Charting the Innovation Ecosystem

Abstract

As Victor Hwang noted in April 2014 article for Forbes , term has become the next big buzzword. Hwang's Google Ngrams demonstrate dramatic increase in use of word in phrases like business ecosystem and ecosystem in last 10 years. Increasingly, authors, bloggers, and commentators use term in place of such one-time favorites as network and cluster . The ecosystem- whether it's ecosystem, innovation ecosystem, or startup ecosystem-shows every sign of becoming next fad.Except, Hwang suggests, perhaps this is more than fad. Perhaps it reflects fundamental change in way we think about in general and innovation specifically. Although some writers use term interchangeably with other words, carries very different set of connotations and implications than network or cluster . Networks and clusters are constructed; communications run along definable lines and it's mostly clear how activity in one part of system will affect conditions elsewhere. They may be com plicated- consisting of many different parts and relationships-but they are not especially complex. An ecosystem, in contrast, is complex, dynamic, emergent system that constantly adapts, sometimes in unexpected ways. As blogger Alastair Brett described it in March 2014 blog post, ecosystems are nonlinear complex adaptive systems where same inputs don't always produce same outputs, where behavior of system is not sum of its individual parts, where there are disruptions and emergence, and where effects occur in far-from-equilibrium states.Perhaps one reflection of organic, adaptive nature of is lack of single clear definition for ecosystem. The idea of is, of course, borrowed from biology where, as Deborah Jackson described it in paper for National Science Foundation, it refers to a complex set of relationships among living resources, habitats, and residents of area, whose functional goal is to maintain equilibrium sustaining state. A biological is modeled by tracing energy exchanges across system, from plant to predator, to prey, and then back to soil.The use of concept to describe environment originated with James Moore, who offered definition of business ecosystem in his 1996 book The Death of Competition . In part, Moore describes as an economic community supported by foundation of intera cting organizations and individuals-the organisms of world. In ecosystems, companies occupy niches, just as species do in biological ecosystem, and various members of co-evolve and tend to align themselves.A plethora of definitions has grown from application of this basic concept to innovation. For Jackson, innovation is driven by economic dynamics rather than energy exchanges and is comprised of two separate, weakly coupled economies: knowledge economy and commercial economy. Erkko Autio and Llewellyn D. W. Thomas survey several definitions in their chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Innovation Management , each focusing on slightly different set of characteristics and indicators, as do Susanne Durst and Petro Poutanen in their paper, Success Factors of Innovation Ecosystems. Taken together, these surveys seem to converge to particular set of elements that appear in most definitions of concept: Innovation ecosystems are dynamic, purposive communities with complex, interlocking relationships built on collaboration, trust, and co-creation of value and specializing in exploitation of shared set of complementary technologies or competencies. Strong innovation ecosystems, according to Autio and Thomas, are productive-they translate knowledge into increased value-and they are robust-resistant to disruption. …

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 88 citations exist upstream.