Mapping, analyzing and designing innovation ecosystems: The Ecosystem Pie Model (original) (raw)

Disruptive Innovation Ecosystems

Conference Proceedings of the Academy for Design Innovation Management, 2019

Ecosystems are valuable in creating diverse and collaborative environments that enable businesses to innovate in ways that are much more difficult without them. However, business managers can be reluctant to participate in building ecosystems mainly due to lack of understanding. Specifically, businesses can be uncomfortable sharing resources, data, intellectual property and secrets with other ecosystem actors. Drawing on inter-disciplinary perspectives from literature, we use a ‘design focused ecosystem thinking' to propose a new type of Disruptive Innovation Ecosystem (DIE). Firstly, we discuss the significance of adopting innovation ecosystems to create shared value. Secondly, we conceptualize a new type of DIE and propose steps on how DIEs can be created and fostered. Finally, we discuss DIE roles in relation to Amazon, Apple, Uber, and Siemens ecosystem cases. This paper offers a new type of DIE design process which may be leveraged by businesses towards building sustainable...

Visualizing Business Ecosystems: Applying a Collaborative Modelling Process in Two Case Studies

Australasian Conference on Information Systems 2018, 2018

Business ecosystems are increasingly gaining relevance in research and practice. Because business ecosystems progressively change, enterprises are interested in analysing their ecosystem, to identify and address such changes. In order to gain a comprehensive picture of the business ecosystem, various stakeholders of the enterprise should be involved in the analysis process. We propose a collaborative approach to model and visualize the business ecosystem and we validate four central roles in the modelling process. The process consists of six steps, namely the definition of the business ecosystem focus, instantiation of the model, data collection, provision of tailored visualizations, collecting feedback and adapting the models, and using the visualization 'to tell a story'. In this paper, we report case studies of two companies that have instantiated ecosystem models.

Unpacking the innovation ecosystem construct: Evolution, gaps and trends

Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2016

The innovation ecosystem construct has emerged as a promising approach in the literature on strategy, innovation and entrepreneurship. It draws upon former business ecosystem literature. However, the term innovation ecosystem has been employed in very polysemic and sometimes competing ways. Many adjectives used with reference to innovation ecosystems render the consolidation of the construct more difficult-which its characteristics, boundaries and relation with other, to some extent competing, constructs, such as supply chain and value chain are. To clarify concepts, to identify trends and research opportunities, we conducted a systematic literature review from 1993 to 2016, with a hybrid methodology including bibliometric and content analysis. Besides highlighting the most influential papers and exhaustively discussing the innovation ecosystem concept and its variations, we identify a turning point in the literature, the transition from business ecosystem to innovation ecosystem. Business ecosystem relates mainly to value capture, while innovation ecosystem relates mainly to value creation. We conclude by describing six research streams in innovation ecosystem: industry platform × innovation ecosystem; innovation ecosystem strategy, strategic management, value creation and business model; innovation management; managing partners; the innovation ecosystem lifecycle; innovation ecosystem and new venture creation. These streams lead us to propose opportunities for further research to solidify the innovation ecosystem concept.

Towards a dynamic capabilities view on ecosystem formation: A case study on the emergence of an innovation ecosystem

2020

Digitalization is a catalyser that drives rapid changes in industries. While bringing huge opportunities for business, digitalization outdated existing capabilities and working methods, thus, it brings threats to companies who cannot timely innovate themselves. In today's business landscape, no company has sufficient resources to develop digital innovation alone. Companies have to be able to attract, secure and combine a variety of new resources and competencies from other organizations to co-create new services on top of its technology platform. Currently, we see that innovation ecosystems are emerging to answer to this need. Innovation ecosystems are inherently complex as they consist of multiple actors coming from different cultural, political, economical and knowledge backgrounds. Thus, developing innovation ecosystems can be very challenging. However, we have not been equipped with sufficient theoretical and practical knowledge to understand how a company can form an innovation ecosystem. Therefore, this thesis was set to establish a deeper understanding of the factors and capabilities that support the formation of an innovation ecosystem. Through an extensive literature review of both fields-ecosystem and dynamic capabilities, this thesis established the first theoretical model that explains the development of an innovation ecosystem. This theoretical model was applied and developed iteratively in an in-depth case study of a European-based Intelligent Mine innovation ecosystem. This thesis was conducted using an exploratoratory, qualitative approach and followed an abductive research design. Data was collected through several open-ended interviews with ecosystem members, and analysed following Gioia methodology. The results of this thesis shed light on: (1) the key factors that trigger the formation of an innovation ecosystem, (2) the motivations of a hub company for forming an innovation ecosystem, and (3) the sensing and seizing mechanisms that a hub company employed while forming its innovation ecosystem. Moreover, a conceptual model was developed after refining the initial theoretical with new empirical insights. This thesis contributes directly to the development of new theory on ecosystem formation and the new application of dynamic capabilities framework in ecosystem literature. It also provides useful suggestions for companies whose aspiration is to develop innovation ecosystems around their core technologies.

Firm’s Innovation Ecosystem: Barriers, Key Success Factors and Strategies

2021

Strategic positioning fosters the firm performance in an ecosystem. Companies in an innovation ecosystem use strategic tools to connect different business units. The systematic literature review was used to search for the articles used in this review. Google Scholar search engine was employed to filter the references of each selected paper. In total, 41 papers published in journal and conference proceedings have been used for the review. The review shows that companies challenges as shortage of willingness to share insights and intellectual property, confusion over management methods need to create sustainable value, lack of coordination within the ecosystem, lack of an innovation plan, failure to pay attention to a new set of risks and costs associated with network-types of practices when innovating through an ecosystem. The review highlights specific key success factors such as management commitment, consumer value, and value chains linked to customers’ expectations, and organisat...

