EIT Digital: leveraging ecosystems for international entrepreneurial innovation

Abstract

Building on earlier work on entrepreneurship and holistic innovation policy, the paper elaborates on the concept of “entrepreneurial innovation ecosystem” and applies it in the empirical analysis of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) partnership operations. The analysis focuses on the EIT Digital, which is one of the EIT “Knowledge and Innovation Communities” (KICs) formed by partners from higher education, research and business. The empirical research with primary data from semi-structured interviews and secondary data from desk research provides evidence on the different perceptions between EIT Digital managers in six accelerators around Europe compared to partners and start-ups in the Madrid co-location centre. Ecosystem dimensions are intertwined in EIT Digital activities and the actual performance of the whole depends on their effective alignment. Hence, further research is suggested on the interconnections between the ecosystem dimensions with particular attention to ecosystem integration, international networking and adaptive governance.

Keywords:

• new business acceleration
• entrepreneurial innovation ecosystem
• European Institute of Innovation and Technology
• high growth firm
• holistic innovation policy

Acknowledgements

The preparation of this work was possible with the support of EIT Digital for the fieldwork. The paper is based on the earlier working paper entitled “Overcoming barriers to high growth firms in Europe: The star-up to scale up approach by EIT ICT LABS KIC” written with Alejandro Tosina and Natalia Dévora-Quintero from the Technical University of Madrid (UPM). The authors want to thank all interviewees for their time and keen interest in the work; also, sincere the openness and support of the leadership team of EIT Digital is gratefully acknowledged, particularly CEO Willem Jonker and DolfWittkämper, leader of the Business Development Accelerator network. We are also grateful to Prof. Gonzálo Leon (UPM) and Alex Coad (formerly at SPRU, now at CENTRUMPUCP, Peru) for their comments to the earlier versions. The opinions presented are the authors’ only and do not represent an official view of the organizations they represent. This research has been conducted as part of Platform Value Now programme, financed by the Academy of Finland (Grant no. 293446).

Notes

1 OECD (2007) defines a “high-growth enterprise” as all enterprises with average annualized growth greater than 20% per annum, over a 3-year period, and with 10 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 et al. (2015) for discussion on the definition.

2 In ecology (e.g. Odum 1969), the biological ecosystem “community” is considered to emerge with relatively few pioneering plants and animals and to expand 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.

3 For more on the value of ecology as a metaphor for industries, see Harte, Shireman, Burke, and Lynn (2001). See also Oh, Phillips, Park, and Lee (2014) for a critical view on the term of “innovation ecosystem”.

4 In line with Wang and Von Tunzelmann (2000), we consider complexity’ to mean the “depth” as well as “breadth” of a phenomenon. Complexity in “depth” refers to the analytical sophistication of a subject, which becomes complex because of the cognitive difficulty of pushing the particular matter to its logical extremes. On the other hand, complexity in “breadth” refers to the range of areas that have to be investigated to develop a particular subject.

5 See Oh, Phillips, Park, and Lee (2014) for a critical view of the concept of “innovation ecosystem”.

6 Alain Leloux (Netherlands), Bertrand Lejeune (France), Eric Dubois (France), Fabio Carati (Italy), Filip Coenen (Belgium), Julia Schmalenberg (Germany), Kai Rose (Germany), Paolo Magni (Italy), Raoul Stubbe (Sweden), Tobias Vahlne (Sweden) and Klaus Beetz (Germany).

7 Manuel Hermenegildo from IMDEA Software, Gonzalo Leon from Technical University of Madrid, UPM, David Pascual from Indra, Pasic Aljosa from Atos Origin and Estanislao Fernandez from Telefonica.

8 Ricardo Jimenez from LeanXcale, Oscar Corcho from Localiata and David Moreno from Coowry.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Academy of Finland: [Grant Number AKA/5/00.02.40/2015].