What are the roles of, and the implications for, the government when guiding and supporting membership-based innovation ecosystems?

Abstract

Successful membership based innovation ecosystems allow their members to create value that could never be created alone. Although many studies have been conducted on innovation ecosystems, there are no clear distinctions between different types of innovation ecosystems (e.g., membership based). This dissertation addressed the influences of the government in membership-based innovation ecosystems and evolves around the central research question: What are the roles and the implications of the government involvement in guiding and supporting innovation ecosystems? Hence in this dissertation I claim that the government plays a number of significant roles in supporting innovation ecosystems. This research is empirically based on four case studies, i.e., four organisations, which constitute membership-based innovation ecosystems: (i) FlandersBio; (ii) Smart Grids Flanders; (iii) Voka Health Community and (iv) Fisch. Consequently addressing the impact/ role of government in dynamics of these ecosystems. My findings suggest that four building blocks or keystones are essential in establishing and managing successful innovation ecosystems. These are vision and strategy, scaling up, financing and management. The government can affect the dynamics of the innovation ecosystem by their influences in these building blocks.