Bifocals: Visualizing Interactions between Business Model Design and Ecosystem Innovation

2020

This article describes an ongoing research project, which is mainly addressed to managers of nursing homes. Recent events have obliged nursing homes to redefine the interactions among stakeholders in their business ecosystem. By combining the existing literature in business ecosystem design and business model design, we propose a method called Bifocals to align the two ecosystem and business perspectives. We claim that our method (1) allows representing in details the niche ecosystem where the firm is located, (2) it offers a more structured way to respond to an ever-evolving ecosystem and (3) it underlines a coherent way to build and test new business model features to restructure the firm, in response to its ecosystem. We illustrate how to use Bifocals by describing how we supported the creation of a new service that adapts to recent evolution in the business ecosystem of nursing homes. In the future, we intend to validate our method by working with a group of nursing homes and he...

The structure of an innovation ecosystem: foundations for future research

Management Decision, 2020

Purpose-The concept of an innovation ecosystem, based on the idea of business ecosystem, has increasingly grown in the literature on strategy, innovation, and entrepreneurship. However, not all innovation ecosystems have the same architectural models or internal collaboration, and existing research rarely deconstructs an ecosystem of innovation and examines its structure. The objective of this article is to systematize the discussion about the structure of an innovation ecosystem and offer a foundation for future research. Design/methodology/approach-Using the Web of Science database as the source for the articles, this paper presents a systematic review of the literature on the structure of the innovation ecosystems. The period of analysis spanned from January 1993 to August 2019. Two methods, bibliometric analysis and content analysis, were used to structure the systematic review. Findings-The results of the content analysis showed that the main classifications related to the structure of an innovation ecosystem are the ecosystem life cycle (birth, expansion, leadership, and self-renewal), the classification according to the ecosystem level (macroscopic, medium, and microscopic), and the layered structure (core-periphery structure, triple-layer structure, triple-layer core-periphery structure, and framework 6C). The results also showed that studies in the field are concentrated around a small group of authors, and few studies have discussed the structure of an ecosystem. Research limitations/implications-This study includes only peer-reviewed articles from the Web of Science database. Originality/value-This article contributes to innovation ecosystem theory by exploring the characteristics that influence ecosystem structure. In addition to the theoretical contribution, the triple-layer core-periphery framework and the 6C framework set a benchmark for future research on innovation ecosystems.

Roles during innovation ecosystem genesis: A literature review

Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2016

This paper addresses recent calls to enhance our understanding of innovation ecosystem genesis, focusing in particular on the roles that come to prominence during this important yet volatile phase in the innovation ecosystem lifecycle. To this end, we undertook a systematic review of the literature, which has allowed us to study in detail 60 publications appearing in journals and conference proceedings. Our results propose several roles seminal to innovation ecosystem birth, which we have collated thematically into four groups-leadership roles ('ecosystem leader' and 'dominator'), direct value creation roles ('supplier', 'assembler', 'complementor', and 'user'), value creation support roles ('expert' and 'champion'), and entrepreneurial ecosystem roles ('entrepreneur', 'sponsor', and 'regulator')-and defined in terms of the specific activities they carry out during ecosystem birth. Furthermore, our findings tentatively suggest the entrance of these roles at different times as the process of genesis unfolds. Particular roles, such as the champion, are likely to be pivotal in ensuring that the innovation can move successfully from discovery to its commercialization. We conclude our paper by discussing future research avenues that can build on our role typology, to shed further light on the process of innovation ecosystem genesis.

Business Model Design and Ecosystem Innovation: A Method for Visualizing Interactions

2021

In this article, we consider the existing literature in business ecosystem design and business model design to propose a method called Bifocals. The method aims to align the two ecosystem and business perspectives. We illustrate how to use Bifocals by describing how we supported the creation of a new service, which adapts to recent evolution in the business ecosystem of nursing homes. The access to the field for the instantiation of the method is provided by an ongoing research project, which is mainly addressed to managers of nursing homes. Indeed, recent events have obliged nursing homes to redefine the interactions among stakeholders in their business ecosystem. In the end, we claim that our method (a) allows representing in greater details the niche ecosystem where the firm is located, (b) it offers a more structured way to respond to an everevolving ecosystem, and (c) it underlines a coherent way to build and test new business model features to restructure the firm, in response to its ecosystem.

Relational capital for shared vision in innovation ecosystems

Triple Helix, 2015

This paper provides an evidence-based approach to understanding the relationship infrastructure of spatially defined innovation ecosystems in three metropolitan areas. With the Triple Helix framework, the ecosystem perspective, and shared vision for transformation initiatives, we explore relationships as structure in the metropolitan areas of Austin, TX; Minneapolis, MN; and Paris, France. Network metrics are interpreted as indicators of relational capital; and network visualizations reveal distinct patterns of relational space that structure business ecosystems at the enterprise, growth, and startup levels in each geographic area. We illustrate that network metrics, relationship indicators, and their visualization can be valuable resources for quantitatively and qualitatively investigating and analyzing the complexities of engagement, agility, vitality, linking, and embeddedness in innovation ecosystems. We suggest that data-driven indicators of relational capital may be used for network orchestration, evidence-based policy, and the development of shared vision in spatially defined business ecosystems.