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Understanding Innovation Ecosystems: A Framework for Joint Analysis and Action MIT Practical Impact Alliance
1
MIT D-Lab
designing for a more
equitable world
INNOVATION ECOSYSTEMS
A Framework for Joint Analysis and Action
UNDERSTANDING
Understanding Innovation Ecosystems: A Framework for Joint Analysis and Action MIT Practical Impact Alliance
MIT D-Lab
MIT D-Lab works with people around the world to develop and advance collaborative approaches
and practical solutions to global poverty challenges. The program’s mission is pursued through inter-
disciplinary courses, research in collaboration with global partners, technology development, and
community initiatives — all of which emphasize experiential learning, real-world projects, communi-
ty-led development, and scalability.
MIT Practical Impact Alliance
The MIT Practical Impact Alliance harvests the power of collaborative learning and action to increase,
accelerate, and sustain impact on global poverty. Organized by MIT D-Lab, PIA is a membership
organization of leaders from diverse organizations with aligned missions who learn, collaborate, and
develop best practices together. PIA working groups focus on addressing a knowledge gap of the
group and in the field, with the goal of generating outputs that will serve as relevant, practical tools
for PIA members and a broader audience.
The Local Innovation Group
The Local Innovation Group conducts interdisciplinary social science research on processes of local
innovation and local systems change in communities facing development challenges around the
world. Through evidence synthesis and a portfolio of research projects, our team develops actionable
knowledge for practitioners, policymakers, and communities on how local innovation can be encour-
aged and leveraged as an effective development strategy.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Saida Benhayoune for setting Innovation Ecosystems as a priority for PIA and to
the organizations who lent their experiences and insights to the PIA Working Group on Strengthen-
ing Local Innovation and Entrepreneurship Ecosystems. Specifically, we want to thank working group
members from USAID, Johnson & Johnson, PACT, Siemens Stiung, World Vision, and Danone, as
well as invited guests from USAID, MIT REAP, S3IDF, and Intellecap. We are also grateful for the
insightful review and feedback on dras of this document provided by Amanda Epting, Kofi Taha,
Saida Benhayoune, Stas Vavilov, Steven Koltai, Ta Corrales, Liby Hsu, and Nancy Adams, who also
provided design guidance and review. We thank Brendan Ng for early graphical contributions to the
ecosystem model and Sophia Janowitz for the remarkable work she has done translating our ideas
into compelling visuals. Finally, our deepest gratitude to the organizations who funded, organized,
and/or hosted the workshops we used as case studies: MITEF Mexico, Innovation Village and Kyusa,
Uganda, and the Phosboucraa Foundation.
A special thanks to the Phosboucraa Foundation for the support which made possible the production
and publication of this report.
Producer: Molly Wenig Rubenstein, Innovation Ecosystems Manager, MIT D-Lab
Author: Elizabeth Hoffecker, Research Scientist, MIT D-Lab
Graphic Design: Sophia Janowitz
Suggested Citation:
Hoffecker, Elizabeth. 2019. Understanding Innovation Ecosystems: A Framework for Joint Analysis and Action. Cambridge: MIT D-Lab.
MIT Practical Impact AllianceUnderstanding Innovation Ecosystems: A Framework for Joint Analysis and Action
TABLEOFCONTENTS
FOREWORD .......................................................................................
INTRODUCTION .............................................................................
LOCALINNOVATIONECOSYSTEMFRAMEWORK
What is a Local Innovation Ecosystem? .......................................3
Innovation Ecosystem Model ...........................................................4
Ecosystem Actors & Roles .................................................................6
Resources .................................................................................................. 7
Enabling Environment .........................................................................9
THEFRAMEWORKINACTION
Strengthening Innovation Ecosystems .......................................10
Case Study: Getting Started .......................................................... 12
Case Study: Building Connection ................................................ 14
Case Study: Discovering Identity and Collaboration .......... 16
NOTESANDREFERENCES ......................................................
MIT Practical Impact Alliance
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Understanding Innovation Ecosystems: A Framework for Joint Analysis and Action
FOREWORD
An innovator’s road is long and fraught with challenges. When operating without
reliable access to internet or power, a large network of contacts, supportive tax and
regulatory policy, or a financial safety net, the task can sometimes feel impossible.
