## 6 Conclusions and the Way Forward  
This article began with a puzzle central to contemporary world politics and IR literature, asking why the global balance of technological power shifted from a military-industrial rivalry dominated by the U.S. and the Soviet Union to a digital landscape where the United States and China lead, while Russia lags. In the past, the technological great power competition focused on singular, military-industrial capabilities, developed through centralized, state-directed innovation systems. Innovation served a national security logic. In that context, even when private industry played a role, the state ultimately controlled the direction and output of innovation. Conversely, contemporary tech competition is shaped by generative, civilian-led digital capabilities that originate primarily within decentralized, commercially driven ecosystems. This transition redefines power not as the stock of state-owned capabilities alone but as the capacity to orchestrate distributed innovation flows that continuously scale technological advantage. Thus, the digital balance of power today, i.e., the prominence of the U.S. and China while Russia lags, reflects more than just the scale of investment and state capacity, but also the dynamism and vitality of national innovation ecosystems. Therefore, to answer the question, we examined how cultural-institutional differences toward ecosystem governance influence the performance of digital innovation ecosystems, which are now critical for national power. We advanced the argument that managing to scale ecosystem-based innovation constructively is advantageous, while failing to do so bears strategic costs. Our analysis compared the United States, China, and Russia, three great powers with distinct cultural-institutional types and governance models, to demonstrate how differences in ecosystem orchestration shape relative positions in the global digital hierarchy. The findings show that the U.S., with its decentralized, market-driven innovation model and \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \hline \hline  & **U.S.** & **China** & **Russia** \\ \hline Cultural– & Individualist– & Collectivist– & Collectivist– \\ Institutional Type & Monumentalist & Flexible & Monumentalist \\ \hline Innovation Style & Disruptive, & & \\  & entrepreneurial & Adaptive & State-driven \\ \hline Drivers of & & & \\ Innovation & Private tech sector & Government + tech & \\  & & firms & State institutions \\ \hline Risk-Taking & High & Moderate & Low \\ \hline Role of the State & \begin{tabular}{c} Minimal regulation \\ Encourage \\ entrepreneurship \\ competition \\ \end{tabular} & \
\begin{tabular}{c} Heavy intervention, \\ flexible toward \\ entrepreneurship, \\ and guided \\ competition \\ \end{tabular} &
\begin{tabular}{c} Centralized control, \\ limited \\ entrepreneurship, \\ and competition \\ \end{tabular} \\ \hline AI ranking & 1 st & 2 nd & 31 st \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 3: Ecosystem governance summarizing country analysis. enabling institutions, remains a global leader due to its absorptive capacity and dynamic private sector. China has rapidly converged by orchestrating an adaptive hybrid model, one that is state-directed yet responsive to private innovation and ecosystem scaling. Russia, in contrast, has struggled to transition from a control-based, military-industrial legacy to a generative digital model, constrained by obstructive institutions and rigid cultural logics. This comparison highlights that cultural-institutional configurations explain the divergent trajectories of their ecosystems. The U.S. orchestration model demonstrated how individualism and institutional openness enabled a decentralized ecosystem where private actors drive disruptive innovation, while the state facilitates absorptive capacity and systemic stability. China's collectivist-flexible model shows how strategic, adaptive orchestration can mobilize scale and speed in ecosystem building, blending top-down direction with market incentives.