Narrow Results

The issue of boundary determination in ecosystems remains problematic which is exaggerated in a dynamic, emerging innovation context, with actors joining and leaving. As part of wider research, on how firms innovate in emerging ecosystems, the boundaries of several early innovation ecosystems were explored.

Using evolutionary approaches, with extensive interviews and mapping, the wider ecosystem was initially researched. Then, five in-depth firm-focussed case studies were undertaken, and specific innovation ecosystem boundaries were mapped as they emerged and evolved.

The findings point to ‘identity’, a common early approach, being limited as the ecosystem evolves. The influence of competence and relationships play an increasing role. It is suggested that as the innovation ecosystem develops through its lifecycle, different approaches aligned to Santos and Eisenhardt’s (2005) four foci can be employed, starting with identity, then competence, then power and finally issues of efficiency.

Actor-network theory (ANT) represents a research paradigm applicable to innovation management (IM) research. Its unique ontology of second-degree objectivity through symmetry can be combined with many research contexts, methods, and concepts. This paper summarises the insights from a literature review of 299 Web of Science articles on both ANT and IM. The meta-features of all articles are analysed to identify 25 articles for in-depth analysis. Three ANT literature streams are identified: descriptive, managerial proactive, and participatory proactive. These three streams are found to differ in terms of their specific methods, concepts, and research contexts. An additional subset of the 10 most cited articles is used to validate the findings. We suggest that IM researchers should select a specific ANT approach based on the context and the theorised hypothesis of their research. Knowledge of the options within ANT and how they can be applied to different IM contexts can help IM researchers in maximising research outcomes.