Over the years, D-Lab has tested a variety of strategies to increase the number of
local innovators in the Global South who are creating impact in their communities
with new products, services, and processes. We’ve offered workshops to build the
design and prototyping capacities of local communities, and multi-week co-design
summits to bring them together with students and experts from around the world
who have helped develop their ideas.
We’ve offered project grants of various sizes. We’ve partnered with local universities
and innovation centers to help them establish local hubs of support. And, through
the Local Innovation research group led by Elizabeth Hoffecker, we’ve conducted
research to better understand their innovation process — how it unfolds, what
conditions enable it, and what gets in its way.
In 2017, D-Lab took what we had learned from this research, and from implementing
such a wide range of interventions, and launched a new strategy focused on support-
ing local actors who are seeking to create a more supportive enabling environment
for local innovation, or what we call “local innovation ecosystem builders.” By working
to strengthen and connect these actors, we can contribute to strengthening the
ecosystem for local innovation as whole, in addition to more targeted efforts to build
the capacity of individual innovators.
The Practical Impact Alliance (PIA) was one of the first D-Lab programs to embrace
this new strategic focus. In 2018, PIA launched a working group on Strengthening Local
Innovation & Entrepreneurship Ecosystems, to which we invited a series of speakers
to share stories of the strategies, successes, and challenges of their ecosystem-
strengthening programs. As the staff lead of the working group, Molly Rubenstein
worked closely with Elizabeth for one year to identify components of her research to
translate into best practices and tools for a practitioner audience, which we began
to share through presentations, workshops, talks, and articles.
The framework presented in the following pages organizes some of the concepts,
lessons, and best practices that we have found so far to be most useful to the govern-
ment officials, funders, program managers, capacity builders, cultural influencers, and
innovators themselves who are trying to increase the rates of success for innovation
in their communities around the world. We hope it can help you in your work!
Molly Wenig Rubenstein, Innovation Ecosystems Manager, MIT D-Lab
Elizabeth Hoffecker, Research Scientist, MIT D-Lab
June 2019
Understanding Innovation Ecosystems: A Framework for Joint Analysis and Action MIT Practical Impact Alliance
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Place-based innovation ecosystems play a crucial role in
driving local and regional economic development. This
role has been documented and understood for over 40
years in industrialized economies but is only starting to be
appreciated in the context of emerging and developing
economies. However, the past several years have seen an
intensification of interest in innovation ecosystems among
global development actors as well as practitioners and
policymakers working across the Global South.
Whether at the municipal level, in places such as Medellín,
Colombia and Guadalajara, Mexico, or the national level
in Rwanda, South Africa, or India, we see governments,
multi-laterals, donors, and civil society actors embarking
on initiatives to strengthen local innovation ecosystems.
The International Development Innovation Alliance, for
example, which includes many of the largest public and
private global development agencies, has created a set
of recommendations for why and how actors investing in
economic development should support the strengthening
of innovation ecosystems.
Within the past year, MIT D-Lab has been invited to play a
role in some of these ecosystem-strengthening efforts. In
contexts ranging from Oaxaca, Mexico to Accra, Ghana,
we have been asked to convene ecosystem actors and
stakeholders in order to facilitate joint ecosystem strength-
ening work. In preparing for these engagements, we have
researched the state of the field regarding both innovation
and entrepreneurial ecosystems as well as existing ecosys-
tem frameworks, models, and tools.
In doing so, it has become clear that much of the current
thinking and practice related to these concepts is drawn
from research on innovation processes and entrepreneurial
clusters in highly developed economies — places like Silicon
Valley and Kendall Square, Boston. Much less is known
about innovation ecosystems in less-developed contexts in
terms of how they can be characterized, how they function,
and — most importantly — how they can be strengthened.
At D-Lab, we work from the
principle that in order to intervene
effectively in systems, we first need
to understand them.
To that end, the Local Innovation Group at D-Lab has been
conducting multi-year research on local innovation ecosys-
tems in the types of contexts where D-Lab and our partners
engage. This involves learning about diverse processes of
ecosystem development through primary and secondary
case study research.
Based on this research, we have developed a framework
for understanding local innovation ecosystems, which we
share in this publication. We have found the framework, and
accompanying visual model, to be a useful tool for orienting
and organizing conversations among ecosystem actors on
how particular innovation ecosystems are functioning, what
their strengths and weaknesses are, and where opportuni-
ties for further development might lie.
