Innovation Policies and Practices within Innovation Ecosystems

Catherine Beaudry, Thierry Burger-Helmchen, Patrick Cohendet, Catherine Beaudry, Thierry Burger-Helmchen, Patrick Cohendet

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781032246116
• eBook ISBN: 9781000589429
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

While intense efforts of clarification have been made to distinguish between the concept of system and ecosystem, and between the different forms of ecosystems, very few works have addressed the issues of how these different forms of ecosystems are interacting in a dynamic perspective, or of how the notion of a dynamic ecosystem could emerge from the static frame of a system approach.

The five chapters in this volume precisely aim at adding to this literature by highlighting the interplay between different types of innovation systems. A common thread among the five chapters of the book is the recognition of the need to develop new lenses to formally account for adaptative behaviour within clusters, networks, or regional innovation systems using the ecosystem metaphor. The diversity and heterogeneity of agents, the complexity of relationships, and new forms of organisation (underground, middleground, and upperground) are the main characteristics of innovation ecosystems, in contrast to more traditional concepts like clusters or networks. In essence, the five chapters add various complexity dimensions (relationships, knowledge, systems, etc.) to the existing knowledge on ecosystems.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Industry and Innovation.

Exploring regional innovation ecosystems: an empirical study in China

Ke Rong, Y. Lin, J. Yu, Y. Zhang and A. Radziwon

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the regional innovation ecosystem (RIE) in an effort to fully understand its static and dynamic nature. We investigate how organisations coevolve within an ecosystem and how it affects their ecosystems. Based on a longitudinal, qualitative in-depth case study analysis of the three most representative Chinese RIEs, we empirically explore and validate a 4C framework. The framework includes construct, cooperation, configuration and capability and offers insights into 1) a better redistribution of roles and coordination of ecosystem resources, 2) delivering a better understanding of the dynamic and co-evolution nature of ecosystem development and 3) inspiring the practitioners to further explore their complementary partners. The key findings suggest importance of within- and inter-RIE complementarity-based collaboration, which – with appropriate and well-informed governmental support – can significantly boost the national innovation system.

Introduction

The ecosystem concept has been gaining increasing attention among management scholars (Moore 1993; Iansiti and Levien 2004; Parente et al. 2019; Rong et al. 2020). Only within the last years, many scholars have initiated discussions about the conceptual origins of the ecosystems (Rong et al. 2015; Scaringella and Radziwon 2018) and the similarities and differences between ecosystems and inter-organisational networks (Shipilov and Gawer 2020) in an attempt to conceptualise the ecosystem construct (Rong and Shi 2014; Adner 2017) and develop the theory of ecosystems (Jacobides, Cennamo, and Gawer 2018; Kapoor 2018). Simultaneously, issues of fragmentation and a certain level of ambiguity in regards to the use of the ecosystem concept have been raised (e.g. Oh et al. 2016; Adner 2017; Ritala and Almpanopoulou 2017).

While referring to ecosystems management studies typically focus on inter-organisational linkages and networks, interdependencies and coevolution (Ahuja, Soda, and Zaheer 2012; Dyer and Singh 1998; Owen-Smith and Powell 2004; Provan, Fish, and Sydow 2007; Radziwon and Bogers 2019). The most common ecosystem type is the business ecosystem, which was first introduced by Moore (1993), followed by the innovation ecosystem (Adner 2017; Dias Sant´Ana et al. 2020), the service ecosystem (Trischler, Johnson, and Kristensson 2020), the entrepreneurial ecosystem (Cavallo, Ghezzi, and Balocco 2019), the knowledge ecosystem (Aaldering, Leker, and Song 2019) and also recently discussed the platform ecosystem (Panico and Cennamo 2020). In order to shed some more light on the field, our research will focus on one of the most controversial concepts within the ecosystem domain, namely the innovation ecosystem (Oh et al. 2016; Adner 2017; Ritala and Almpanopoulou 2017). In particular, we will explore the concept of regional innovation ecosystem (RIE) (Ritala et al. 2013; Radziwon, Bogers, and Bilberg 2017) and its dynamic nature (Zhang, Gregory, and Shi 2007; Attour and Burger-Helmchen 2014; Rong, Patton, and Chen 2018b; Rong, Lin, Li, Burstrom, Butel, and Yu 2018).

