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This article aims to examine how users' involvement in value co-creation influences the development and orchestration of well-being ecosystems to help tackle complex societal challenges. This research contributes to the public management literature and answers recent calls to investigate novel public service governances by discussing users' involvement and value co-creation for novel well-being solutions.

The authors empirically explore this phenomenon through a case study of a complex ecosystem addressing increased well-being, focussing on the formative evaluation stage of a longitudinal evaluation of Sweden's first support centre for people affected by cancer. Following an abductive reasoning and action research approach, the authors critically discuss the potential of user involvement for the development of well-being ecosystems and outline preconditions for the success of such approaches.

The empirical results indicate that resource reconfiguration of multi-actor collaborations provides a platform for value co-creation, innovative health services and availability of resources. Common themes include the need for multi-actor collaborations to reconfigure heterogeneous resources; actors' adaptive change capabilities; the role of governance mechanisms to align the diverse well-being ecosystem components, and the engagement of essential actors.

Although using a longitudinal case study approach has revealed stimulating insights, additional data collection, multiple cases and quantitative studies are prompted. Also, the authors focus on one country but the characteristics of users' involvement for value co-creation in innovative well-being ecosystems might vary between countries.

The findings of this study demonstrate the value of cancer-affected individuals, with “lived experiences”, acting as sources for social innovation, and drivers of well-being ecosystem development. The findings also suggest that participating actors in the ecosystem should utilise wider knowledge and experience to tackle complex societal challenges associated with well-being.

Policymakers should encourage the formation of well-being ecosystems with diverse actors and resources that can help patients navigate health challenges. The findings especially show the potential of starting from the user's needs and life situation when the ambition is to integrate and innovate in fragmented systems.

The proposed model proposes that having a user-led focus on innovating new solutions can play an important role in the development of well-being ecosystems.

Innovation ecosystems (IEs) have attracted the attention of policymakers and researchers because of their potential to positively affect territories, creating shared value. However, due to the fragmentation of IEs, how this happens in different IEs has been explored only partially. This research aims to bridge this gap, aiming to support policymakers in understanding how to foster shared value in diverse IEs.

The paper identifies, based on the literature, two “drivers of aggregation” of IE's actors as key dimensions characterizing shared value in IEs, namely physical proximity and dominant issue. If these are combined, three archetypes emerge: Hub- and Chain-Driven, Place-Driven, Competence- and Issue-Driven IEs.Then, elements useful for understanding shared value creation in these archetypes are framed and studied in real cases.

Results reveal that aggregation drivers affect shared value creation, which differ among archetypes: in Competence- and Issue-Driven IEs alignment is challenged by the low physical proximity, which in Place-Driven IEs is high, but not enough to grant shared value; in Hub- and Chain-Driven IEs, the hub is the orchestrator, representing both a driver and a risk.

Differences in shared value creation processes relate to the set-up of the IE, which has relevant implications for policy definition. In Competence- and Issue-Driven IEs, policies at diverse levels align in funding and promoting the IE; in Place-Driven IEs, policies support anchors' development on-site; in Hub- and Chain-Driven IEs, policies, sometimes absent, should foster partnerships for projects for the territory, IE's enlargement and resilience.

This paper aims to examine the origins of value co-creation (VCC) knowledge streams, vis-a-vis their progression over the past 18 years. The study explores how knowledge of this discipline emerged across the tripartite strategic paradigms of business transformation.

Co-citation analysis (CCA) and co-word analysis (CWA) are used as bibliometric techniques, for which, a group of articles is retrieved using Scopus’s usual keyword-based search. The initial collection consists of 3,431 research articles published in business and management publications. By explaining the article clusters generated through CCA and keyword connections generated through CWA, the findings outline the origins and development of VCC research. A CWA-based chronological study adds further insights to the development of VCC research themes.

The results depict that VCC research has grown multifold in the past 18 years, whereby it has shifted its attention from a dyadic interaction approach to a multistakeholder ecosystem-based approach detailing the phenomenological instances of resource integration and institutional processes. Notably, extant research in this field has grown at a much faster rate since 2008. In fact, a stronger concentration of research emerged in the experience domain, particularly in terms of hedonic services. Development of engagement platforms has been driven by research into technologies such as IoT and artificial intelligence.

The theoretical framework of the VCC paradigm is used to describe the aggregation of co-creation research around the three strategic pillars. This framework is useful for business strategy and to track VCC research over time.

This work identifies the practices and strategies of VCC at three different levels: capacity, platform and experience. The study offers insights into a variety of co-creation practices at their respective levels, incorporating micro-level dyadic interactions and macro-level processes in a service ecosystem.

