Innovation At and Across Multiple Levels of Analysis

In this introductory article for the Special Issue on Innovation At and Across Multiple Levels of Analysis, we review major streams of extant research on innovation to establish a clear role for multilevel theory and research within this domain. We then examine and illustrate two fundamental and complementary approaches for investigating multilevel linkages—bottom-up emergent processes and top-down processes. In a brief commentary on each paper in the special issue, we overview the conceptual questions addressed by the research, identify the particular model of multilevel effects that serves as its foundation, and suggest how the use of multilevel models provides insights that help us better understand how innovation phenomena at one level of analysis are linked to those at another, thus providing a richer and more complete perspective on innovation. We conclude by identifying major methodological and applied contributions of the special issue and suggesting future research directions for the study of innovation at and across multiple levels of analysis.