This document shares this framework and how we have used
it over the past year to catalyze ecosystem-strengthening
efforts. We start by clarifying the concept of a “local inno-
vation ecosystem” and presenting the core ideas informing
the visual model. We then describe the model and each of
its individual components. We follow with guidance from
our research on best practices for conducting ecosystem
strengthening work, and share three examples of how we
have used the model to facilitate ecosystem-strengthening
conversations in distinct local contexts.
INTRODUCTION
USINGTHISPUBLICATION
The purpose of this publication is to offer a model that
can be used by anyone seeking to build understand-
ing of local innovation ecosystems, particularly in the
context of presentations, workshops, education, and
advocacy for ecosystem-level work.
Whether advocating for resources, the inclusion of
missing stakeholders, or seeking to bring awareness
to aspects of your ecosystem that need development,
it can help to have a clear definition and model of the
ecosystem as a shared point of reference.
We therefore describe the ecosystem model in enough
detail to enable you to explain the model to others,
should you want to do so. We also share specific
formats for sessions we’ve designed as examples of
the kinds of conversations that can be facilitated with
this material.
MIT Practical Impact Alliance
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Understanding Innovation Ecosystems: A Framework for Joint Analysis and Action
Drawing on the metaphor of a biological ecosystem, local
innovation ecosystems refer to the complex, dynamic
systems within which innovators operate — systems char-
acterized by an array of interacting actors, resources,
relationships, and conditions that work together to either
enable or impede innovation.
1
Our understanding of local
innovation ecosystems is informed by three bodies of
research: first and foremost, research on the characteris-
tics and behavior of complex adaptive systems;2 second, a
large body of work on innovation systems; and third, a more
recent but growing body of research and practice related
to entrepreneurial ecosystems.
We bring these three streams of literature together with
empirical research from our case studies to inform how
we conceptualize, describe, and define a local innovation
ecosystem. The literature on complex adaptive systems iden-
tifies that all such systems have the following characteristics:
1) a collection of elements or components; 2) relationships,
interactions, and inter-dependencies between the elements;
and 3) a purpose or function, which describes what the
system produces or accomplishes, both intentionally
and unintentionally.3
As a particular type of complex system, innovation systems
exist to produce innovation and support processes of
innovation. They are typically described in terms of actors,
relationships (and networks) between actors, institutional
conditions (both formal and informal) and infrastructure.
4
They have been studied at the national, regional, and local
levels, but are typically described in a way that ignores
the specific social, cultural and ecological contexts within
which innovation processes are embedded and on which
they depend.5
Entrepreneurial ecosystems, on the other hand, are seen as
explicitly place-based and consider all aspects of a place that
contribute to its ability to produce and sustain successful
entrepreneurship.6 The purpose of entrepreneurial eco-
systems is distinct from that of innovation systems (though
also overlapping, as can be seen in Figure 1 below), and
the ecosystem has been conceptualized in a way that is
broader and more vague. However, the ecosystem framing
acknowledges that economic activity is embedded in and
dependent on environmental and cultural contexts that
affect the system’s behavior and results.
WHATISALOCALINNOVATIONECOSYSTEM?
Purpose: enable
innovation
Innovation
system
Entrepreneurial
ecosystem
Innovation-oriented
entrepreneurship
Purpose: enable
entrepreneurship
FIGURE Innovation systems and entrepreneurial ecosystems: related but distinct
Understanding Innovation Ecosystems: A Framework for Joint Analysis and Action MIT Practical Impact Alliance
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Given D-Lab’s focus on context-appropriate and sustainable
development approaches, we have drawn on the broader
ecosystem framing in conceptualizing the kind of system that
is needed to produce and sustain innovation at the local level.
We therefore talk about “local innovation ecosystems” rather
than local innovation systems, and we define and model
these using language and concepts drawn from ecology
and entrepreneurship as well as innovation systems theory.
From this perspective, we see local innovation ecosystems as
model and their importance to the functioning of local
innovation ecosystems.
The model includes the minimum type and number of
categories to enable an accurate understanding of a local
innovation ecosystem. We also suggest relationships
between these different components, i.e. between actor
types, the roles they play in the system, and the types of
resources they typically provide or interact with, while
acknowledging that these relationships are fluid and may
look different across distinct systems.
