Call for papers: Sustainable Innovation Ecosystems as Complex Systems: challenges, advantages, and limits for research and practice

In this Special Issue, we consider sustainable innovation ecosystems as complex adaptive systems, in which many autonomous and heterogeneous actors leverage their resources and capabilities and create new ones, by interacting with each other at multiple levels, to allow innovative solutions to new problems to emerge, in a very short time.

Guest editors:

Linda Ponta,
Università di Genova, Italy
linda.ponta@unige.it;

Giovanna Ferraro,
University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy;
giovanna.ferraro@uniroma2.it;

Raffaella Manzini,
LIUC - Cattaneo University, Castellanza, Italy;
rmanzini@liuc.it;

Andrew W. H. Ip
University of Saskatchewan, Department of Mechanical engineering, Canada
wh.ip@polyu.edu.hk

Cristina Ponsiglione,
University of Naples Federico II, Italy;
ponsigli@unina.it;

Andreas Pyka,
University of Hohenheim, Germany;
a.pyka@uni-hohenheim.de;

Ben Vermeulen,
University of Bremen, Germany;
ben.vermeulen@uni-bremen.de;

Special issue information:

Background and Motivation

In the last decade, the number of scientific articles on ecosystems has dramatically increased, and more generally, the adoption of the ecosystem concept in innovation and entrepreneurship studies has become increasingly popular.

The concept of ecosystem was borrowed from the field of ecology during the late 1980s (Van de Ven, 1986), where ecosystems are characterized by strongly interconnected groups of organisms that interact with each other and with the physical environment where they live, to maintain the dynamic equilibrium of the system (Jackson, 2011).

The ecosystem metaphor marked a substantial shift in innovation and entrepreneurship studies, away from an individualistic perspective toward deeper attention to collectivity and community, thus including social, cultural, and economic forces in the entrepreneurship process (Stam & Van de Ven, 2021). However, despite many years passed since its first introduction, the concept of ecosystem gained momentum only recently (Stam, 2015), especially in the fields of management and innovation, as the growing number of papers published after 2010 proves (Tsujimoto et al., 2018).

The concept of ecosystem is strongly debated in scientific literature and introduces different concepts focused on specific aspects. Most of the studies dealing with this topic adopt a qualitative approach, hence analyzing ecosystems in a descriptive way aimed at pointing out the founding elements and policies that encourage the establishment of an innovation ecosystem. What mostly emerges is that innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems include a combination of social, institutional, financial, and cultural components (Van de Ven, 1993; Spigel, 2017; Ancona et al., 2023).

According to Granstrand and Holgersson (2020, p.3) “an innovation ecosystem is the evolving set of actors, activities, and artifacts, and the institutions and relations, including complementary and substitute relations, that are important for the innovative performance of an actor or a population of actors”.

Specifically, the set of actors, structures, and activities, as well as the institutions and relations that characterize ecosystems, could lead to innovation and vice versa. (Granstrand & Holgersson, 2020).

Among the innovation ecosystems, a subset is represented by sustainable innovation ecosystems where also the environment is considered an important element (Zeng et al., 2017). More in detail, sustainable innovation ecosystems are ecosystems in which the collaborations between the internal departments of organizations and external organizations have been assumed to play a strategic role to target social and environmental sustainability matters, developing ethical, social, economic, and environmental rules (Stubbs and Cocklin, 2008, Pham and Vu, 2022).

Sustainability and the sustainability transition are salient concerns for sustainable development and social well-being and have become an imperative for governments, policymakers, and organizations as underlined also by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Thus, studying sustainable innovation ecosystems and their complex dynamics could be of prominent interest for scholars and policymakers.

Several authors describe ecosystems and in particular, sustainable innovation ecosystems as complex systems, thus borrowing concepts from complexity theory. Isenberg (2016) claims that the ecosystem implies the existence of a largely self-organizing, self-sustaining, and self-regulating system, and this aspect needs to be considered in the development of pro competition policies. The theme of self-organization is also treated by Tan et al. (2020), whose studies depict ecosystems as robust, scalable architectures that can automatically solve complex and dynamic problems, possessing several properties, including self-organization, self-management, sustainability, and scalability.

Self-organization is a term typically used in literature to describe a process in which small units assemble into larger structures without external intervention (Burnes, 2005); this process often combines with a co-evolutionary perspective that is frequently adopted in studies of complex adaptive systems and economy (Moore, 2006). According to Han et al. (2019), self-organization and co-evolution are just two of the interrelated complex properties that an entrepreneurial ecosystem exhibits, as well as non-linear interactions, (in)sensitivity to initial conditions, adaptation to the environment, and the emergence of successful actors.

In this Special Issue, we consider sustainable innovation ecosystems as complex adaptive systems, in which many autonomous and heterogeneous actors leverage their resources and capabilities and create new ones, by interacting with each other at multiple levels, to allow innovative solutions to new problems to emerge, in a very short time. Adopting the perspective and the methodological approaches of complexity could be advantageous in this field, not only to take into account the non-linear interactions among multiple diverse and independent agents belonging to the ecosystem, but also to capture the self-organizing emergent structures and properties at the collective level, and the interplay among the social, environmental, and economic dimensions of their evolution (Ponsiglione, 2021; Ponta, 2023).

The use of complexity science and the related methodologies, in the field of innovation management, is still very limited and, hence, it is not clear yet how studying sustainable innovation ecosystems through the lens of complexity science would produce benefits and limitations. In particular, there is a need to understand how the complexity theory and related methods can be applied in this field. Thus, also empirical analysis and case studies can be useful for a deep understanding of this topic. The best practices, possible implications, and impacts on policy making can be very relevant for government authorities and also for the scientific community.

