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Ecosystem partnerships are driving a dramatic change in the nature of business as industries as diverse as banking, automotive and retail are converging in unprecedented ways–and at an unprecedented rate. To learn how leading companies are embracing innovation in ecosystems to drive both value creation and competitiveness, the IBM Institute for Business Value in collaboration with Oxford Economics surveyed 1000 top executives in 19 industries and 29 countries between August and January 2019.

The survey cohort included 250 Chief Executive Officers, 150 Chief Financial Officers, 150 Chief Innovation Officers, 150 Chief Marketing Officers, 150 Chief Operations Officer and 150 Chief Alliance/Partnership Officers.

Analysis revealed that organizations with high engagement in ecosystems generate greater revenues from innovation initiatives. Specifically, revenues tied to innovation were more than 14 percent higher for ecosystem-engaged businesses than their less ecosystem-oriented peers.

The analysis showed that organizations differentiated on four innovation-enabling dimensions are more successful than others in ecosystem innovation. Their winning practices: 10;•9;They lead with platforms for innovating in ecosystems. 10;•9;They create the structures that enable the transformation of ideas into desired customer experiences in ecosystems 10;•9;They establish effective, meaningful measurements for successful innovation in ecosystems. 10;•9;They approach innovation with a collaborative mindset and create an environment of openness that shapes innovative behavior. 10;

The study identified the best practices of the most successful companies, ecosystem innovators. They excel across four innovation dimensions. They build platforms and employ ecosystems to better orchestrate customer experiences. They establish processes to effectively measure innovation within ecosystems in which they operate. They form organizational structures that institutionalize innovation. And they create and promote environments of openness and collaboration

Rapid advancements in blockchain technology transform various sectors, attracting the attention of industrialists, practitioners, policymakers and academics, and profoundly affect construction businesses through smart contracts and crypto-economics. This paper explores the blockchain innovation ecosystem in construction.

Through a qualitative study of 23 diverse interviewees, the study explores how open or closed the blockchain innovation ecosystem in construction is and who its emerging orchestrators are.

The data showed that construction aims towards an open innovation blockchain ecosystem, although there are elements of hybridisation and closedness, each system pointing out to different orchestrators.

The study has implications for governments and large companies in construction, showing that open innovation initiatives need to be encouraged by policymakers through rules, regulations and government-sponsored demonstrator projects.

The data showed that there is lack of readiness for business model change to support open innovation blockchain ecosystems in construction.

This is the first study applying the open innovation theory in the construction industry and sheds light into the phenomenon of blockchain, suggesting routes for further democratisation of the technology for policymakers and practitioners.

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.

This chapter adopts a problem-solving perspective to analyze the competitive dynamics of innovation ecosystems. We argue that features such as uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, entail different knowledge requirements which explain the varying abilities of focal firms to coordinate the ecosystem and benefit from the activities of their suppliers, complementors, and users. We develop an analytical framework to interpret various instances of coupling patterns and identify four archetypical types of innovation ecosystems.

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 article aims to understand the dynamics between disruptive innovations and innovation ecosystems, using disruption business models as a catalyst.

This study presents an integrative literature review and a theoretical framework in order to integrate the theories of disruptions and ecosystems.

The dynamics of disruptive innovation, within an ecosystem, as an essential driver of creating new markets. The effect of creative destruction from a disruption influences business models in a coopetitive dynamic that drives the ecosystem as a whole.

Limited to theoretical research and suggested the application of the proposed model in an empirical study.

Understand the formation of new ecosystems based on the occurrence of a disruption as a way for organisations to prepare for the arrival of this new market.

The contribution of this study is based on joining the literature of disruptive innovation and innovation ecosystem, pointing to a theoretical framework and a flow of Evolution and Adaptation to the Disruptive Ecosystem that integrates this complex dynamic.

Although there is a growing body of literature on the benefits of innovation ecosystem participation for keystone/focal firms, there are limited studies on what motivates or impedes other actors’ participation (i.e. suppliers and complementors) in collaborative innovation. Hence, this study aims to address the root causes of collaborative innovation failure and develop a better understanding of the hindering factors for the generation of collaborative innovation performance in ecosystem-based manufacturing.

This study adopted a qualitative research study with 45 managers involving an online survey with open-ended questions followed by an expert focus group with seven managers from a UK-based high value manufacturing ecosystem. Data analysis and coding followed a highly iterative process using a thematic analysis approach.

This study identified six common barriers to collaborative innovation from the perspective of supplier firms. Particularly, this study found unique impeding factors in relation to revealed and deterring barriers in an ecosystem-based manufacturing context. This paper argues that suppliers and small- and medium-sized enterprises not only require financial support but also need to develop a strategic mindset, confidence, effective partnerships and knowledge about risks and returns to participate in collaborative innovation.

The extant literature identifies the motivations for joining innovation ecosystems and the prominence of value co-creation activity from the perspective of focal firms or orchestrators. However, this study offers insights into the need for an effective value co-appropriation setup amongst the ecosystem actors including suppliers. Importantly, this study proposes that effective value co-appropriation is essential for making collaborative innovation happen in manufacturing ecosystems.

This study aims to investigate the impact of an institutionalized market context on platform ecosystem development. It studies how platform ecosystems are set up and evolve in the asset management industry and explores the role of the platform leader and selected core network partners in unleashing value innovation notwithstanding institutional barriers. A problematization lens is used to identify deviations between the management practices in this industry setting and the prescriptions and suggested practices in the extant literature on platform ecosystem development.