This model therefore provides a starting point for devel-
oping more nuanced descriptions, maps, and analyses of
specific innovation ecosystems. Over the past year, we
have incorporated the framework into the facilitation of
events ranging from hour-long sessions to multi-day, immer-
sive workshops. Whether convening a local group of 20
stakeholders from the same ecosystem or an international
group of 60 stakeholders from diverse ecosystems, we
have found that the framework helps participants develop
a shared understanding of innovation ecosystems, what
they need to be healthy, and how actors can contribute to
strengthening them.
These processes oen involve entrepreneurship but also
can involve other mechanisms for bringing new ideas and
practices into society, such as direct implementation through
government agencies, multi-laterals, large corporations,
NGOs or community-based organizations, or through legal
and policy changes.
INNOVATIONECOSYSTEMMODEL
To help visualize local innovation ecosystems, we have
created a model that illustrates our definition graphically
(see Figure 2, next page). This model focuses on describing
what a local innovation ecosystem consists of, rather than
how it functions, which would be better represented through
a systems dynamics model. Similarly, the model focuses on
representing important structural features of local inno-
vation ecosystems, rather than comprehensively listing all
their elements.
With those considerations in mind, the model is composed
of three main components that reflect the structural
attributes of complex systems: 1) the ecosystem’s purpose;
2) its actors and other essential elements (in concentric
circles moving outwards); and 3) the relationships and
interconnections between actors and elements, which are
illustrated metaphorically through the radiating, 8-pointed
star. In the following sections, we focus on describing
the specific elements we have chosen to include in the
place-based communities of interacting
actors engaged in producing innovation
and supporting processes of innovation,
along with the infrastructure, resources,
and enabling environment that allow
them to create, adopt, and spread more
effective ways of doing things.
PURPOSETHEGUIDINGSTAR
All systems, including innovation ecosystems, have a
purpose, which may be defined explicitly or may mani-
fest through the results the system produces.
Vibrant, well-known innovation ecosystems tend to have
purposes that reflect the vision, values, and motivations
of the actors driving the ecosystems’ development.
Examples include:
Israel: Agricultural technology innovation ecosystem
PURPOSE: Create and diffuse innovations in
agricultural methods and technologies.
Kendal Square, MA (USA): Innovation-driven
entrepreneurship ecosystem
PURPOSE: Develop cutting-edge technologies
and high-growth-potential, tech-based start-ups.
Philadelphia, PA (USA): Social innovation ecosystem
PURPOSE: Develop innovations in socially and
environmentally responsible enterprise.
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Understanding Innovation Ecosystems: A Framework for Joint Analysis and Action
1. ACTORS — At the center of the
ecosystem, we find the organizations,
entities, and individuals (collectively
termed “actors”) who create, support,
and enable innovation through their
activities and interactions. This model
depicts actors in terms of the roles
they play in the ecosystem (in white)
and secondarily, in terms of actor types
(in pink).
3. ENABLING ENVIRONMENT — At
the top, in blue, we find elements of the
enabling environment that affect the
functioning of the ecosystem. These
elements form part of the overall
context for creativity and entrepreneur-
ship, influencing productivity as well as
the system’s ability to produce, diffuse,
and scale innovation.
2. RESOURCES — At the bottom, in
green, we depict essential resources
that the ecosystem needs to func-
tion. These resources include natural
endowments of the place where the
ecosystem is located, as well as
resources created by humans, such as
infrastructure, financial resources, and
human and social capital.
This model places the purpose of the ecosystem at the center, since it gives the system coherence and identity. Moving
outwards, the model depicts three main categories of ecosystem elements.
FIGURE. Local innovation ecosystem model
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Market Systems
Context
Financial
Resources
Infrastructure
Natural
Environment
Social Capital
Human Capital
Cultural + Institutional
Context
Legal + Regulatory
Context
Connect
Innovate
Convene +
Facilitate
Advocate
Fund
Celebrate
Train Share
Knowledge
Understanding Innovation Ecosystems: A Framework for Joint Analysis and Action MIT Practical Impact Alliance
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ECOSYSTEMACTORSANDROLES
At the same time, certain types of actors are better
positioned to play certain roles over others. When these
actors are missing from the ecosystem or not playing the
roles for which they are best positioned, the ecosystem
becomes less supportive of innovation. In emerging market
ecosystems, a common challenge is that financial resource
providers such as banks are unwilling to offer loans — and
sometimes even checking accounts — to community-based
innovators, who they perceive as too risky.
