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Although there is a growing research stream on Performance Measurement and Management Systems (PMMS) in Ecosystems literature, current research offers limited theoretical insights into how PMMS deal with two types of strategies in uncertain ecosystems: ecosystem-based strategy – EBS (at the focal firm level) and ecosystem strategy – ES (at the ecosystem level). This study aims at identifying how PMMS are employed to deal with different types of strategies in uncertain ecosystems.

The authors employed an inductive, rich multiple case approach in five focal firms with platform ecosystems. Data collection involved multiple sources of information (primary and secondary data), combing retrospective and longitudinal perspectives. Data analysis combined replication and comparison logic with coding.

This study identifies four major distinctive dimensions of Ecosystem PMMS under uncertainty: (1) Integrative Performance (considering the different ecosystem actors’ performance), (2) Interdependence Performance (mutual, yet not necessarily convergent amongst ecosystem partners), (3) Regulative Performance (paradoxical in nature, having to cope with both flexibility and stability) and finally (4) Phased Learning Performance (non-linear).

Our primary contribution is a new framework for PMMS literature: a performance measurement and management system for dealing with strategies in ecosystems. This framework enables managing performance regarding both types of strategies (EBS and ES) and their interplay in uncertain ecosystems.

The ecosystem management requires focal firms to measure and manage the overall ecosystem’s performance, and it varies according to the type of strategy adopted in each case. Our framework provides dimensions that guide firms to build and implement PMMS for an ecosystem consistent with the ES. Therefore, it may improve performance, especially in uncertain business contexts.

The findings enrich PMMS literature in an ecosystem context related to the ES in uncertain environments.

Accessing and sharing dispersed knowledge in ecosystems is neither easy nor automatic. In ecosystems, focal firms should purposely create the right conditions and act to deal with dispersed knowledge. This study aims to investigate how focal firms manage dispersed knowledge in ecosystems characterized by a set of autonomous, heterogeneous, yet interdependent actors involved in experimentation under uncertainty.

Following a conceptual framework based on preceding literature, this study conducted a broad qualitative case study of 6 firms and 12 projects, with 43 semi-structured interviews to identify the patterns of actions associated with dispersed knowledge management (KM) in ecosystems. This paper combines coding and multiple case comparisons to examine the processes and strategies used by the firms to strategically manage dispersed knowledge in ecosystems.

This paper proposes a framework that articulates a new type of orchestration (dispersed knowledge orchestration) and offers a new set of dispersed knowledge strategies (transfer, modularity and circular) for ecosystems.

Innovation and knowledge managers play the roles of dispersed knowledge orchestrators. The study offers guidance on how focal firms should carefully use a particular set of approaches (e.g. integrative theorization) including a portfolio of dispersed knowledge strategies in ecosystems.

Current literature on KM and ecosystem management offers a limited understanding of how organizations manage dispersed knowledge in ecosystems. The research provides three major original contributions. First, the framework contributes to broadening the current understanding of ecosystem orchestration by identifying the micro-foundations of dispersed knowledge orchestration: integrative theorization, nurturing distributed sensemaking and a new chapter for ecosystem governance (i.e. dispersed knowledge governance). Moreover, the framework proposes a new type of strategy, the dispersed knowledge strategy. Finally, by exploring the interplay between the micro-foundations of dispersed knowledge orchestration and dispersed knowledge strategy, the results contribute to a multi-level approach in the field.

Platform, open/user innovation, and ecosystem strategies embrace and enable interactions with external entities. Firms pursuing these approaches conduct business and interact with environments differently than those pursuing traditional closed strategies. This chapter considers these strategies together highlighting similarities and differences between platform, open/user innovation, and ecosystem strategies. We focus on managerial and organizational challenges for organizations pursuing these strategies and identify four institutional logic shifts associated with these strategic transitions: (1) increasing external focus, (2) moving to greater openness, (3) focusing on enabling interactions, and (4) adopting interaction-centric metrics. As mature incumbent organizations adopt these strategies, there may be tensions and multiple conflicting institutional logics. Additionally, we consider four strategic leadership topics and how they relate to platform, open/user innovation, and ecosystem strategies: (1) executive orientation and experience, (2) top management teams, (3) board-management relations, and (4) executive compensation. We discuss theoretical implications, and consider future directions and research opportunities.