This study uses different bibliometric methodologies to investigate the development of this scientific field over time. “Document co-citation” analysis, a more preferred bibliometric technique under CCA, is used to construct the cluster of theoretical cores of this area. The results are classified under the strategic framework of the co-creation paradigm (Ramaswamy and Ozcan, 2014).

Infrastructure forms a basis for the operations and sustainability of the modern society. This paper aims to recognize value creation from the infrastructure procurement ecosystem perspective to achieve those goals. The pursuit of enhancing value creation involves an examination of infrastructure procurement challenges, boundaries as well as boundary spanners that facilitate effective knowledge transfer and interaction.

The qualitative study is based on content analysis of 25 thematic interviews. Data was transcribed and coded via Atlas.ti software.

Infrastructure procurement value creation challenges appear complex and related to boundaries that hamper collaboration, coordination and knowledge sharing. Our results show that these boundaries locate within and between different levels of procurement ecosystem. Therefore, value creation in infrastructure procurement requires boundary spanners for leveraging knowledge sharing and interaction. Artifacts, discussion, processes and brokers as identified boundary spanners are strongly nested and interrelated in the industry. Special attention should be given to supporting individuals to act as brokers, since they play the key roles in trust building, culture steering and usage of other boundary spanners.

Promoting value creation in infrastructure procurement helps to achieve socio-economic development goals.

This study offers a unique perspective on value creation in the context of infrastructure by adopting an ecosystem lens and examining boundary crossing mechanisms. The results support future development of collaboration and knowledge sharing practices fostering procurement productivity.

This study explores the influence of the Top Management Team (TMT) social capital on business model innovation in business ecosystems.

This study examines the impact of internal and external TMT social capital on enterprises’ business model innovation, explores the relationship between internal and external TMT social capital, and investigates how business ecosystem health moderates the relationship between external TMT social capital and enterprises’ business model innovation. These hypotheses are proposed and tested using a hierarchical regression analysis with data from 168 Chinese firms.

First, both internal and external TMT social capital exert a significantly positive influence on an enterprise’s business model innovation. Second, internal TMT social capital positively contributes to the development of external TMT social capital, affecting business model innovation. Finally, the moderating effect of business ecosystem health on the relationship between external TMT social capital and business model innovation depends on the dimensions. Specifically, the productivity of the business ecosystem negatively moderates this relationship, whereas the niche creation capability of the business ecosystem has a positive moderating effect.

These findings enrich prior research on business model innovation within the business ecosystem, thoroughly exploring the critical role of TMT social capital. This study reveals the diverse impacts of internal and external TMT social capital on business model innovation and the intricate relationship between these elements. Furthermore, it emphasizes that the success of enterprise’s business model innovation within a business ecosystem depends on the alignment and adaptation to dynamic ecosystem conditions. By presenting these insights, this study provides valuable practical implications for enterprises aiming to cultivate social capital within business ecosystem to facilitate business model innovation.

This study aims to examine the co-creation of customer experiences at different levels in service ecosystems, analyzing the case of a tourist destination.

A questionnaire was designed based on previously validated scales. The questionnaire was distributed through the social media platforms Facebook and Instagram. The survey yielded 1,476 valid responses for three types of destinations. Structural equation modeling and multigroup analysis were performed to test the hypotheses.

Aggregate service experience and memorable customer experience (MCE) in service ecosystems are determined by customer experiences at a dyadic level. Service experience at the ecosystem level is formed from ordinary experiences at the actor level, while MCE is formed from extraordinary experiences at the dyadic level. The type of ecosystem moderates the relationships between the variables but does not alter the importance of each of them.

The relationship between the co-creation of customer experiences at different levels of service ecosystems (dyadic vs aggregate) is addressed. A relationship is established between the ordinary and extraordinary character of experiences and their memorability at the ecosystem level.

Innovation ecosystems consist of independent and yet interdependent enterprises and actors. This constitutes a challenge for innovation leadership to set the direction to pursue UN SDGs. Enhanced insights and understandings of how collaborative innovation leadership can be conducted in practice are revealed in two cases conducted using a participatory action research approach. Hereby theory and practice are linked by the ecosystem participant actions to reach competitiveness of the offshore wind energy ecosystem compared to traditional/other renewable energy sources pursuing UN SDG number 7 of ‘affordable and clean energy’. The two cases are situated in ports in offshore wind energy innovation ecosystems, respectively in the Baltic Sea and in the North Sea. The first case contains complementary ecosystem participants with both leadership and expert positions. The second case contains both complementary and competitive ecosystem participants with leadership positions. The findings note that both cases can use collaborative innovation leadership through the point of origin in the guiding star of the value proposition at ecosystem level to go beyond their own enterprise self-interest. Next, collaborative innovation leadership is based in heterogeneities of both knowledge domains and individual and organisational behaviours for the innovative imagination of future needed initiatives for collaborative design-based sensemaking. A short-term challenge is present from reduced revenue in own enterprise from future needed initiatives. This short-term impact needs to be addressed for enhanced long-term robustness. The findings are summarised in a model for dissemination of collaborative innovation leadership in ecosystems to pursue UN SDGs in practice.