The research follows a retrospective longitudinal single-case design focusing on the development of a new platform ecosystem to which several PaaS initiatives are linked. It is based on 13 in-depth interviews over a one-year period triangulated with documentation and member checks. This study identifies the impact of regulations and norms on the early stages of platform ecosystem development.

In this institutionalized market, intensified interactions between carefully selected strategic market players focusing on platform development, lead to growing value innovation initiatives. The collaboration between core actors evolves “under the radar” with select partners and with lots of controls by incumbents. The value innovation process evolves in a non-disruptive way. Initially, the new value initiatives are rather incremental and focus on optimizing the present business models while slowly adding new peripheral services shared as successful signs of value innovation initiatives. This “submerged” direction enables platform actors to gather critical mass and stimulates co-evolution with key players.

This paper outlines one vertical and looks at various principles involved during early stages of platform development. Because the authors have chosen a deep dive into one institutionalized setting, future studies could investigate a broader scope of institutionalized settings/verticals and a broader scope of management stages and related practices to replicate the study and corroborate the findings. The idea raised from hybrid platform ecosystem development also warrants further study.

Practitioners in institutionalized business-to-business markets find suggestions on how to overcome institutional barriers to platform ecosystem development and this study shows which levers can be used by core actors of ecosystems to strengthen established business models and simultaneously unleash value innovation initiatives.

This study contributes to the understanding of the challenges to be faced when setting up and expanding platform ecosystems in a highly institutionalized setting and identifies “levers” to create a smooth flow and snowball effect for platform ecosystem development. It “fine-tunes” the extant literature on platform ecosystem development to institutionalized markets.

Innovation ecosystems face many environmental challenges. The literature review shows that innovation ecosystems accelerate innovation activity, but empirical studies have not provided enough case studies focusing on the minimum-waste business strategy as one aspect of the circular economy. Various forms of interaction between members occur in the innovation ecosystems, which determines the level of cooperation. This paper aims to show the structure and forms of cooperation in an innovation ecosystem using the Czech Hemp Cluster (CHC) and its surroundings and suggest research directions in the field of interaction between members in an innovation ecosystem. Although hemp is associated with the production and distribution of narcotics, it is a versatile plant supporting the minimum-waste business strategy.

The research is based on a theoretical part of a literature review of major scientific articles on innovation ecosystems from 2016 to 2021. The case study of the CHC and the hemp ecosystem is based on qualitative research in the form of a content analysis of the mission of the cluster members. In addition to content analysis, the classic multidimensional scaling method and hierarchical cluster analysis were used to reveal ecological guilds.

The case study highlighted the specific relationship between the cluster and the ecosystem. The cluster does not determine the ecosystem boundaries, but the ecosystem is a much broader system of cooperation and interaction between organisations. Clusters emerge after an ecosystem has existed for a particular time to coordinate collaboration and information between organisations and stakeholders. The analysis of the CHC revealed the specific role of non-profit organisations (NPOs) in the innovation ecosystem. NPOs are not engaged in primary functions in the value chain, but they provide supporting activities through coordinated networking, disseminating information on innovation, awareness-raising and stakeholder education. Compared to natural ecosystems, innovation ecosystems are typically characterised by higher forms of collaboration between members.

An exciting opportunity for research on innovation ecosystems is the ecological guilds taken from natural ecosystems and whose identification can help define the boundaries of innovation ecosystems. An opportunity for further research is the comparison of NPO-based and government-based clusters playing a central role in developing innovation ecosystems. Regarding the problematic generalisability of the case study to the entire agricultural production, a challenge is a search for minimum-waste business models in agriculture characterised by the biological nature of production.

Theoretical and empirical studies have not yet considered innovation ecosystems in the minimum-waste context to a sufficient extent. The paper builds on previous scholarly studies focusing on innovation ecosystems and, for the first time, discusses the role of NPOs in the innovation ecosystem. The CHC case study adds a suitable minimum-waste business model to the still very scarce literature on sustainable innovation ecosystems. The article discusses the purpose and forms of cooperation in an innovation ecosystem, identifies a complementarity of roles in the innovation cluster and describes the interrelationship between the cluster and the ecosystem. Discussion of the ecosystem leader in the cluster-based innovation ecosystem shows the differences between Czech, Polish and German life science ecosystems.

This paper identifies exigent factors that enable and constrain trust building in a science-based innovation ecosystem.

Set in the Northeast England, this study adopts a processual sensemaking approach to thematically analyse interviews with a diverse range of participants in six science-based SMEs.

The findings provide a unique exposition of trust building in an innovation ecosystem across geographic and platform relationships. In doing so, the findings highlight factors outside of contractual agreements that enable or constrain trust building in an innovation ecosystem.

Limitations centred on subjectivity in the use of thematic analysis, sample bias and size. Sampling limitations were mitigated through the research design and analysis.

The findings provide unique insights into understanding the exigent factors that enable or constrain trust building in a science-based innovation ecosystem.

The study identifies five exigent factors that constrain or enable trust building in science-based SMEs' innovation ecosystem at a micro-level – building network relationships, degree of novelty, protection of innovations, propensity for adding value, propensity for risk.