# The emergence of ecosystems driven by a social purpose

Anaïs Garin, Mathias Béjean, Stefan Meisiek

► To cite this version:

Anaïs Garin, Mathias Béjean, Stefan Meisiek. The emergence of ecosystems driven by a social purpose. Transforming industries through technology, R&D Management, Jun 2024, Stockholm, Sweden. <https://shs.hal.science/halshs-04978086>v1>

HAL Id: halshs-04978086

<https://shs.hal.science/halshs-04978086v1>

Submitted on 5 Mar 2025

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access
archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-
entific research documents, whether they are pub-
lished or not. The documents may come from
teaching and research institutions in France or
abroad, or from public or private research centers.

L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est
destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents
scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non,
émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de
recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires
publics ou privés.

<figure><img src="image_1.png" /></figure>

Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
# Title: The emergence of ecosystems driven by a social purpose

## INTRODUCTION

Ecosystem research has proliferated since the concept was introduced by Moore (1993). Autio and Thomas (2014, 3) defined ecosystems as "a network of interconnected organizations, organized around a focal firm or a platform, and incorporating both production and use side participants, and focusing on the development of new value through innovation". This definition reflects the dominant view that ecosystems emerge around a focal value proposition (Dias Sant'Ana et al. 2020; Gomes et al. 2021) and are managed by a focal actor (Iansiti and Levien 2004; Jacobides, Cennamo, and Gawer 2018).

When investigating a French innovation ecosystem, we found it presented several specificities that could not entirely be explained by the literature. First, the ecosystem was managed by multiple actors. Second, the ecosystem emerged around a social purpose, rather than a focal value proposition. While some studies have provided empirical and theoretical insights into ecosystems managed by multiple actors (Thomas and Ritala 2022) - for instance, Lingens et al. (2022) argued that multiple actors could manage an ecosystem due to a lack of production or consumption-related knowledge - few studies distinguish ecosystems centered around a social purpose. As we faced a special case, we undertook further research on this ecosystem emerging around a social purpose, thus bringing novel insights into the ecosystem literature.

## THEORY

When Moore (1993) introduced the ecosystem concept in the management literature, he defined the birth, expansion, leadership, and self-renewal evolutionary stages. The birth stage, our focus in this paper, involves defining a focal value proposition and ways to implement it (Moore 1993). Ecosystems generally emerge around a central node, whether it is a particular value proposition or attractive economic conditions (Dias Sant'Ana et al. 2020). Other triggers for ecosystem emergence include the need for resources and competencies, the interdependence between a joint venture and its parent firm, or the need to coordinate activities among multiple actors (Pushpananthan and Elmquist 2022).

The emergence stage is central as it is then that the focal firm defines how to structure actors and activities in the best ways to create and capture value (Dias Sant'Ana et al. 2020). Creating value during emergence requires a high level of cooperation between ecosystem actors (Ben Letaifa 2014) as well as tangible and intangible mechanisms to design the value-creating process, attract actors, build trust, and define clear communication (Ritala et al. 2013). While value capture remains low during emergence (Ben Letaifa 2014), the focal actor should still guide early
plans, specify intellectual property, create a common vision, and consider actors' motivations to ensure value capture in the future (Ritala et al. 2013). Foss et al. (2023) identified three particular issues that can inhibit ecosystem emergence: (1) developing a mutual understanding of the value proposition and the need for ecosystem-specific investments, (2) getting actors involved and making them follow rules and agreements, and (3) dealing with unforeseen problems. The early stage of ecosystems also involves volatility (Dattée, Alexy, and Autio 2018; Dedehayir, Mäkinen, and Roland Ortt 2018) and uncertainties (Gomes, dos Santos, and Facin 2022). Furthermore, emerging ecosystems face a liability of newness and struggle to gain resources and institutional support (Thomas and Ritala 2022; Daymond et al. 2023).