Different from the concept of an innovation system, which is mainly focused on the static view (Cooke, Gomez Uranga, and Etxebarria 1997), the innovation ecosystem with a focus on dynamics and coevolution has been regarded as a key driver of regional innovation (Thomas 2016). Within the area of the innovation system, the concept of regional innovation system (RIS) is generated with considerations of regional factors contributing to innovation performance (Braczyk, Cooke, and Heidenreich 1998). A RIS can be defined as a set of interacting private and public interests, formal institutions, and other organisations that function according to organisational and institutional arrangements and relationships conducive to the generation, use, and dissemination of knowledge (Lund and Karlsen 2020; Ritala et al. 2013; Radziwon, Bogers, and Bilberg 2017). However, RISs were more separate and dedicated to their own business and skills within their own regions, and failed to make good value by connecting to the other RISs (Belussi, Sammarra, and Sedita 2010). Nowadays a company can have various linkages and cooperation with external actors, and the importance of these external ties has been increasingly recognised as a crucial factor in accelerating technological changes and innovation processes (Karna, Täube, and Sonderegger 2013). Hence, in this research we propose and further discuss the concept of regional innovation ecosystem (RIE).

Several challenges are faced during the emergence, development and coevolution of stakeholders in an RIE. These are related to establishing and building relationships between ecosystem stakeholders, coping with industry uncertainties and ensuring sustainable ecosystem development (Zhang, Gregory, and Shi 2007; Rong, Liu, and Shi 2011). In order to disentangle some of these challenges from the overall complexity of the ecosystem multilayer nature, this paper focuses on answering two research questions 1) how organisations coevolve within an ecosystem in a specific region and 2) how it affects their ecosystems. Following this logic, this paper reports findings from an in-depth case study of the three most representative RIEs in China. These are located in the Bohai Delta, the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta. Our finding led us to develop a framework that comprehensively outlines the static and dynamic nature of the RIEs. Exploring RIEs offers interesting managerial implications for practitioners and policymakers alike by (1) providing insights into a better redistribution of roles and coordination of ecosystem resources (Snehota and Hakansson 1995), (2) delivering a better understanding of the dynamic nature of ecosystem development (Zhang, Gregory, and Shi 2007) and (3) inspiring the practitioners to further explore their complementary partners (Lorenzoni and Lipparini 1999).

The paper begins with a literature review, proceeds to more in-depth insights into the research design and data collection in the methodology section, goes into a discussion of the identified configuration patterns and capabilities of the RIE, and concludes by suggesting avenues for further research.

2. Literature review

Scaringella and Radziwon (2018) explored the ecosystem archetypes, through the territorial approach that takes into account not only economic but also social factors important for the exchange of knowledge. Even though, from the archetypes point of view, the regional innovation system (RIS) is seen as one of the (regional) innovation ecosystem predecessors, the connection between the two constitutes an interesting theoretical and practical gap that we intend to explore. In the following section, we propose the key highlights of an in-depth analysis of the territorial and ecosystem literature, which we conclude by identifying the key concepts that play a major role in the coevolution process among ecosystem members in China.

2.1. Regional innovation systems

Within the current literature, there are two construct elements, social network (Granovetter 1985) or community network, and industrial system (Saxenian 1996) or value network (Chesbrough 2003), which are imperative to a RIS (Gordon and McCann 2000). We further elaborate on the importance of these constructs for RIS and for simplicity we will use the community network and value network terminology throughout the manuscript.

First, the social network or community network, which includes financial capital, social capital and human capital, is a critical resource pool to support the development of a RIS. The financial capital, which particularly comprises seed capital, venture capital and government funds, is identified as the success factor that supports a system’s innovation (Chiaroni and Chiesa 2006). The skilled human capital, both cultivated by the local universities and attracted from outside, makes up the fundamental soft infrastructure for the growth of a knowledge-intensive RIS (Cooke 2001). Social capital is defined as the ability to secure resources by virtue of membership (Su and Hung 2009). It enables the linkage between different organisations. Especially in emerging countries like China, the term ‘Guanxi’ is used to describe very close social capital which could generate value (Knight and Yueh 2008).

Second, besides the community network of those who are loosely connected, there are some established industrial systems with a matured value network in each RIS. Factors like entrepreneurship and networking within the value network are essential to the success of an RIS (Lin, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Innovation policies and practices within innovation ecosystems
• 1 Exploring regional innovation ecosystems: an empirical study in China
• 2 Entrepreneurship, complexity and the emergent order in the techno-economic scenario of the twenty-first century. Evidence from a field study in Tuscany
• 3 Local innovation ecosystem: structure and impact on adaptive capacity of firms
• 4 The evolution of knowledge-intensive innovation ecosystems: co-evolving entrepreneurial activity and innovation policy in the West Swedish maritime system
• Index