Science Research Management

Science Research Management ›› 2021, Vol. 42 ›› Issue (3): 1-11.

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The digital innovation ecosystems: Theory building and a research agenda#br#

Zhang Chao, Chen Kaihua, Mu Rongping   

  1. Institutes of Science and Development, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China
  • Received:2021-01-02 Revised:2021-02-06 Online:2021-03-20 Published:2021-03-19
  • Contact: Kai-Hua Chen

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Abstract:    Rapid and pervasive digitization of innovation processes and outcomes has upended the way that innovative actors jointly creating value, deepened the development of extant theories on innovation ecosystems, and triggered the discussion on building digital innovation ecosystems. Innovation ecosystem studies have underlined the importance of coordinate symbiosis between innovative actors. The ecosystem members jointly create value around a hub actor, which means they work cooperatively and competitively to support new products, new technologies, and coherent customer solutions. Going digital not only introduces data as a new productive factor but also enhances the collaboration among actors, which changes the behavior logic of innovation ecosystems. Therefore, understanding digital innovation ecosystems in a proper way contributes to guiding the innovation practice in a digital era, as well as expanding or reconstructing relative theories on innovation ecosystems. However, most of the existing studies have neglected the new characters, new trends, or new challenges. There is an urgent need for scholars conducting in-depth studies to understand the nature of digital innovation ecosystems. 
   To fill the research gap, this paper put forward two basic manifestations of digital innovation ecosystems, that is, innovation-oriented digital ecosystems (or say, digital innovation ecosystem Ⅰ type) and digital-enabled innovation ecosystems (or say, digital innovation ecosystem Ⅱ type). On the one hand, innovation-oriented digital ecosystems are defined as digital ecosystems that serve for the creation, application, and diffusion of digital innovations. The innovation-oriented digital ecosystems could realize the join value creation among digital actors through innovation, and therefore can be regarded as innovation ecosystems established around digital actors. Such ecosystems also have characters that they inherit from digital ecosystems, that is, convergence, scalability, generativity, and modularity. On the other hand, the digital-enabled innovation ecosystems are the deep integration between the digitalization process and the behavior logic of ecosystem actors. From the perspective of a complex adaptive system (CAS), this paper constructed a theoretical analytical framework on the behavior logic of innovation ecosystems consisting of five dimensions, that is, actors, structures, institutions, functions, and evolution. Going digital enables new characters to innovation ecosystems, which also changes the behavior logic of innovation ecosystems.
    The two types of digital innovation ecosystem permeate each other and push forward each other. Such intertwined relationships change the way of jointly value creation among innovative actors and improve the innovation capability and innovation effectiveness in an all-round way. This paper introduces a conceptual framework for studying digital innovation ecosystems by integrating the above two concepts: innovation-oriented digital ecosystems and digital-enabled innovation ecosystems (i.e., digital innovation ecosystem Ⅰ type and Ⅱ type). This paper clarified the nature of digital innovation ecosystems by describing how the actors, structures, institutions, functions, or evolution perform when convergence, scalability, generativity, and modularity influence the ecosystems profoundly in a digital era. At last, this paper outlines a new research agenda to fill the gap in our understanding of digital innovation ecosystems. It points out that the following scholars could modify or polish the theories on digital innovation ecosystems by conducting convincing empirical analysis like measuring or case study, analyzing the pathway of ecosystem growth or development, or studying the policy on supporting the establishment or development of digital innovation ecosystems.

Key words: digital innovation ecosystem, digital ecosystem, innovation ecosystem, digital innovation, value co-creation