Ecosystems’ digitally enabled networks that enhance corporate value propositions by linking corporate units, suppliers, distributors, partners, customers and other stakeholders -- have become the engine that drives performance and strategic impact across economies. Article examines which ecosystem strategies are appropriate for firms in various situations.

A new IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) survey of 700 executives involved in decision-making about their organizations’ ecosystem growth and partnering reveals that the companies most focused on ecosystem engagement consistently generate higher growth and more business value.

Analysis of the executive responses identified four distinct strategic approaches for ecosystem activity – Accelerate, Expand, Ignite and Reposition.

Success is likely only if firms pursue the right ecosystem strategy for their situation, with the right business partners, executed the right way.

Ecosystems can enhance the value of products or services through both competition and cooperation with partners and rivals. For enterprises battling dislocation and disruption, ecosystems promote agility and resilience and can identify new revenue opportunities. As such, ecosystems have been the essential vehicle for growth and expansion for many corporations.

Performance measurement and management (PMM) systems have traditionally enabled strategy execution within and across firms. However, PMM have been criticized as overly static and deterministic and therefore inappropriate for emergent and dynamic contexts, such as those that characterize business ecosystems.The study aims to address the roles of organizational PMM practices in the development and implementation of business ecosystem strategies.

The authors carried out a qualitative, longitudinal study during 2016–2020 at a Japanese multinational technology corporation attempting to create an ecosystem strategy to expand its market and diversify its offering. The authors collected interview, observation and archival data, spanning the period from framing the initial strategy to establishing the ecosystem.

The process of developing and implementing the ecosystem strategy was emergent and highly iterative, rather than planned and linear, eventually requiring key decision-makers in the company to challenge some of their deeply held assumptions. PMM practices first acted as barriers to ecosystem development by promoting an excessive focus on revenue generation. Once modified, PMM helped capture, convey and reassess the ecosystem strategy. Performance targets, indicators and strategy maps were not just data gathering and reporting mechanisms but key means to express competing perspectives.

When developing an ecosystem strategy, managers should adopt a participatory and iterative approach, reviewing the complementary effects of various PMM tools at different points in time.

The study is among the first to provide an in-depth account of ecosystem strategy creation and implementation and to identify the diverse roles and effects of PMM practices in dynamic and complex contexts.

Vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystems, systems of inter-related forces that promote and sustain regional entrepreneurship, are increasingly viewed as sources of innovation, economic development and community revitalization. Regions with emerging, underdeveloped or depressed economies are attempting to develop their nascent entrepreneurial ecosystems in the hopes of experiencing the positive benefits of entrepreneurial activity. For nascent entrepreneurial ecosystems to grow requires resources. However, how nascent entrepreneurial ecosystems manage their resource dependencies and the tensions that exist between creating and attracting resources are not clear. The purpose of this paper is to propose a theory of nascent entrepreneurial ecosystem resource dependence.

This conceptual paper analyzes entrepreneurial ecosystems as meta-organizations and builds on resource dependence theory to explain how nascent ecosystems respond to environmental dependencies and their resource needs through internal and external strategies.

Two specific strategies used by nascent entrepreneurial ecosystems to manage resource dependence – bridging and buffer – are explored. It is proposed that there is a positive relationship between the resource dependence of a nascent entrepreneurial ecosystem and its use of bridging and buffering activities. Two ecosystem characteristics that influence the pursuit of bridging and buffering – ecosystem size and the presence of collaborative values – are also identified. In addition, it is theorized that resource dependence strategies influence a key, system-level characteristic of entrepreneurial ecosystems: resilience, the ecosystem’s ability to respond and adapt to internal and external disruptions.

The theory presented generates insights into how nascent entrepreneurial ecosystems create and obtain resources when ecosystems are unmunificent, resource-constrained or underdeveloped. The theorizing addresses which resource dependence strategy – buffering or bridging – has a stronger link to resource dependence (and resilience) and under what conditions these linkages occur. The theoretical model generates insights for research on entrepreneurship in emerging and developed economies and produces practical implications for ecosystem participants, policymakers and economic development organizations.

Innovation ecosystem research has highlighted complementors as the critical force to determining focal firm innovation’s success in addition to the traditional value chain or supply chain perspective. However, literature is relatively scarce in terms of innovation ecosystem governance, especially, on how to manage various types of complementors. The purpose of this paper is to fill this theoretical gap by developing a typology of managing complementors from multiple case studies.

