Modeling and Analytics to Support Emerging International Innovation Partnerships

Science and technology innovation is a critical determinant of a nation's competitiveness in the global economy and a key driver of wellbeing for its residents. Building research partnerships with other nations can create and sustain a lasting competitive advantage and facilitate the international transfer of knowledge and skills. While it is tempting to continue to collaborate with established partners, emerging partners may represent a source of untapped benefit. In this article, we discuss how modeling approaches and techniques may be used to identify innovation partnerships. We describe a number of modeling methods that can be applied in isolation or in combination to inform the partnership identification and selection process. A multiplicity of available modeling tools exist, which can be applied depending on how the problem is scoped with respect to partners, science domains, time frames, and objectives. We develop an objectives hierarchy that can be used to direct future decision making efforts, and we contrast the assumptions and requirements underlying various methodological approaches .