Toolbox for Innovation Policy: the Ecosystem of Innovation

        The "ecosystem of innovation" is a metaphore of self-governed biological ecosystems applied to innovation, aiming at analysing how agents undertake processes for the development, diffusion and use of innovation in an innovative environment (Nilsson 2013, Chukhray 2012). This approach has emerged along the 2000s in academic and policy debates on innovation from the criticisms made to the "system of innovation" perspective (Papaioannou et al. 2009), influencing for instance the rethoric of the European Commission when referring to "environment for innovative enterprises" (EC 2003; 15).

       The parallel drawn between biological ecosystems and "ecosystems of innovation" is based on the biological principle that every living elements interact among them and with the natural environment, feeding back through the ecosystem on itself (Miller 1975), while acknowledging the evolutionary nature of these interactions. Therefore, Engler et al. define an "ecosystem of innovation" as a complex environment in which the individual agents exist and interact both among other agents in the ecosystem through different activities, and with the dynamic environment itself (Engler et al. 2011; 55) in order to develop, diffuse and use innovation.

Ecosystem metaphore *

        The functioning of an "ecosystem of innovation" can be explained as a mechanism in which path-dependent environments influence the self-interested and mostly uncoordinated interactions of the agents based on competition and cooperation, bringing about innovation. These key interactions are also largely influenced by the impact of disruptive historical accidents, and the unpredictable behaviour of other agents. Although impossible to concretely state all the general elements of context dependent "ecosystems of innovation", their main characteristics will be detailed next:

• Environment (framework): Strongly dependent on local history and context, it influences agents' behaviour and set the specific 'fitness criteria' of new ideas to the given environment, like in a biological process of natural selection (Bollier 2000).
  • Soil: formal institutions
  • Climate: informal institutions, business climate, life style, social capital
    
    

• Agents: individual self-interest initiative takers responsible for innovation processes.
  • Organisations: firms, universities, governments, financial organisations, etc.
  • Entrepreneurs
    
    

• Historical accidents: an event caused by the coincidence of the right circumstances, with the right people, in the right place at the right time. For instance, the fact that A meets B, personal drifts and so on (Chukhray 2012) might initiate one economic activity in one place, which will attract other similar activities creating a cluster (Walker 2001).

• Interactions of unpredictable and uncoordinated nature among agents both with other agents and with their environment based both in cooperation and competition to develop, diffuse and use new products and services (Zahra et al. 2011), processes and organisations. There is no ideal or pre-established mechanism that will boost innovation. Spontaneity, exploration ventures and risks taken by organisations and entrepreneurs might be major drivers of innovation (Chukhray 2012), although the relevance of individual decisions might be only observable years, even decades after they occurred.

       Drawing on the extreme complexity and uncertainty intrinsic in innovation processes acknowledged by Cooke (1997) and Carlsson (2002), the "ecosystem of innovation" approach deals with the impossibility of systematising, operating, controlling or predicting how innovation will happen. Therefore, the main focus of the ecosystem perspective is on the characteristics of the innovation environment and on the observation of the actors' behaviour. This focus allows the approach to offer sound historical overviews on regional innovation processes, building up stories that identify key agents and their relevant behaviour shaped by and executed within a context dependent institutional environment.

      The application of this conceptual tool to policy strategies towards innovation underlines the importance of the provision of a long-run innovation-friendly environment for the agents to take advantage of it and unleash individual self-interested activities conducive to innovation. Therefore public action is expected to act on the background and for the long run, since it is not conceived to influence the decisions of individual agents driving to innovation.

        Some doubts have been raisen concerning the effectiveness of this tool for building policy strategies. In regions where innovation processes are weak or almost absent and lack of innovation is perceived as a public issue, the "ecosystem of innovation" sheds few light on potential initiatives to strengthen innovation. Since future historical accidents and individual behaviour or interactions that would trigger innovation cannot be foreseen, specific strategies to foster innovation can hardly be traced.

       Nevertheless, this tool counteracts the risk of locking in the system of innovation into a rigid structure, leaving wider freedom to individual potentially successful deviant explorations, that might be especially interesting in regions with a well established innovation environment.

Bollier, D. (2000) “Ecologies of Innovation: The Role of Information and Communication Technologies” The Aspen Institute, Washington, DC. 
Chukhray, N.I. (2012) “Forming an ecosystem of innovation” Economics of Development 61 (1) 12-18. 
Engler, J.; Kusiak, A. (2011) “Modelling an Innovation Ecosystem with Adaptive Agents” International Journal of Innovation Science 3 (2) 55-68. 
European Commission (2003) “Innovation policy: updating the Union’s approach in the context of the Lisbon strategy” COM(2003) 112 final. Brussels.

Miller, G.T. (1975) “Living in the Environment:Concepts, Problems andAlternatives” Wadsorth, Belmont, CA.

Nilsson, J.-E. (2013) “The eco-system perspective” Innovative Regions course slideshow. Blekinge Institute of Technology.

Papaioannou, T., Wield, D., Chataway, J. (2009) “Knowledge ecologies and ecosystems? An empirically grounded reflection on recent developments innovation systems theory” Environmental Planning C: Government and Policy 27, 319-339.

Walker, R. (2001) “The geography of production” in Sheppard, E., Peck, J., and Barnes, T.J., “A Companion to Economic Geography”. Wiley Blackwell.

Zahra, S.A., Nambisan, S. (2011) “Entrepreneurship in global innovation ecosystems” AMS Review 1 (1) 4-17. 
 * http://www.puzzlesonline.eu/puzzles-1000-piezas/1005-peces-de-arrecife-de-coral.html