https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3830-7396
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Abstract
While business practices and management research has evolved towards more systemic approaches building on the notion of ecosystem to relate organisations with their complex operational environment, the linear model of innovation is still highly pervasive in governmental innovation policies. In this paper we contribute to the narrowing the research gap in the field on ecosystems by combining two often separate streams of literature and subsequently coining the term ‘entrepreneurial innovation ecosystems’. We then examine the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), a recent policy experiment aimed at developing Pan-European ecosystems to stimulate high-impact innovative entrepreneurship, which is done by integrating higher education, research and business activities (i.e. via knowledge triangle integration). While the high political profile of the EIT has constrained partly its freedom to experiment, a European-wide networked excellence and business logic in managing KICs has created new insights on experimental governance models that merit to be explored further. Building on an action research case study, the paper documents these developments and opens up an avenue for further work regarding experimental governance of Pan-European entrepreneurial innovation ecosystems.
Acknowledgements
The preparation of this work was made possible due to the financial support of Sitra, a Finnish future fund and Madrid-based Insight Foresight Institute (IFI) specialised in transforming innovation ecosystems. This research has also been partly supported by the project Platform Value Now, funded by the Strategic Research Council of the Academy of Finland (AKA/5/00.02.40/2015). We appreciate the comments of Timo Hämäläinen (Sitra) and Professor Gonzalo Leon (UPM) and two further anonymous reviewers for their comments to the earlier versions. The opinions presented are the authors’ only and do not represent an official view of the organisations they represent.
Notes
1 OECD (Citation2007) defines a “high-growth enterprise” as all enterprises with average annualised growth greater than twenty percent per annum, over a three-year period, and with ten or more employees at the beginning of the observation period. Growth is thus measured by the number of employees and by turnover. See also Daunfeldt, Johansson, and Halvarsson (Citation2015) for discussion on the definition.
2 In line with McGinnis (Citation2011, 58), we refer to “governance” as the “process by which the repertoire of rules, norms, and strategies that guide behaviour within a given realm of interactions are formed, applied, interpreted, and reformed”. The generic tasks of governance include production, provision, consumption, financing, coordinating, dispute resolution, and rule-making.
3 Further to business ecosystems (Moore Citation1993), this relates to efforts in conceptualising also innovation (Russell et al. Citation2011) and entrepreneurial (Ács, Autio, and Szerb Citation2014; Mason and Brown Citation2014) ecosystems.
4 The biological ecosystem “community” emerges with relatively few pioneering plants and animals and expands through increasing complexity until it becomes stable or self-perpetuating as a mature community. The “engine” of succession, the cause of ecosystem change, is the impact of established species upon their own environments (Odum Citation1969).
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Notes on contributors
José Manuel Leceta
José Manuel Leceta, PhD candidate of Universidad Politecnica de Madrid and former director of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, he co-authored a CEPS report: “Unleashing Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Europe: People, Places and Policies”.
Totti Könnölä
Totti Könnölä, the associate professor of Universidad Politecnica de Madrid and the managing director of Insight Foresight Institute, which is specialised in transforming entrepreneurial innovation ecosystems. He has published widely on innovation policy and management.