When finance providers are not providing finance, when
associations are not effectively connecting their members,
or when universities and research institutes are not produc-
ing and sharing knowledge that is relevant to solve local
challenges, ecosystems struggle to produce innovation.
Similarly, ecosystems that lack diversity in the types of
actors providing key roles are less adaptable and resilient
to change, as compared to ecosystems where a variety of
different types of actors exist and provide complementary —
and even competitive — offerings.11
Studies on innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems have
identified that these systems need a diversity of actors play-
ing complementary roles in order to function well. Different
authors and organizations categorize ecosystem actors in
different ways,7 but broad agreement exists that certain
types of actors are necessary for a balanced, dynamic, and
robust system.
Based on our case study research into local innovation
ecosystems in developing and developed economies, we
identify six types of actors with particularly important
roles to play. These include: 1) businesses of various sizes,
ranging from start-ups and small and medium enterprises
(SMEs) to large firms; 2) community-based and not-for-profit
organizations (CBOs and NGOs); 3) centers and institutes
of research, education, and R&D; 4) providers of funding,
including gi and grant funding as well as financial products
and services; 5) governments and government agencies,
particularly local and regional bodies; and 6) networks,
alliances, associations, and groups of individuals, both formal
and informal.8
We also identify eight roles
9
that actors play in ecosystems
that are producing innovation and innovation-driven entre-
preneurship (see next page). By highlighting six types of
actors and eight key roles, we acknowledge that the rela-
tionship between actors and roles is fluid and can vary based
on the circumstances of particular innovation ecosystems. In
one ecosystem, for example, the major provider of funding
might be local or national government agencies, while in
another, the primary funders might be international donor
agencies or the private sector, through philanthropic dona-
tions and corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives.
Similarly, we see cases in which the role of convening eco-
system actors and facilitating interaction between these
actors is played by local or international NGOs and others in
which this role is played by associations of local enterprises.
We therefore agree with Tedesco and Serrano (2019), who
argue that the role an actor plays in an ecosystem and the
value that it contributes is more important than the sector
to which the actor belongs or its legal identity as a for-profit,
not-for-profit, private foundation, etc.10 Consequently, our
model emphasizes actor roles over actor types, placing roles
closer to the center as they enable the system to achieve
its purpose.
COMMONACTORCHALLENGES
Here, we highlight several actor-related challenges
that are relevant in the context of emerging
economies.
1. Key roles are not filled. If essential roles are
unfulfilled because certain actors are absent,
ineffective, or not performing their core functions,
the ecosystem will be less capable of producing and
supporting innovation.
2. Actors are disconnected. When actors in the eco-
system are not connected to each other, or when the
quality of the connection is poor — indicated by high
levels of mistrust, lack of information and resource-
sharing, and difficulty or unwillingness to coordinate
action — the ecosystem underper forms.
3. No backbone organizations. If the ecosystem lacks
an organization (or coalition of organizations) whose
focus is on system-strengthening through coordination,
information-sharing, and facilitation, the ecosystem may
become disconnected.
MIT Practical Impact Alliance
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Understanding Innovation Ecosystems: A Framework for Joint Analysis and Action
Innovate
Innovators identify, develop, and put into use
new and improved ways of doing things within a specific
local context.
12
Whether as individuals, members of
groups, start-ups, or research units, innovators play
the defining role within local innovation ecosystems.
The extent to which diverse types ofactors can inno-
vate — and create impact from innovation — is indicative
of the system’s health and level of development.
Connect
The role and activity of connecting different
actors to each other, whether through social
networking or value chain development, is fundamental
to the process of enabling local innovation. This includes
processes of network-building, relationship brokering,
13
supply chain development, and trust-building between
actors who might not previously have worked together.
Celebrate
Actors who promote local innovators —
whether through positive press, innovator
showcases, competitions and prizes, and/or storytell-
ing — help to create a supportive culture for innovation.
This includes shared values, language, norms, and
standards that reward those who introduce new ways
of doing things and encourage others to take on the
difficult and risky task of innovation.14
Train
Innovation involves doing things in new ways,
and innovation processes oen require that
certain actors in the system develop new mindsets,
skills, and/or capabilities. Training and capacity-building,
whether in specific technical domains or more general
business and leadership skills, is therefore a key activity
within innovation processes and more broadly within
the ecosystem.
