Innovation ecosystems for regional value co-creation
Regional development often involves challenges that no single organization can tackle alone. Competitiveness pressures, sustainable development issues, energy transition needs, digitalization advancement, industrial renewal requirements, and RDI initiatives call for vast knowledge, resources, and capabilities distributed across various companies, public organizations, universities, research institutions, and other stakeholders. Here, the innovation ecosystem concept provides an approach for connecting the myriad of needed heterogeneous actors to bring complementary expertise together, share risks, and co-create, test, and pilot solutions that generate joint value.
In regional innovation ecosystems, proximity to local industries, assets, policies, and development needs can further boost interactive learning, knowledge exchange, and trustful collaboration (1–3). Through inclusive participation beyond organization-centred development, such ecosystems can strengthen regional development and competitiveness while enabling cross-sectoral measures to overcome economic, environmental, and social challenges (4,5).
Interdependence and value co-creation
Innovation ecosystems can be defined as evolving networks of actors, activities, artifacts, institutions, and relationships that contribute iteratively to innovative performance (6). A key characteristic is the interdependence between the actors involved: achieving shared objectives depends on individual inputs and investments and on how such contributions connect and complement the efforts of others. The interdependence fosters value co-creation as a main objective of innovation ecosystem activities.
Value co-creation signifies a joint process through which ecosystem actors combine their knowledge, resources, and expertise to generate mutual value – one for all, all for one (7,8). Thus, co-creation extends attention beyond final outputs, e.g., products, services, or technologies, to the interactions and joint processes through which value emerges. This value can take several forms, e.g., new business, product innovations, improved services, shared knowledge and infrastructure, or strengthened capabilities among the participating actors.
Innovation ecosystem emergence
Bringing organizations around the same table, into the same project, network or its joint strategy does not automatically create a functioning and thriving innovation ecosystem. Ecosystems are delicate creatures; they do not pop out of thin air: they need to be born and emerge, then develop and grow through constant interaction, fine-tuned alignment and sharpened shared direction. Tending and care are required to carry the ecosystem through its genesis phase, which is highly sensitive. (9) described this phase well: a volatile period in which a viable collaborative network may fail to develop and proceed if the necessary conditions, resources and activities are missing or do not fall into their rightful place.
Shared vision and commitment
Sheer will among the actors to collaborate is also needed. Actors must understand why they are involved, why they need to commit, what the shared value proposition is, how their roles relate to one another, what they are expected to contribute, and within what timeframe. Hence, a shared vision is paramount. Although it provides a good start, it is not enough. Ecosystem development also requires strong long-term commitment, active participation, open knowledge exchange, clear communication and the ability to manage interdependencies between all actors involved, big and small (10,11). These relational and organizational rules of engagement are vital in emerging ecosystems, where established routines and collaboration practices are still foggy and very much taking form.
Ecosystem emergence is thus a process of building structures, rules and relationships. Here, the playbook and interplay between collaboration, orchestration and trust rise to the occasion. These three together largely determine whether the ecosystem actors can move from parallel interests toward shared value-creating action.
Collaboration and orchestration
Collaboration forms the foundation for innovation ecosystem activity. Without stern, fair and open collaboration, which is constantly cherished and developed, the innovation ecosystem will not survive, or it simply cannot be called an ecosystem. Although collaboration as a concept may sound simple, something to be taken for granted, and even trivial, it is far from it. Companies may collaborate around shared challenges while simultaneously competing in markets, technologies or customer relationships. This combination of cooperation and competition, often described as coopetition, makes clear roles, communication and trust particularly important (12,13).
The need for orchestration
Because innovation ecosystems consist of autonomous actors rather than a single hierarchical organization, collaboration also needs coordination – it needs direction and facilitation. This is where “orchestration” comes into play. Innovation ecosystem orchestration refers to deliberate actions that facilitate ecosystem development, align actors and activities, look after roles, responsibilities and leadership, and ultimately support innovation and value co-creation (11,14). In practice, orchestration may involve developing a shared vision, connecting complementary actors, clarifying roles, facilitating knowledge exchange, integrating resources and maintaining progress toward common objectives. It does not mean controlling every actor. Rather, its purpose is to create conditions in which independent organizations can work together coherently.
