Technology brokering and innovation in a product development firm.

We blend network and organizational memory perspectives in a model of technology brokering that explains how an organization develops innovative products. The model is grounded in observations, interviews, informal conversations, and archived data gathered during an ethnography of IDEO, a product design firm. This firm exploits its network position, working for clients in at least 40 industries, to gain knowledge of existing technological solutions in various industries. It acts as a technology broker by introducing these solutions where they are not known and, in the process, creates new p