Measuring shared value (SV) created in innovation ecosystems (IEs) is increasingly relevant but complex, given the multidimensional and multiactor nature of both concepts, which challenges traditional performance measurement systems (PMSs). Moving from this gap, the authors propose an integrated approach to extend the balanced scorecard (BSC) for measuring and monitoring SV creation at IE level.

The proposed approach combines the most recent contributions on PMS in IEs and SV to define perspectives and dimensions that are better suited to deal with the nature of both IEs and SV. The approach is also applied to the real case (Alpha) of an Italian IE through a step wise method. Starting from the IE vision, the authors identify in the strategy map the specific objectives related to each perspective/dimension combination and then associate a performance indicator with each objective.

The resulting SV BSC is composed of indicators interconnected along different perspectives and dimensions. The application of the approach to the real case proves its feasibility and highlights characteristics, advantages and disadvantages of the SV BSC when used at IE level. The authors also provide guidelines for its application to other IEs.

The study contributes to the research on PMS by introducing and applying to a real case an integrated approach to assess SV in IEs, overcoming the shortcomings of PMS framed for single firms. It can be of interest for both researchers in the field of ecosystems value creation and practitioners managing or promoting such complex structures.

In the African context, the threat of the disruption of traditional business value-creation processes, currently facilitated by the growing information technology (IT) ecosystem, came with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Thus, this paper aims to investigate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on interfirm relationships within the context of the digital ecosystem in Africa.

This study employs an explanatory–exploratory qualitative approach from an interpretivist stance to investigate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on interfirm relationships. The authors conducted seven in-depth interviews with top management executives in a Nigerian technology company, together with the company's archival data that provided the pre, during and post pandemic (2018–2021) business-to-business (B2B) relationship structures, to determine how these relationships have been affected.

The results suggest that the pandemic had a minimal effect on partnership relationships in the B2B ecosystems of the case company but affected only non-partnership relationships.

The authors' qualitative study is interpretive and the sample size is limited. Hence, there is a need for caution in generalizing the findings. The framework can be further validated across a wider population.

Partnerships can help organizations weather business crises. Consequently, organizations should maintain a healthy number of partnership relations to deal with periods in which challenges emerge in the business landscape. In other words, with tight contracts and a strategic focus on goals and objectives, partnership relations can help organizations weather business crises.

This study builds upon the burgeoning body of literature on digital ecosystems within the African context, which is a relevant contextual contribution.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic review of literature on corporate engagement with start-ups (CEWS) by identifying the modes, contexts, antecedents, barriers and outcomes. As an emerging field, CEWS presently has no such review available which will help in building consensus within the field and shape future research directions.

The study followed a two-phased systematic review of literature. Three research databases (i.e. Web of Science, ScienceDirect and SCOPUS) were accessed to gather and conduct the review. Of the total 379 papers retrieved, 63 total relevant papers were studied and analysed. The exhaustive review of literature helped to uncover the contexts, perspectives, antecedents, outcomes and barriers reported across the different modes of CEWS.

The study highlighted the five prominent modes of CEWS favoured by large corporations and start-ups. It found that the large corporations and start-ups associate with one another on the basis of complementarities of activities, resources and motives to pursue their strategic orientations. The engagements also face barriers on the ground, such as incompatibility of goals, power imbalances, cultural differences and weak engagement plans. Most important contexts seen were the high-technology industries in the developed economies like the USA and Europe. It also found that ecosystem creation, accessing innovation and corporate strategy have been preferred as the most productive modes of CEWS in the literature.

This review provides practitioners with a detailed list of the modes and drivers of CEWS. Subsequently, the barriers that need to be managed to successfully execute a specific mode of engagement. This shall enable the practitioners in developing and adopting the best practices while engaging with the start-ups to better facilitate the outcomes of CEWS.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no systematic literature review available in the domain of CEWS – thus, this study makes an important methodological contribution to the field. By consolidating the fragmented yet growing knowledge on CEWS, the study presents a detailed understanding of what drives and obstructs the engagement between large corporations and start-ups.