Impact of process innovation on enterprise networks for competences exchange: E3, a multi agent based model

A business process is a set of logically related tasks performed to achieve a defined business and related to improving organizational processes. A process innovation can happen at various levels: incremental way, redesign of existing processes, totally new processes. The knowledge behind a process innovation can be shared, acquired, changed and increased by the enterprises inside a network. An enterprise can decide to exploit the innovative process it owns, thus potentially gaining competitive advantage, but risking, in turn, that other players could reach the same technological level. Or it could decide to share it, in exchange for other competencies or money. These activities could be the basis for a network formation and/or impact the topology of an existing network, by changing the number and topology of ties and links. In the present work an agent based model is introduced (E3), that aims to explore how a process innovation can facilitate network formation of existing enterprises, affect the network topology (e.g.: an enterprise owning an innovative process could become a focal point), induce new players to enter the market and spread onto the network by being shared or internally acquired by new players.