Topics and Research Questions

This special issue aims to attract high-quality contributions that use these approaches and address the issue of complexity concerning this specific topic. Papers that adopt innovative theoretical and empirical methodologies are particularly appreciated as well as papers addressing the relationship between theory and practice.

We invite researchers aimed at investigating the following sub-topics

• Sustainable innovation ecosystems’ business models considering complexity theory and practice
• Case studies of real complex sustainable innovation ecosystems
• New methodologies for the analysis of sustainable innovation ecosystems
• Simulations of sustainable innovation ecosystems for theory building or policy advice
• Policies and strategies for innovation ecosystems to foster sustainability transition
• Sustainable and resilient innovation ecosystems
• Novel technologies, as machine learning and AI, to foster sustainable innovation ecosystems
• Modelling of learning and knowledge sharing processes in sustainable innovation ecosystems
• Modelling techniques and mixed methods to analyze sustainable innovation ecosystems according to the complexity approach
• Advantages and limitations in applying conceptual and methodological approaches of complexity science to the study of sustainable innovation ecosystems.

Manuscript submission information:

The timeline of this special issue is as follows:

Submission dates: September 1^st, 2024 to August 31^st, 2025.

Review process: On a rolling basis from September 2024 to December 2025.

Papers can be submitted here: https://www.editorialmanager.com/jik/default2.aspx and by selecting article type "VSI: Innovation Ecosystems"

Publication: This is a VSI; accepted papers will be published online immediately once accepted and will be included in the next available issue of the journal.

Before submitting a manuscript, please read carefully the Journal of Innovation & Knowledge Guide for authors.

In particular, authors should disclose in their manuscript the use of AI and AI-assisted technologies and a statement will appear in the published work. Declaring the use of these technologies supports transparency and trust between authors, readers, reviewers, editors, and contributors and facilitates compliance with the terms of use of the relevant tool or technology. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical behaviour and is unacceptable.

More information can be found at the following link:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-innovation-and-knowledge/publish/guide-for-authors 

References:

Ancona, A., Cinelli, M., Ferraro, G., Iovanella, A. (2023). Network-based principles of entrepreneurial ecosystems: a case study of a start-up network. Small Business Economics, 61, 1497–1514.

Burnes, B. (2005). Complexity theories and organizational change. International Journal of Management Reviews, 7(2), 73-90.

Granstrand, O. and Holgersson, M. (2020). Innovation ecosystems: A conceptual review and a new definition. Technovation, 90-91, 102098.

Han, J., Ruan, Y., Wang, Y., Zhou, H. (2019). Toward a complex adaptive system: The case of the Zhongguancun entrepreneurship ecosystem. Journal of Business Research, 128, 537-550.

Isenberg, D.J. (2016). Applying the ecosystem metaphor to entrepreneurship: Uses and abuses. The Antitrust Bulletin, 61(4), 564-573.

Jackson, D.J. (2011). What is an innovation ecosystem? National Science Foundation, 1(2), 1-13.

Moore, J.F. (2006). Business ecosystems and the view from the firm. The Antitrust Bulletin, 51(1), 31-75.

Pham, Q.H. and Vu, K.P. (2022), "Digitalization in small and medium enterprise: a parsimonious model of digitalization of accounting information for sustainable innovation ecosystem value generation", Asia Pacific Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Vol. 16 No. 1, pp. 2-37. https://doi.org/10.1108/APJIE-02-2022-0013

Ponsiglione, C., Cannavacciuolo, L., Primario, S., Quinto, I., & Zollo, G. (2021). The ambiguity of natural language as resource for organizational design: A computational analysis. Journal of Business Research, 129, 654-665.

Ponta, L., Puliga, G., Lazzarotti, V., Manzini, R., & Cincotti, S. (2023). To copatent or not to copatent: An agent-based model for firms facing this dilemma. European Journal of Operational Research, 306(3), 1349-1363.

Spigel, B. (2017). The relational organization of entrepreneurial ecosystems. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 41(1), 49-72.

Stam, E. (2015). Entrepreneurial ecosystems and regional policy: A sympathetic critique. European Planning Studies, 23(9), 1759-1769.

Stam, E. and Van de Ven, A.H. (2021). Entrepreneurial ecosystem elements. Small Business Economics, 56(2), 809-832.

Stubbs, W. and Cocklin, C. (2008),“An ecological modernist interpretation of sustainability: the case of interface INC”, Business Strategy and the Environment, Vol. 17 No. 8, pp. 512-523, doi: 10.1002/bse.544

Tan, F.T.C., Ondrus, J., Tan, B. and Oh, J. (2020). Digital transformation of business ecosystems: Evidence from the Korean pop industry, Information Systems Journal, 30(5), 866-898.

Tsujimoto, M., Kajikawa, Y., Tomita, J., Matsumoto, Y. (2018). A review of the ecosystem concept – Towards coherent ecosystem design, Technological Forecasting & Social Change, 136(July 2017), 49-58.

Van de Ven, A.H. (1986). Central problems in the management of innovation. Management Science, 32(5), 590-607.

Van de Ven, A.H. (1993). The development of an infrastructure for entrepreneurship. Journal of Business Venturing, 8(3), 211-230.

Zeng D, Hu J, Ouyang T. Managing Innovation Paradox in the Sustainable Innovation Ecosystem: A Case Study of Ambidextrous Capability in a Focal Firm. Sustainability. 2017; 9(11):2091. https://doi.org/10.3390/su9112091

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