ABSTRACT
For over a decade innovation ecosystems have been an integral part of business dialogue and academic research. This trend has amplified following the COVID-19 crisis that has pushed enterprises all over the world to regroup, harness the abilities of networks, and establish collaborations that enable business renewal. Innovation ecosystem acts as an enabler for stakeholders’ interrelations that attracts a body of heterogeneous members to the ecosystem from within various stakeholder groups, and supports stakeholders’ co-evolution and complex value-creating interrelationships.
The existing body of research has mainly focussed on the firm as the unit of analysis. The present chapter addresses the enterprise perspective with the ecosystem level and its stakeholders being the focus – the angle that is previously scarcely discussed. Innovation ecosystems are uniquely positioned to enable the business renewal of enterprises with the consideration of the exchanges of members within innovation ecosystems that are based on understanding, appreciating, and responding to each other’s needs. It is advanced here that provided that the interrelations between an enterprise and other members of an innovation ecosystem are established constructively, the mutuality is bound to support not only the enterprise’s own business renewal, but also that of the interacting parties.
The chapter adopted a practice-oriented and management-centred approach to addressing innovation ecosystems from the perspective of enterprises and in relation to other ecosystem members or stakeholders. The chapter is structured in the following way. First, innovation ecosystems are placed within the current context of business renewal from the perspective of enterprises. Second, the multi-stakeholder perspective of innovation ecosystems is addressed with the respective implications for enterprises. A summarizing table is introduced, and it offers examples of sources of business renewal via enterprise interrelations with ecosystem members. Third, managerial outcomes and considerations are offered for key interrelationships.