Where Moore's (1993) depiction of an ecosystem lifecycle evoked an organic emergence, other scholars argued that ecosystems are rather deliberately stimulated and guided (Oh et al. 2016; Jacobides, Cennamo, and Gawer 2018; Lingens, Miehé, and Gassmann 2021). This role has often been assigned to a focal actor, also called keystone (Iansiti and Levien 2004) or orchestrator (Autio 2022), and perceived as a strong and established leader with legitimacy and wide access to resources (Heaton, Siegel, and Teece 2019; Williamson and De Meyer 2012). During the emergence stage, the focal actor has to carefully manage actors and resources to overcome this “fuzzy front end” (Dedehayir, Mäkinen, and Roland Ortt 2018; Heaton, Siegel, and Teece 2019) and achieve economic returns. Its role becomes central to securing ecosystem actors cooperation, fostering strong ties, and protecting the value proposition from competitors (Dedehayir, Mäkinen, and Roland Ortt 2018).

However, this dominant view has been challenged in two ways. First, recent studies suggested multiple actors can be involved in the early development of ecosystems (Lingens, Huber, and Gassmann 2022; Visnjic et al. 2016; Smolka and Böschen 2023; Gupta, Panagiotopoulos, and Bowen 2020). For example, Thomas and Ritala (2022) suggested that an ecosystem can emerge without a central coordinator, thus showing the central role complementors, users, and external actors can play during this stage. Second, an increasing number of research has investigated ecosystems geared toward a social purpose (Smolka and Böschen 2023; Fiandrino et al. 2023). Pundziene et al. (2023) empirically studied five ecosystems seeking social impact before economic profits and how this impacted value capture. The authors found that multi-layer value creation, multi-purpose complementary assets, emerging dominant design, and distributed socio-economic returns mechanisms enabled value capture in social-purpose-driven ecosystems.

Thus, prior research has dominantly considered ecosystem emergence around a focal value proposition that could bring economic benefits for the ecosystem actors involved. Scholars also
found that emergence could be guided by a focal firm or by multiple actors. However, few research investigated ecosystem emergence under multiple actors aiming to fulfill a social purpose rather than a focal value proposition for creating economic value. We therefore ask: How does an ecosystem structured around a social purpose emerge?

## METHODOLOGY

This paper builds on a single-case study (Yin 2017) of an innovation ecosystem in the French disability sector. In 2019, a rehabilitation center partnered with a technological innovation center and a conurbation representative body to answer a national call for projects that would finance innovations for disability. The resulting project, here called Disability Innovation Territory (DIT), included 37 partners in charge of 63 sub-projects, geared to fulfill the social purpose of improving the lives of people with a disability. Eventually, more than a hundred actors, such as firms, universities, healthcare organizations, regional representative bodies, associations, and users, formed the DIT ecosystem. To structure this ecosystem, the three founding actors decided in 2021 to create a disability innovation center, seen as the reference actor for all ecosystem and external actors. They also defined four additional levels of governance, namely a DIT board, a strategic committee, a general assembly, and consultative committees.

## Data collection

Following Bluhm et al.'s (2011) advice on gathering multiple data sources for triangulation, we collected data through semi-structured interviews, internal documents, and other publicly available written documents such as news articles, books, and reports (see Table 1).

<table><caption>**Table 1.** Data collection</caption><thead><tr><td>Data sources</td><td>Details</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Interviews</td><td>38 interviews (433 pages of transcript, in French)</td></tr><tr><td>Internal documentation</td><td>Application file of DIT for the call for projects (432 pages)<br>DIT progress report for the year 2022 (86 pages)<br>2 mind maps of the regional government organization's strategy<br>One PowerPoint presentation of DIT</td></tr><tr><td>Public documentation</td><td>5 news articles from the DIT website<br>A news bulletin from the conurbation representative body<br>8 news articles on the rehabilitation center<br>DIT booklet<br>95 online articles published between January 2018 and October 2022</td></tr><tr><td>Book</td><td>The rehabilitation center's history from 1914 to 2014 (115 pages)<br>16 testimonies of former patients and professionals (100 pages)</td></tr><tr><td>Online inauguration</td><td>Of the disability innovation center<br>2h30 video broadcasted on YouTube and transcribed (42 pages)</td></tr></tbody></table>

The first interview round, conducted between October 2021 and March 2022, included 16 interviews with ecosystem actors seen as important during the DIT emergence. We asked
participants to present themselves and their organizations, their perception of the DIT ecosystem, their role in the ecosystem, and the reasons for being part of it. The second interview round, conducted between October 2022 and March 2023, included 22 interviews with key ecosystem actors during ecosystem emergence. We selected six organizations and interviewed between two and six individuals in each organization. We asked them about their perceptions of the DIT ecosystem, their activities within the ecosystem, whether they collaborated with other actors, and why actors collaborated. Details about the participants and their organizations are shown in Table 2. The interviews lasted between 31min and 1h20, were conducted online in French, and were recorded and transcribed with permission from the participants.