Share Knowledge
Sharing knowledge between different
domains, sectors, and types of actors (such as research-
ers, farmers, entrepreneurs, and consumers) contributes
to the production of innovation and the spread of
innovative practices throughout a system. This role
includes providing and sharing scientific knowledge,
technical and practical know-how, information, and
business intelligence.
Convene and Facilitate
This role involves bringing diverse members
of the ecosystem together and facilitating produc-
tive, mutually beneficial interactions, whether in the
context of working groups, stakeholder workshops
and gatherings, task forces, or Innovation Platforms
(IPs).
15
Facilitation has been highlighted as a particularly
important role within successful multi-stakeholder
innovation processes.16
Advocate
The work of innovators and entrepreneurs is
either encouraged or stymied by the legal, regulatory,
economic, and tax policies of places where they operate.
Advocacy for the conditions needed to support innova-
tion and for a level playing field for community-based
innovators and entrepreneurs is oen necessary in order
to order to address system-level constraints and barriers
to success.
Fund
An essential role in any innovation ecosystem
is the provision of funding, ranging from philanthropic
and grant funding to credit, loans, and equity invest-
ments. In healthy innovation ecosystems, a variety of
different actors offer a diverse range of funding types
and sizes, ensuring that innovators and entrepreneurs
can obtain the financing they need at each stage in their
innovation process.
8 Key Roles
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the group, one of the most important being the ability to
engage in “mutually beneficial collective action.”
19
These
resources can affect the ability of group members to
connect effectively with each other (“bonding capital”)
and to connect effectively with other individuals or
groups (“bridging capital”),
20
both of which play a critical
role in processes of innovation and entrepreneurship.
Infrastructure
Infrastructure includes the networks, systems,
and facilities (labs, maker spaces, fabrication
centers, etc.), both tangible and intangible, that are nec-
essary for innovation and innovation-oriented economic
activity. Examples of physical infrastructure include
roads, electric grids, and internet networks; examples of
technological infrastructure include information systems.
Financial Resources
This category encompasses the types and
quantities of funding, financial products, and related
services that are available to innovators to support
their innovation process and the diffusion of innovation
through entrepreneurship and other channels. Financial
resources include various types of funding with different
requirements and terms, such as gis, grants, loans, and
equity, as well as financial products and services such as
banking services, insurance, and revolving credit.21
Natural Environment
The environmental characteristics of a place,
including its natural heritage and features that make
it distinctive, as well as the natural capital and eco-
logical resources that are both abundant and scarce,
provide a crucial context and catalyst for innovation
in terms of locally relevant constraints, opportunities,
challenges, and “innovation domains,”17 as well as raw
materials that are utilized and transformed through the
innovation process.
Human Capital
Human capital includes the knowledge, skills,
capacities, and competencies that enable people to
produce innovation, support innovation processes, and
contribute to economic activity more generally through
the creation of goods, services, and new ideas. In our
model, we use the category of human capital broadly
to include the accumulated store of knowledge and
know-how, including technological know-how, that is
present within individuals and groups in a given location.
Social Capital
Social capital refers to resources such as
information, trust, and norms of reciprocity18 that exist
within a group or social network and create benefits for
RESOURCES
Most models of entrepreneurial ecosystems focus on iden-
tifying system actors, placing less emphasis on the other
elements that are necessary for the system to function
and fulfill its purpose. The literature on innovation systems,
however, makes clear that innovation processes require
resources and enabling conditions, in addition to the types
of actors and roles we have previously mentioned.
Our model therefore identifies five types of resources nec-
essary for innovation processes (below) and three aspects
of the enabling environment (next page) that directly
influence the system’s ability to produce and support
innovation. Drawing on the ecosystem metaphor, we can
5 Key Resources
think of resources as the soil and nutrients of the system,
which directly contribute to its ability to produce innovation;
while the enabling environment includes aspects of the local
context that affect how (and how well) the system functions.
Like the quality of soil and water in a natural ecosystem,
the quality and availability of resources such as human and
social capital in an innovation ecosystem directly affect the
extent to which innovation processes can emerge and how
they unfold over time. While many resources influence a
location’s ability to produce and support innovation, we
have highlighted five foundational resource types that have
relevance across diverse geographic and cultural contexts.
