Innovation Ecosystems for Business Success

Creating an innovation ecosystem can help support the long-term success of your business. This might leave you wondering: “What is an innovation ecosystem?”

In short, an innovation ecosystem is the evolving set of actors, activities, and artifacts (technologies, products and services), and the institutions and relations, including complimentary and substitute relations, that are important for the innovative performance of an actor or a population of actors.

Now, you may be further confused by that definition, but let’s discuss this more and allow me a brief moment to describe how the innovation ecosystem way of thinking could help benefit your business. Considering or adopting the innovation ecosystem concept could greatly benefit a wide range of important functions such as business planning, strategy formation, client engagement and product/service development.

Your Business and Innovation Ecosystems

At the surface, many people think that a business exists purely to sell products or services. However, for a large number of modern businesses – when we abstract the specific products or services from the analysis – we see that quite a few businesses are now in the business of developing and managing innovation ecosystems.

Let’s break down the analysis of the modern, successful business and see how they fit within the innovation ecosystem way of thinking:

• Many businesses now coordinate between an ever-evolving set of actors (vendors, consortiums, financiers, consumers, communities, governments, regulatory bodies and agencies, etc.) in order to deliver innovation capacities into markets, communities and groups of people.
• These businesses engage in, maintain and operate within a wide scope of activities and systems (business, research, development, lobby-based, social and interpersonal, etc.) to enable the development and delivery of innovations into markets, communities, regions, nations and situations where those innovations were previously considered non-viable.
• These businesses also interact with, support and – in some cases – develop the institutions (community-level, regional, federal and transnational) necessary in delivering or supporting innovations and the related systems in communities and regions.
• Taken a step further, those businesses often create strong partnerships with academic institutions and researchers in order to spur a continuous flow of innovations.

How can your business benefit from the innovation ecosystem concept?

Your business development planning and strategy formation could benefit from engaging in a higher-level review that an innovation ecosystem perspective would provide. Instead of thinking specifically on how your product or service would benefit the target market, think about how your new products, technologies or services expand upon your existing innovation ecosystem. Then following this, how is the new evolution of your innovation ecosystem better able to support the innovation capabilities within the target client?

Enhance your client engagement (perhaps better thought of as stakeholder engagement) by informing clients/stakeholders that your business delivers entire innovation ecosystems, instead of simply a new technology, product or service. Simply put, you should express how the entire scope of your activities, technologies/services and network (in the interpersonal/relationship sense) significantly enhance the innovation capacities and performance of the communities and regions that utilize your solutions.

Improve product development, specifically product development in the long-term, by considering how a new product or service integrates with or enhances your innovation ecosystem. Furthermore, considerations on how the new product or service may replace existing parts should be encouraged. Innovation ecosystem are constantly evolving with different parts added or removed as time goes on. As a product or service is developed, discussions should include how it fits into the innovation ecosystem, whether it is replacing something and the long-term effect it will have on the innovation ecosystem overall.

You probably already have an innovation ecosystem and do not even know it!

Your business, if you’re operating successfully in today’s market, is likely to already have the beginnings of an innovation ecosystem. Take stock of your existing operations, activities and client interactions. You might be surprised to see that you are engaging in the development of an innovation ecosystem. Considering this concept during the management and operation of your business will most likely support those important functions you are already doing.

Read More (and Source of Innovation Ecosystem Diagram Above)

Ove Granstranda & Marcus Holgers (2020) - Innovation ecosystems: A conceptual review and a new definition