<table><caption>**Table 2.** Interviewed participants overview per organization</caption><thead><tr><th>Organizations</th><th>Participant positions</th><th># interviews</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td rowspan="4">Disability innovation center</td><td>Part-time technical director (part-time engineer at the rehabilitation center)</td><td>1* + 2</td></tr><tr><td>Director</td><td>1* + 2</td></tr><tr><td>Project manager</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>Project engineer</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="4">Rehabilitation center</td><td>Engineer (from 1982 and 2022)</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>Director (from 2015 and 2023)</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>Doctor</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>Engineer</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="4">Regional government organization</td><td>Co-director of "Economic development"</td><td>2*</td></tr><tr><td>Project manager "Economic development"</td><td>2*</td></tr><tr><td>Project director "Training, research and innovation"</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>Regional elected representative</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="3">Technological innovation center</td><td>Project manager "Medical technologies & e-health"</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>Project manager "E-health"</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>Network manager "Health"</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="6">Conurbation representative body</td><td>DIT project manager (until 2022 and from 2023)</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>DIT project manager (between 2022 and 2023)</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>Communication manager</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>Local elected representative</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>Assistant development "Tourism & Handicap"</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>Director "Information System" department</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2">Non-profit health insurer</td><td>General manager</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>President</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>University "Bretagne"</td><td>Vice-president for innovation</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>University "Engineering"</td><td>Researcher</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>Public bank</td><td>Venture capital investment officer</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="3">Local agency for urban planning, economic development, and technology</td><td>Director "Companies and innovation support"</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>Director of the local agency</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>Market researcher "Employment & Training"</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>Digital healthcare firm</td><td>Managing director and co-founder</td><td>2</td></tr></tbody></table>

<footnote>*The participants were interviewed together at the same time</footnote>
Additionally, participants provided us with internal documents. We also consulted publicly available news articles about ecosystem actors and online articles from their websites. Finally, we read a book on the rehabilitation center's 100th anniversary, which provided us with a rich account of its past and evolution from its creation to the formation of DIT.

## Data analysis

We analyzed data following an inductive approach to thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006). Drawing on the six-phase process of Braun and Clarke (2006), we began with familiarizing ourselves with the data. This phase provided us with provisional ideas and informed our second round of data collection, as we started to identify the specificities of the DIT ecosystem. We then began identifying patterns to develop codes and eventually refined them as we pursued data collection. One of the authors constructed provisional themes, which were then discussed with the two other authors to refine or reject them. After this review by all three authors, we named the selected themes appropriately and designed the data structure (see Figure 1).

<figure><img src="image_2.png" /><figcaption>Figure 1. Data structure</figcaption></figure>
# FINDINGS

Our findings demonstrated a special ecosystem motivated by an integrative ambition and an established community to realize a social purpose. Finally, we found that achieving a social purpose influenced ecosystem management and required a collaborative and social approach.

## An integrative ambition

Attracting actors during emergence is key for the future development of the ecosystem, as actors bring in resources and competencies (Autio 2022). Our findings revealed that the DIT ecosystem attracted actors to achieve its social purpose thanks to an integrative ambition with an extensive, inclusive, and polysemic project.

From the early emergence of the ecosystem, DIT actors strived to work extensively on disability by not limiting themselves to a specific project. At the time of our research, the ecosystem counted 63 sub-projects, all aimed at creating innovations for any disability type. The former director of the rehabilitation center insisted that “*the target was not just the patients [from the rehabilitation center], but all types of disability*” and that the ecosystem needed to remain open.

The current project manager attested that the DIT ecosystem was a “*structuring territorial project with significant funding [...] to deploy a global approach*”. This global approach enabled the inclusion of a wide array of actors. A local elected representative described a typical DIT meeting and why being inclusive attracted actors:

> "*When there are DIT meetings, there are a variety of actors, and it works quite well. Why does it work? I think the project is quite complete. It tackles housing, mobility, employment, education, etc. Obviously, it's a fairly exhaustive vision so we quickly see what it can bring.*"

This extensive and inclusive approach provided ecosystem actors with a framework for guiding their actions while enabling enough flexibility for actors to interpret the ecosystem's ambition according to their individual strategies. We argued that this led to a polysemic project where different actors attributed different meanings to the DIT ecosystem purpose, such as developing an inclusive territory, sustaining innovation activities, or leveraging the existing dynamic.

