The Innovation Ecosystem as a Source of Value Creation

3Modeling: Combination of Three Ecosystems

All models are wrong, but some are useful.

George E.P. Box, statistician, 1919–2013 [BOX 87]

3.1. Introduction

In innovation ecosystems, modeling focuses on business ecosystems. It focuses on networks of value or virtual networks, mostly on commercial or financial agreements between focal firms and partner organizations. This modeling is anchored on the creation of value for the end user and the stakeholders, both of whom benefit from the spill over effects of the innovation. In this context, actors such as scientists are rarely evoked in studies and analyses of innovation ecosystems. In the same way, the innovation process is trimmed of its discovery and invention phases to focus on its last phases, the adaptation of solutions centered on the final customer in view of satisfying them on the targeted markets. Ever faster, ever cheaper and ever less risky, innovation is locked into incremental logics where competition rages. As we have seen, disruptive innovation, which consumes more time and resources and is highly risky, is not favored.

In this context, the scientific ecosystem is an actor that produces and disseminates knowledge without really being a stakeholder in the innovation process. Similarly, the technological ecosystem, which specializes in the production of inventions based on scientific discoveries, is forced to innovate in the direction of the value proposition of the focal firm. It plays an interface role between the ...