This study conducted multiple case studies of three leading focal firms with ecosystem strategies to understand innovation ecosystem governance. Theoretical themes are inductively generated to reveal their success in managing complementors in their ecosystems.

The case analysis reveals four generic strategies to manage complementors. These strategies are contingent on the types of complementors and level of interdependence: focal firms tend to engage functional complementors and collaborate with infrastructural complementors when the level of interdependence is higher, and acquire functional complementors and nurture infrastructural complementors when the level of interdependence is lower.

For practitioners, this study can improve their understanding on the mechanisms of innovation ecosystem governance, particularly interdependence between participants in an innovation ecosystem, and developing appropriate strategies to manage different types of complementors in innovation ecosystems.

This study contributes to innovation ecosystem literature by enriching the conceptualization of interdependence in innovation ecosystems and unpacking innovation ecosystem governance with the inductively developed holistic typology of strategies to manage complementors. Meanwhile, this study also suggests underlying mechanisms for how innovation ecosystem governance and, therefore, contributes to a systematic theory on understanding innovation ecosystem governance.

This study analyzes how the innovation ecosystem helps integrate technology-push and market-pull strategies in the Industry 4.0 paradigm.

This study investigates companies' involvement in the Industry 4.0 paradigm through technology-push strategies, and through both technology-push and market-pull strategies. The authors perform two econometric logit models to test the influence of collaborations with heterogeneous actors, research and university relationships, and relations with business incubator (the pivot actor) on companies' involvement in Industry 4.0.

The study empirically shows that developing relationships with a greater diversity of actors, collaborating with university and research laboratories, and developing intense relationships with business incubator increase the likelihood for companies to integrate both technology-push and market-pull strategies in companies' involvement in the Industry 4.0 paradigm.

This study provides insights to practitioners who are interested or involved in the new Industry 4.0 paradigm. The authors' study explains how specific features of an innovation ecosystem, such as complex interactions among actors, can stimulate creative ideas and successfully implement innovations to address Industry 4.0 challenges.

First, the authors confirm the role of the innovation ecosystem on companies' involvement in the Industry 4.0 paradigm. Second, the authors study highlights that the innovation ecosystem is a new relevant framework that enables companies to integrate both technology-push and market-pull strategies. Third, we provide empirical evidence about the role of business incubator on firms' strategies to get involved in the Industry 4.0 paradigm.

Platform ecosystem governance is a decisive issue for orchestrators, as the motivation and behaviors of the complementors in an ecosystem can be distinctly different, shaped by the specific arrangements they have within the ecosystem. However, knowledge about adaptation in the governance of platform ecosystems is quite limited. First, the authors hardly know which obstacles are arising for orchestrators due to typical governance settings and their consequences. Second, the authors know less about governance strategies by orchestrators that help deal with these obstacles.

The authors follow an inductive, multistep case-study-based approach with multiple cases using guidelines proposed by Yin (2018). Based on predefined criteria, the authors selected 41 platform ecosystems with a “hub and spoke” system within and across several industries and collected a wide range of data. The authors conducted 14 interviews with executives of these platform ecosystems to gain further insights, transcribed and/or summarized all interviews, and analyzed the data.

Based on the dataset, the authors identify four significant obstacles and ten strategies of orchestrators in platform ecosystems. This approach allows us to gain insight into innovative approaches orchestrators conduct to cope with these challenges.

The authors already have a broad range of studies on ecosystem governance in the literature. However, research dealing with the dynamics of governance regimes is quite rare. The study examines how orchestrators of platform ecosystems react to emerging obstacles they are confronted with during the evolution of their platform ecosystems. Partly, these strategies might be expected, but mostly they show innovative approaches for handling these obstacles that have not been reported in research so far.

Competence-based theory provides valuable insights in a business context characterized by global ecosystems, co-specialization, and asset orchestration. As the unit of analysis shifts from the individual enterprise to the ecosystem, pursuing proper competence building and competence leveraging activities considering both firm-specific and firm-addressable resources becomes a key issue in strategy development.

Based on the original concepts of the competence-based theory, this paper suggests that the competence space can be a useful framework when considering alternative ecosystem strategies. Competence-based theory, emphasizing the simultaneous pursuit of competence leveraging and competence building, provides an important complement to other dynamic perspectives on strategy, such as dynamic capabilities and ambidexterity. The paper also suggests considering the inclusion of aesthetic properties as an important part of competence-based theory.