyond the familiar.
So if you’re leading innovation, here’s the hard truth: your time spent cultivating a broad, generous network isn’t “networking”, it’s R&D. Every conversation with someone outside your domain is a data point, a design probe, a seed of the next big idea.
Ask yourself: Who do I regularly speak with who disagrees with me? Who can show me a world I don’t yet understand? If the answer is “not many,” your innovation pipeline is narrower than you think.
In a world where every industry is converging with another, the leaders who win won’t just have the best products — they’ll have the most connected minds.
That’s the power of networks. And it’s yours to build.
What this means for Innovation teams
- Be intentional: Networks don’t form by accident. Curate bridges across departments, invite external collaborators, seed cross-functional “idea circles.”
- Diversity unlocks novelty: Diverse participants bring distinct mental models - stimulating the recombination of ideas.
- Sustain trust and reciprocity: The most powerful networks aren’t transactional; they’re built on goodwill, openness, and repeated exchange.
Measure connection, not just output: Track who is talking to whom, how often, which disciplines are interacting. A strong network is your innovation safety net.