How would YOU define an innovation ecosystem?

The literatures on Emergence of innovation systems and ecosystems shows that in 1990s the national or regional innovation systems were seen as static structures which the regulating body was usually the government and the success of these systems was very much dependent to the infrastructure built by the governing body as well as the vital corporation of the big number of components or actors (World Economic Forum Report, 2015). However innovation ecosystems being introduced in early 2000s are rather a dynamic system with the very important specification of self-governing which is now being applied in many developed and developing economies (World Economic Forum Report, 2015).

In order to be able to achieve full picture of studies and Research on Innovation ecosystems it is to consider innovation ecosystem as a multidisciplinary concept and study economy literature which Focuses more on the role and Motives of system in generating ideas and also business literatures which discuss more about the factors that are the roots of innovative companies and help them to innovate as well as social studies and management literatures .

The main character of innovation ecosystems being explored and discussed in management literature is the self-organizing property of innovation ecosystems while in business studies the focus is rather on innovation ecosystems being a mean for co-creation and market introduction of innovation . Literature on economy explore the concept of ecosystems in the digital world for example IT and ICT and how this might change the nature of innovation process and especially the property of nonlinear innovation creation which is very much seen in modern production systems .

The trend found in innovation ecosystem literature shows that this tern is mostly used in entrepreneurial contexts. It is undeniable that entrepreneurial actions might also benefit from innovation ecosystems. Since entrepreneurs are dealing with equating uncertainties at firm levels to managing Collective uncertainties , therefore, building an innovation ecosystem and managing collectives uncertainties at ecosystem level can be considered as a strategy applied by entrepreneurs.

There are various definitions and conceptualization of innovation ecosystems by different scholars in various fields and contexts. Gomes et al. (2016) found that the term "innovation ecosystem" has been used in many different contexts which may produce a diverse Theory this makes it difficult to make a comparison among the studies which eventually might lead to not having a consolidated knowledge. Considering where the term innovation ecosystem has been used Oh et al.(2016) discovered that there are not enough literature on the terminology of innovation ecosystem and therefore there is not a robust definition of this term which this suggests a research opportunity or a research gap in this field. After a literature review performed by Smorodinskaya et al. (2017) the work also suggested that the idea of ecosystem is usually used without having a clear definition of the term itself and the uncertainty on terminology of this concept is increasing. Different types of ecosystems are also used that in so many cases they are used interchangeably and although some researchers paid more attention on differentiating between biological and innovation or business ecosystems but it is found that the research on ecosystems is still at its young stages .

Innovation ecosystems are organizational spaces meant to co-create values through collaboration of collection of actors, assets and interactions or means of Communications generated by collaborative activities of networks of several forms and sizes and so, Innovation ecosystems also could be considered as fostering environment of networks meant for a collective decision-making and collective action.

Although as discussed there is not a clear definition extracted from literature, here we discuss different sets of definitions available. As cited in Oh et al.(2016), Jackson (2011) defines an innovation ecosystem as the complex relationships that are formed between actors including the material resources and human capital or entities that participate in ecosystem in order to enable technology development and innovation. He also believes that innovation ecosystem has two distinct; the research economy which is driven by fundamental research and the commercial which is driven by the marketplace. Additionally Jackson distinguishes and Innovation ecosystem from any biological ecosystem or any other system only based on its purpose which is to innovate but not based on the location of the actors with geography being a very relevant item to innovation ecosystems or the kind of the interconnection and relationships between the components and players of the ecosystem.

The available literature gives rather a confusing variety of meanings giving to innovation ecosystem in several contexts);

1.      Corporate innovation ecosystems (open innovation) . it consists of suppliers, users, partners and other contributors to the process of open innovation and the actors such as government or industrial associations or any other stakeholders, although they are considered external to the ecosystem, but they still have impact on the functioning of the ecosystem.

2.      Regional and National Innovation ecosystems; in these sort of definitions of innovation ecosystems the focus is on open innovation and more precise role scopes of the players although the term "eco" is also added to regional or national innovation system label

3.       Oh et at. (2016) also found city based innovation ecosystems and innovation districts are usually planned by municipalities with the help of universities with the focus on new and small companies. City based innovation ecosystems may start with real estate development rather than active business development unlike the technopolis objectives of long-standing.

4.      High Tech small and medium Enterprises (SMEs) centered ecosystems with Taiwan being known as the best of such ecosystems .

5.      Hyper-local innovation ecosystem which managers of some incubators and accelerators claim that is created by combination of their services and facilities.

6.      University based innovation ecosystems created by universities and institutions of Science and Technology .It concentrate on entrepreneurial section of the innovation ecosystem and it is sometimes called rather an entrepreneurial ecosystem as well .

Gomes et al.(2016) suggested some of the concepts drawn from innovation ecosystem which might differ from each other in meaning and purpose are digital innovation ecosystem, hub ecosystems, open innovation ecosystems and platform based ecosystems.. Gomes (2016) also suggested that where exactly these definitions are used is pretty much dependent on the relevance of the concept or contradictory of the competing concept, for example some of the scholars believe that when we talk about business ecosystem it is the synonym of innovation ecosystems while others suggested that these two Concepts are quite different from each other in a sense that innovation ecosystems are rather dealing with the activities that create value while business ecosystems are usually dealing with the sort of activities which captures the value or captures the created value by innovation ecosystems. Based on the Durst and Poutanen's (2013) review, Oh et al (2016) suggests that innovation ecosystem literature needs to focus more on "the dialogue with multiple constituents". From which this can be drawn that both part of eco and system need more attention to be discussed in context of innovation and this might be a point where a robust definition of innovation ecosystem could be achieved .

There are also debates on the weight and added value the prefix "eco" brings to the innovation ecosystems. Although by adding "Eco" in front of innovation national systems and innovation regional systems and creating the term innovation ecosystem, the term has been becoming popular in industry, academia and government but it is yet not a well define concept and it is rather much less a theory and it implies a faulty analogy to natural ecosystem so it cannot be considered as a strong basis for the requirements of multidisciplinary research in the concept of innovation. There are number of literature found for the term innovation ecosystem. However these literature contributions do not depend on the prefix "eco" and the use of prefix "Eco" appears mostly in non-peer reviewed articles by industry people and practitioners which makes it difficult to know and not doubt whether these practitioner authors have used the term in an international way or it's a metaphoric and rather a figurative expression than precise and meaningful.

Discussing about the prefix "eco" is basically extracted from ecological aspect and it relates to the inter-dependency and co-evolution relations between the actors of which co -evolution meaning a two way interaction between two entities . In innovation ecosystems there are several actors in the different layers which each of these actors' decisions or actions might cause an impact on others and also counter response from the other actors and of course this set off behavior is multiplied across the multi layers of innovation ecosystem. Therefore understanding of the interconnections between micro and macro behaviors of ecosystem factors as well as Cooperative or competitive interactions among them is essential. These links and interactions also affect the balance of ecosystem.

Having discussed the term ecosystem, we should not forget the important prefix of innovation which can be defined as creation of new ideas and knowledge and successfully commercializing these new services or products to the market . Innovation ecosystem therefore involves both of these aspects; innovation and ecosystem.

There are still many discussion on differences between an innovation ecosystem and natural ecosystems as well as with national or regional innovation systems which I will cover on later aarticles.