## An established community

Our data revealed the existence of an established community before the emergence of the ecosystem that included empowered individuals, time-honored collaborations between organizations, and a social mindedness at the organizational and regional levels.

First, the community of empowered individuals implied that many participants were affiliated with two organizations or used to work in organizations that became part of the DIT ecosystem.
When describing their background, participants referred to education in healthcare or work experiences with innovation, collaborative projects, health, and disability. We believe this favored the development of a community of individuals and collaborative practices between them. Furthermore, participants referred to renowned and legitimate individuals who facilitated collaborations, as described by the project manager for "Medical technologies and e-health" at the technological innovation center:

"[JP] or [AC] are people who... I mean, out of 100 people they have met, 99 think they are great people, and it's a real observation. With whom it is easy to work, they are dynamic people, attentive, open, and caring."

Collaborations lasted over time and existed before the ecosystem emerged. For example, the rehabilitation center and the conurbation representative body, two ecosystem founders, collaborated beforehand, as explained by a former engineer of the rehabilitation center:

"At the conurbation representative body, we were listened to because we had a network, we were involved in the territory, we knew the former president. So, we had a favorable hearing."

The region was also known for its collaborative culture and ease of establishing partnerships, as testified by the co-director for "Economic development" at the regional government organization:

"In Bretagne, I think there is a real historical tradition, we can put aside our differences [...] when it is in the interest of Bretagne. It's a kind of supra interest that gets everyone to agree quite easily because there is this collective history that comes from afar."

We also identified an existing dynamic towards merging and unifying organizations at the regional level. The project director for "Training, research and innovation" at the regional government organization explained how they were already involved in "developing a sector or a network [...] that was conducive to the development of health". Other examples involve the non-profit health insurers, previously present in each department and merging into a regional group, or two public authorities unifying resources to improve innovation capabilities.

Finally, we argue social mindedness at the organizational and regional levels supported ecosystem emergence. DIT ecosystem actors had existing expertise in innovation and health. For instance, participants from the rehabilitation center, regional technological center, non-profit health insurer, and the university "Engineering" testified that innovation was part of their organization's DNA. The region has also always been active in including people with a disability. The director of the disability innovation center told us that disability was "strongly anchored in the
region”. The venture capital investment officer of the public bank confirmed that “Bretagne was quite exemplary on [disability], already since the 70s. It’s a cause close to their heart.”

## A social-driven collaborative management

Our case study indicated that the DIT ecosystem's social purpose influenced its management. The DIT ecosystem was managed across different levels by multiple actors who developed a symbiotic relationship and were socially engaged. This oriented ecosystem management towards realizing the social purpose rather than generating economic value.

First, the social engagement of DIT involved shared values for improving accessibility and inclusion of people with disability with actors strongly committed to its achievement. According to the former director of the rehabilitation center, these values and commitment were determinant in defending DIT during the call for projects:

> "When we went to defend the project in Paris, we perhaps didn't have the most powerful economic model, but we had the strongest commitment, that's for sure, I'm convinced of that."

The local elected representative perceived the DIT ecosystem as being “at the service of society” because disability is a universal topic that can affect anyone throughout life. He further explained that “when you work at [the rehabilitation center], when you work in organizations like that, obviously your motivations are not about making money”.

The ecosystem's social purpose encouraged collaborative management practices from its early creation when “[the technological innovation center, the rehabilitation center, and the conurbation representative body], worked hand in hand to put it all together”, as explained by the director of the disability innovation center. These organizations, together with the disability innovation center, formed the founders committee. Four additional governance bodies, namely a DIT board, a strategic committee, a general assembly, and consultative committees, were also defined and responsible for the daily ecosystem management, the sub-project follow-up, or strategic decision-making. The part-time technical director of the disability innovation center explained that decision-making “has always been by consensus. We always find a way to discuss, everyone has free expression. It's one man/one voice. There are sometimes subjects where we need more time to reach a consensus, but overall, it has always happened like this”