MIT Practical Impact Alliance
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Understanding Innovation Ecosystems: A Framework for Joint Analysis and Action
routines of behavior and interaction.25 Regardless of
whether rules and norms are formal (referred to as
“hard institutions”) or informal (“so institutions”),
26
they
affect how actors interact with each other and with
their environment, and therefore profoundly influence
the context for innovation and entrepreneurship.
Regulatory and Policy
Context
The types of laws, regulations, and policies that exist in a
location, as well as the manner and extent to which they
are enforced, create the incentives — or disincentives
— for innovation. From laws protecting intellectual
property to regulations influencing the ability to start
a new company to tax and certification policies, the
legal, regulatory, and policy context directly affects
the functioning and performance of local innovation
ecosystems. In addition to the content and enforce-
ment of laws, this aspect of context also includes the
processes through which regulation and policy are
created and can be changed, and the extent to which
these processed are closed (i.e. dominated by narrow
interests) or open to influence and participation from a
wide variety of actors, particularly less powerful ones.
Market Systems Context
Market systems refer to the economic systems
through which “private and public actors collaborate,
coordinate, and compete for the production, distribu-
tion and consumption of goods and services.”
22
They
include value chains, end markets and households, and
input and service markets, as well many of the same
resources and enabling conditions that influence the
functioning of economic activity. The type and nature of
supply chains and value chains in a given local context,
as well as the structure, diversity, and complexity of
local market systems, directly influences the context
for innovation. Innovation in the production of a cash
crop, for example, is unlikely to occur if value chains for
that crop are nonexistent, weak, or fragmented.
Cultural and Institutional
Context
The cultural and institutional context of a location
affects market systems generally as well as the more
specific functioning of local innovation ecosystems.
23
This aspect of context includes cultural beliefs, values,
and customs as well as formal and informal rules,
standards, norms, and shared habits (collectively
referred to as “institutions”)24 that produce predictable
ENABLINGENVIRONMENT
3 Environmental Elements
The enabling environment for innovation refers to those
aspects of a place that contribute to facilitating or inhibiting
innovation processes. Like sunshine or oxygen in a natural
ecosystem, these elements directly affect the extent to
which innovation emerges at all as well as how it unfolds
over time and to what extent it produces societal impact.
Research studies from the fields of entrepreneurship, man-
agement, and systems of innovation agree on the critical
role of the enabling environment in innovation ecosystems
and on the specific components of the environment that
most directly affect the system’s performance. In our model,
we highlight three aspects of the enabling environment
that have been shown to affect the ability of a local system
to produce innovation and to adapt and utilize innovations
introduced from elsewhere.
In addition to affecting the context for innovation specifically,
these aspects of the enabling environment also affect the
broader context for entrepreneurship and local economic
development. They therefore refer to larger and overlapping
economic, cultural, and socio-political systems which interact
with and influence more specific innovation systems.
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To strengthen local innovation ecosystems, we first need to
understand them, but understanding alone is not enough.
We also need effective strategies for action — for how to
catalyze, lead, support, or contribute to ecosystem-strength-
ening work. Through our research, we have identified
eight strategies that effective ecosystem builders have
used to create innovation ecosystems from scratch or to
strengthen existing ecosystems to make them more robust,
diverse, inclusive, and effective at producing innovation (see
next page).
Some of these strategies are more relevant than others
at different stages of an ecosystem’s development (see
box below), but across stages, there is typically a need
for some form of ecosystem convening — bringing actors
together in facilitated meetings, workshops, or events to
engage in joint visioning, opportunity identification, peer
learning, and relationship-building. Facilitating inclusive,
multi-stakeholder learning and relationship building is one
of D-Lab’s strengths, and we have increasingly been asked
to bring this skill set to ecosystem convening work.
In doing so, we have found it helpful to combine the insights
from our research with activities and techniques drawn
from our decades-long experience facilitating participatory
design processes. Frequently, this involves bringing the
local ecosystem framework into events organized around
D-Lab’s “Learn, Imagine, Create, and Test” design cycle.
In the following pages, we share some recent examples of
these convenings and highlight how we used the ecosystem
framework in each of these distinct contexts.
