Exploring Innovation Ecosystems as Networks: Four

European CasesJukka Huhtamäki and Neil Rubens

HICSS 2016, Kauai

Innovation often takes place in the context of innovation ecosystems (Adner and Kapoor 2010, Russell et al. 2011, Autio and Thomas, 2013, Valkokari 2015)

New data, tools, and questions are available for insights on latent structures within innovation ecosystems (Basole et al. 2012, Still et al. 2012)

Network analysis allows analyzing the structure and structural dynamics of ecosystems of business and innovation (Russell et al. 2011, Basole et al. 2012)

In this study, we present a novel approach for measuring innovation ecosystems with socially constructed data and network analysis

…and contrast the results to a more traditional innovation indicator, Innovation Union Scoreboard to investigate their compatibility

Introduction

Quantitative metrics

La

Modest Innovator - Latvia

Moderate Innovator - Hungary

Innovation Follower - EstoniaInnovation Leader- Finland

Network analysis of socially constructed data yields into results that are comparable to traditional innovation indicators

Importantly, the approach allows completely new insights into the system-level structure of the innovation ecosystem

In order to fully utilize the new actor-level metrics in understanding innovation, we need equally specific output metrics for innovation performance

The new views allow and indeed insist new ways to conduct decision-making in the context of innovation ecosystems

Boundary specification has to be reconsidered – here we are following national boundaries even though innovation does not respect them!

Conclusions

Developing means and methods to move beyond the (sometimes) superficial statistical analyses and (often) case-specific qualitative analyses

…and to support interdisciplinary investigation of innovation ecosystems that seek to discover mechanisms and structures latent in innovation ecosystems, cf. critical realism in analytics (Bygstad and Munkvold 2011)

Imperatively, to enable true discourse between academic research, decision-making and policy-making for innovation (and business) ecosystems (cross-sector, cross-border, cross-domain)

Future work

Jukka is @jnkka @TampereUnitech

Neil is @activeintel We are part of @ien_stanford

This research was partly sponsored by Tekes: Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation

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