Finally, we found that collaborative management was supported by symbiotic relationships between actors. The former engineer of the rehabilitation center described:
"I love the people in the founders committee, we get along very well, it's super nice. There's never any tension. When there is a little tension, we discuss it, and it goes well. People are super intelligent, it's frankly a real pleasure"

Actors mutually exchange information during meetings and “[they] rarely don't know what the other is doing on a given subject”, according to the rehabilitation center’s former engineer. Such exchange leveraged the existing complementarities between ecosystem actors. The local elected representative testified that because “[they] are complementary, everyone does their thing, so [they] are not going to try to take all the credits for [themselves], there is no point”. Thus, we believe that the management by multiple actors was facilitated and sustained through these complementary and symbiotic relationships between ecosystem actors.

## DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

Our paper investigated an ecosystem that emerged around a social purpose by leveraging an integrative ambition and an established community. We also showed that this social purpose influenced ecosystem management and required a social-driven and collaborative approach. This research thus offers a novel perspective on ecosystems by empirically investigating an ecosystem without a focal actor or focal value proposition. Such findings resonate with the ongoing discussion on the consideration of the wider social field in management studies (Erhardt et al. 2022; Polanyi 2001; Smolka and Böschen 2023). Indeed, as shown in our case, such consideration influences how ecosystems emerge and develop over time. Furthermore, our research relates to the concept of social-driven-purpose ecosystems recently introduced by Pundziene et al. (2023). The authors defined such ecosystems as a “set of interconnected and interacting for-profit and non-profit organizations [...] whose business models address social needs, concerns and missions” (2023, 2). We encourage further research on how collaborative management differs from orchestration practices and how it unfolds as the ecosystem evolves toward more mature stages.
REFERENCES

Autio, Erkko. 2022. "Orchestrating Ecosystems: A Multi-Layered Framework." *Innovation: Organization & Management* 24 (1): 96-109.

Autio, Erkko, and Llewellyn Thomas. 2014. "Innovation Ecosystems: Implications for Innovation Management." In *The Oxford Handbook of Innovation Management*, edited by Mark Dodgson, David M. Gann, and Nelson Phillips, 204-28. Oxford Handbooks. Oxford University Press.

Ben Letaifa, Soumaya. 2014. "The Uneasy Transition from Supply Chains to Ecosystems: The Value-Creation/Value-Capture Dilemma." *Management Decision* 52 (2): 278-95.

Bluhm, Dustin J., Wendy Harman, Thomas W. Lee, and Terence R. Mitchell. 2011. "Qualitative Research in Management: A Decade of Progress." *Journal of Management Studies* 48 (8): 1866-91.

Braun, Virginia, and Victoria Clarke. 2006. "Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology." *Qualitative Research in Psychology* 3 (2): 77-101.

Dattée, Brice, Oliver Alexy, and Erkko Autio. 2018. "Maneuvering in Poor Visibility: How Firms Play the Ecosystem Game When Uncertainty Is High." *Academy of Management Journal* 61 (2): 466-98.

Daymond, Jarryd, Eric Knight, Maria Rumyantseva, and Steven Maguire. 2023. "Managing Ecosystem Emergence and Evolution: Strategies for Ecosystem Architects." *Strategic Management Journal* 44 (4): 1-27.

Dedehayir, Ozgur, Saku J. Mäkinen, and J. Roland Ortt. 2018. "Roles during Innovation Ecosystem Genesis: A Literature Review." *Technological Forecasting and Social Change* 136: 18-29.

Dias Sant'Ana, Tomás, Paulo Henrique de Souza Bermejo, Marina Fiqueiredo Moreira, and Wagner Vilas Boas de Souza. 2020. "The Structure of an Innovation Ecosystem: Foundations for Future Research." *Management Decision* 58 (12): 2725-42.

Erhardt, Niclas, Carlos Martin-Rios, Jason Bolton, and Matthew Luth. 2022. "Doing Well by Creating Economic Value through Social Values among Craft Beer Breweries: A Case Study in Responsible Innovation and Growth." *Sustainability* 14 (5): 1-17.

Fiandrino, Simona, Melchior Gromis di Trana, Alberto Tonelli, and Fabio Rizzato. 2023. "Metagovernance Forms for Enhancing Sustainability-oriented Innovation in a Knowledge Ecosystem." *Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility*, December, 1-16.

