Introducing the lifecycle perspective to innovation ecosystem design: The innovation ecosystem clock model

Abstract

Innovation ecosystems are faced with high expectations: Not only are they intended to enable companies to keep pace with new innovation dynamics, but are also seen as key for bringing together stakeholders from science, industry, politics and society to jointly develop solutions in light of today's grand challenges. But how can practitioners develop and strategically design these collaborative endeavors? While the ecosystem concept has been extensively researched over the last years, scientifically-rooted, practitioner-oriented tools enabling the strategic design of such ecosystems remain scarce. Applying a design-science research approach incorporating various methods, such as a scoping review of the literature, a comparative analysis of existing tools or a focus group discussion with practitioners, this paper develops the ‘innovation ecosystem clock model’. Based on the different phases of the underlying co-innovation process, the model is the first to scrutinize the different dimensions of ecosystem strategy along the ecosystem lifecycle. In doing so, the tool developed enables practitioners to analyze and discuss strategic design choices related to key activities, actors, transfer formats, value creation and capture mechanisms as well as governance aspects.