ABSTRACT

Ecosystems are distinguished from other structural arrangements for value co-production by the nature of their governance and coordination challenges. As ecosystems are marked by their relative non-reliance upon formal, 1–1 supplier contracts to govern and coordinate productive activities, they need to find non-hierarchical ways of orchestrating ecosystem constituents such that a coherent system-level value offering is enabled and targeted at a defined user audience. Importantly, ecosystems cannot rely on ‘command-and-control’ governance to coordinate inputs from different participants, as would be the case of conventional supply chains. Instead, ecosystem leaders need to persuade others to make voluntary inputs that are consistent with the ecosystem’s overarching value offering. I call this task ‘ecosystem orchestration’. In this essay I suggest an ecosystem orchestration framework that distinguishes between technological, economic, institutional, and behavioural layers of ecosystem orchestration. I begin by highlighting distinctive governance challenges of ecosystems. I then provide a brief overview of the ecosystem orchestration literature. Then I introduce the different domains in which orchestration can be exercised. I conclude with a framework for orchestrating innovation ecosystems from birth to maturity. In addition to distinguishing between and describing technological, economic, institutional, and behavioural layers of ecosystem orchestration, the model also distinguishes between three stages of ecosystem momentum creation: initiation, scaling, and control. This framework has been designed to help practitioners to design strategies for ecosystem momentum creation.

摘要

生态系统因其治理和协调挑战的性质而不同于其他价值共同生产的结构安排。由于生态系统的特点是相对不依赖正式的 1 对 1 供应商合同来管理和协调生产活动，因此它们需要找到非等级的方式来协调生态系统的组成部分，以便能够实现并有针对性地提供一致的系统级价值在定义的用户受众。重要的是，生态系统不能像传统供应链那样依赖“命令和控制”治理来协调来自不同参与者的输入。相反，生态系统领导者需要说服其他人做出与生态系统总体价值相一致的自愿投入。我将此任务称为“生态系统编排”。在本文中，我提出了一个生态系统编排框架，用于区分生态系统编排的技术、经济、制度和行为层。我首先强调生态系统的独特治理挑战。然后，我简要概述了生态系统编排文献。然后我介绍了可以执行编排的不同领域。最后，我提出了一个协调创新生态系统从诞生到成熟的框架。除了区分和描述生态系统编排的技术、经济、制度和行为层之外，该模型还区分了生态系统动量创建的三个阶段：启动、扩展和控制。