innovation ecosystems

Digital collaboration and innovation platforms offer SMEs significant potential to compensate for structural resource weaknesses and to participate in innovation ecosystems. Nevertheless, adoption in the B2B context remains low. This paper examines adoption barriers based on a systematic literature review using Teece’s dynamic capabilities approach. The analysis suggests that recurring obstacles can be structured along three dimensions: Sensing—lack of ecosystem awareness, absence of scanning routines; Seizing—IP concerns, governance uncertainty, adoption fatigue; Reconfiguring—closed-innovation culture, lack of absorptive capacity. Building on this, a practice-oriented capability-building framework is developed with recommendations for action.

Addressing future challenges by means of innovation requires organizations to work together to a much larger degree than today, requiring both physical (‘colocated’) and digital collaboration. This collaboration for innovation often goes beyond single organizations and results in networks of shared value creation comprising different actors such as companies, research institutions, or supporting actors. These ecosystems of innovation transcend geographical and organizational boundaries and are enabled by the use of virtual tools. Our article is set out to capture the spectrum between colocated and digital collaboration in innovation ecosystems by introducing the concept of ecosystem virtuality. Specifically, we look at the degree of technology dependence, informational value, and temporal dispersion, and propose key antecedents of ecosystem virtuality such as geographical dispersion, boundary conditions such as the level of trust among actors, and how these factors influence the ...