A city's role in initiating and developing innovation ecosystems
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Journal Title
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Volume Title
School of Business |
Master's thesis
Authors
Date
2022
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Management and International Business (MIB)
Language
en
Pages
68
Series
Abstract
This thesis studies development of innovations ecosystems. Innovation ecosystems enable value creation through inter-company collaboration, which is especially important to create the required sustainable development in industries such as construction, which is traditionally resistant to change. Innovation ecosystems, however, require there to be a focal organization, an ecosystem leader, that initiates the creation of the ecosystem and defines strategy and the needed roles. They should also work on attracting required actors, and coordinate that the intended value is created by the activities done in the ecosystem. Even if the ecosystem leader in the literature is generally a company, not many companies are necessarily interested in taking that role, since that leading of an ecosystem requires a lot of resources. Therefore, this thesis studies how instead a city is able to fill that role and whether it changes the expectations or responsibilities for the leader and the ecosystem development activities. The specific research question is as follows: How can a city orchestrate and develop innovation ecosystems? This study is a qualitative single case study where the ecosystem leader is a city aiming to develop a carbon neutral construction ecosystem. The data used for the research is eleven semi-structured interviews and secondary material related to the case, such as a financing application and website publications of the city on the topic. The data has been analysed thematically in order to identify the relevant key-themes to be raised in the findings. This thesis contributes to the literature about innovation ecosystems, providing insights about how a city is able to develop an ecosystem instead of a company. This study finds that while there are some challenges that the city faces in this role, such as the bureaucratic rigidity of a public actor, it also benefits from enjoying more trust as an impartial body than a private company would. The study also suggests that as there are different ways of initiating development of an ecosystem, if starting with the activities before mapping out the ecosystem, its strategy, and roles, there is a risk of unclarity of roles and objectives for the involved actors. Therefore, the findings indicate that there is a need for the ecosystem leader, whether it be a city or a company, to engage in strategy creation and coordination to ensure satisfaction of the participants value creation of the ecosystem. This suggests that the expectations do not differ based on the type of organization behind ecosystem development and orchestration.Description
Thesis advisor
Saittakari, IirisRitvala, Tiina
Keywords
innovation ecosystem, ecosystem development, city-led ecosystem, ecosystem strategy