However, the presented structures and orchestration alone cannot make collaboration work and last through all the development steps, challenges, trials and errors. Actors must also be willing and feel it in their bones that they can rely on one another in situations where outcomes and behaviour cannot be fully controlled or foreseen. Enter trust, onto the stage of innovation ecosystem development.
Trust under uncertainty
One of the most widely used definitions describes trust as “the willingness of one party to be vulnerable to the actions of another, based on an expectation that the other party will act in an important and acceptable way even when complete monitoring or control is impossible” (15). This definition is spot on when it comes to innovation ecosystems. Participation requires actors to operate under uncertainty and interdependence – putting themselves on the line, ready to face risks, yet trusting the force of many.
Openness and exposure
In the innovation ecosystem world, actors are expected to share knowledge, reveal ideas, invest resources, participate in joint experimentation and depend on complementary contributions from others without knowing precisely how benefits will eventually be distributed – willing just to let the chips fall where they may. Hence, openness creates great opportunity and value, but it also introduces exposure, which may sometimes prove to be unwanted.
Knowledge sharing may bring access to external expertise and innovation opportunities while simultaneously raising concerns over knowledge leakage, intellectual property and value capture. This can be called the ‘paradox of openness’ (16,17). Thus, trust becomes necessary, since not every uncertainty can be removed or secured through contracts, rules or monitoring. Risks come with the territory in innovation ecosystem development.
Trust as the backbone
Trust is not just a positive feature or side-effect of well-functioning collaboration. It is a pre-condition for collaboration, orchestration and the whole ecosystem development. Research connects trust directly with stronger collaboration, knowledge transfer, innovation and interorganizational relationships at various levels (18,19). When actors believe and feel in their guts that others will behave reliably and reciprocally, they are more willing to share information, contribute resources and engage in joint problem-solving. Thus, trust strengthens the innovation capacity and performance of the ecosystem (20,21).
Trust is built over time
However, trust is not simply present at the beginning. Its presence is not constant. You cannot buy it from stores. It develops through interaction. It requires history. Battles won or lost together. Trust breathes through open communication, shared objectives, positive experiences and demonstrated commitment, which set the tone of confidence between actors (19). This creates a reinforcing cycle: trust enables deeper collaboration and better orchestration, and these two, when successful, further strengthen trust.
The reverse is as important to understand. Uneven power relations, conflicting objectives, limited transparency, opportunism and cultural differences will erode trust and disrupt ecosystem development or totally drive it off its tracks (22). If actors become reluctant to share knowledge, commit resources or depend on others, the mechanisms of value co-creation will be shut down.
Innovation ecosystem in practice: the Port of Vaasa
These ecosystem dynamics are currently being put into practice and put to the test at the Port of Vaasa through the Satama puhtaan siirtymän innovaatioalustana -project. Led by Vaasan Satamapalvelut Oy together with VASEK and VAMK, the project develops the port ecosystem toward a sustainable innovation ecosystem and strengthens the port’s role as a regional enabler of clean transition and growth.
The project’s concrete objectives include developing and piloting an innovation platform and collaboration model and accelerating sustainable innovative solutions in logistics and energy, as well as property and infrastructure development. The intended results include an innovation ecosystem collaboration model – or better yet, a co-creation model – and shared value proposition, an investment plan for clean transition projects, and several strategic pilots and demonstrations. Consequently, this innovation ecosystem development becomes concrete joint regional RDI work, in which heterogeneous actors, shared objectives and complementary capabilities are hitched together and set into joint action. Here, collaboration, orchestration and trust will show their full meaning and force.
Project information
- Project: Satama puhtaan siirtymän innovaatioalustana
- Duration: 1 February 2025 – 31 July 2027
- Lead organization: Vaasan Satamapalvelut Oy
- Project partners: Vaasa University of Applied Sciences (VAMK) and Vaasa Region Development Company VASEK
- Funding: Co-funded by the European Union
- Total budget: €244,489