Foss, Nicolai J., Jens Schmidt, and David J. Teece. 2023. "Ecosystem Leadership as a Dynamic Capability." *Long Range Planning* 56 (1): 1-16.

Gomes, Leonardo Augusto de Vasconcelos, Ximena Alejandra Flechas, Ana Lucia Figueiredo Facin, and Felipe Mendes Borini. 2021. "Ecosystem Management: Past Achievements and Future Promises." *Technological Forecasting and Social Change* 171 (October): 1-15.

Gomes, Leonardo Augusto de Vasconcelos, Matheus Graciani dos Santos, and Ana Lucia Figueiredo Facin. 2022. "Uncertainty Management in Global Innovation Ecosystems." *Technological Forecasting and Social Change* 182 (September): 1-13.

Gupta, Anushri, Panos Panagiotopoulos, and Frances Bowen. 2020. "An Orchestration Approach to Smart City Data Ecosystems." *Technological Forecasting and Social Change* 153 (April): 1-12.

Heaton, Sohvi, Donald S Siegel, and David J Teece. 2019. "Universities and Innovation Ecosystems: A Dynamic Capabilities Perspective." *Industrial and Corporate Change* 28 (4): 921-39.

Iansiti, Marco, and Roy Levien. 2004. "Strategy as Ecology." *Harvard Business Review* 82 (3): 68-78.

Jacobides, Michael G., Carmelo Cennamo, and Annabelle Gawer. 2018. "Towards a Theory of Ecosystems." *Strategic Management Journal* 39 (8): 2255-76.
Lingens, Bernhard, Florian Huber, and Oliver Gassmann. 2022. "Loner or Team Player: How Firms Allocate Orchestrator Tasks amongst Ecosystem Actors." *European Management Journal* 40 (4): 559-71.

Lingens, Bernhard, Lucas Miehé, and Oliver Gassmann. 2021. "The Ecosystem Blueprint: How Firms Shape the Design of an Ecosystem According to the Surrounding Conditions." *Long Range Planning* 54 (2): 1-53.

Moore, J. F. 1993. "Predators and Prey: A New Ecology of Competition." *Harvard Business Review* 71 (3): 75-86.

Oh, Deog-Seong, Fred Phillips, Sehee Park, and Eunghyun Lee. 2016. "Innovation Ecosystems: A Critical Examination." *Technovation* 54 (August): 1-6.

Polanyi, Karl. 2001. *The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time*. 2nd ed. Beacon Press.

Pundziene, Asta, Neringa Gerulaitiene, Sea Matilda Bez, Irène Georgescu, Christopher Mathieu, Jordi Carrabina-Bordoll, Josep Rialp-Criado, et al. 2023. "Value Capture and Embeddedness in Social-Purpose-Driven Ecosystems. A Multiple-Case Study of European Digital Healthcare Platforms." *Technovation* 124 (June): 1-18.

Pushpananthan, Gouthanan, and Maria Elmquist. 2022. "Joining Forces to Create Value: The Emergence of an Innovation Ecosystem." *Technovation* 115 (July): 1-15.

Ritala, Paavo, Vassilis Agouridas, Dimitris Assimakopoulos, and Otto Gies. 2013. "Value Creation and Capture Mechanisms in Innovation Ecosystems: A Comparative Case Study." *International Journal of Technology Management* 63 (3/4): 244.

Smolka, Mareike, and Stefan Böschen. 2023. "Responsible Innovation Ecosystem Governance: Socio-Technical Integration Research for Systems-Level Capacity Building." *Journal of Responsible Innovation* 10 (1): 1-30.

Thomas, Llewellyn, and Paavo Ritala. 2022. "Ecosystem Legitimacy Emergence: A Collective Action View." *Journal of Management* 48 (3): 515-41.

Visnjic, Ivanka, Andy Neely, Carmelo Cennamo, and Nikola Visnjic. 2016. "Governing the City: Unleashing Value from the Business Ecosystem." *California Management Review* 59 (1): 109-40.

Williamson, Peter James, and Arnoud De Meyer. 2012. "Ecosystem Advantage: How to Successfully Harness the Power of Partners." *California Management Review* 55 (1): 24-46.

Yin, Robert K. 2017. *Case Study Research and Applications: Design and Methods*. 6th ed. SAGE Publications.