STRENGTHENINGINNOVATIONECOSYSTEMS
STARTINGPOINTSFORECOSYSTEMSTRENGTHENING
When D-Lab is asked to lead or support ecosystem-strengthening work, a first step is to identify where the ecosystem
is starting from in terms of its history, level of development, and needs. Some of the most common starting points
for ecosystem-strengthening work are the following:
Nascent ecosystems – In these settings, an innovation
ecosystem is just starting to form. Some actors might
be present, but others are missing, and key resources
and enabling conditions are absent or weak. A desire
exists to create a vibrant ecosystem for innovation and
entrepreneurship, but this full-fledged ecosystem does
not yet exist.
Lopsided ecosystems – These ecosystems have more
players and components than nascent systems, but are
heavy in some areas and weak in others. They may be
dominated by just one or two actor types or sectors,
or they may be over-reliant on some resources and
unable to access others.
Established but disconnected ecosystems – These
systems are crowded with many actors and initiatives
that are not operating synergistically to produce inno-
vation. Instead, there is lack of coordination, insufficient
information-sharing, duplication of efforts, low levels of
trust, ineffective collaboration between actors and/or
weak capacity for effective collective action.
Ecosystem strengthening in these settings involves
bringing those who are already innovating together
to develop a joint vision of what a vibrant ecosystem
might look like; build relationships, shared values and
norms; develop the capacity of existing actors and cre-
ate new actors and resources; and engage in strategic,
short-term, joint action to address immediate, shared,
system-level blockages and constraints.
Ecosystem strengthening in these settings involves
convening the existing actors and stakeholders to
assess the strengths and weaknesses of the system,
identify missing actors, roles, resources, and conditions
and develop joint action plans to strengthen elements
of the system that are under-developed.
Ecosystem strengthening in these settings involves
helping actors in the system to see who is doing what
and identifying the strengths of the system through
mapping efforts and multi-stakeholder workshops.
These efforts may also involve creating new platforms
to enhance information sharing and facilitating activities
to build trust and collaborative working relationships
between members of the system.
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Understanding Innovation Ecosystems: A Framework for Joint Analysis and Action
1. Identify a “shared dream” of the future
To be successful, ecosystem-strengthening efforts need to
facilitate a process through which stakeholders can develop
a shared vision of the future they desire for the system. What
desirable and undesirable results is the system producing
now? What results do stakeholders wish the system were
producing? Articulating a shared dream for the ecosystem’s
future helps system stakeholders identify a concrete vision
to work towards.
2. Start with the motivated champions
Successful ecosystem strengthening initiatives start working
with the most motivated members of the system, those
who are equally passionate about the shared dream and
already working towards it. These may not be the most
well-connected, powerful, or visible actors in the system,
but they are the ones with the energy and focus to drive
the process forward and the excitement to enlist others to
join. Oen, early champions are leaders of accelerators,
incubators, social innovation networks, or others who are
already interfacing between innovators, entrepreneurs,
funders, local governments, and other actors. Strengthening
them first contributes to building the core of an ecosystem.
3. Facilitate safe, neutral spaces for learning
Learning and problem-solving happen most effectively when
organizational and personal agendas are set aside and when
participants can let their guard down, take risks, and speak
honestly. This requires that meeting spaces be “neutral” and
equally accessible and comfortable for all. It also requires
skillful and neutral facilitation of group meetings, visioning
sessions, or steering committees, so all members can trust
that the process is unbiased, transparent, and belongs to
them and is not being unduly influenced by internal or
external agendas.
4. Establish a common language
Language is powerful. The words we use affect how we
organize information, how we make connections between
concepts — even what we think is possible. Successful
ecosystem-building initiatives develop and use shared
frameworks and language to build community and shared
ways of working among members. The innovation ecosys-
tems framework is one tool that can be used to establish a
common set of terms and concepts that ecosystem cultiva-
tors can use to build shared understanding of the system as
it exists currently and as it could exist in the future.
5. Build on what is already working well
It can be tempting to fixate on what isn’t working, but
successful ecosystem strengthening work usually starts
by identifying what is working well; i.e. the seedlings of
the flowers we want, rather than the weeds. Once we find
those “seeds of the future,” we ask: what is in their way?
What needs to be changed so that these seedlings can grow
into strong plants? By identifying and removing barriers for
initiatives that have the potential for success, we can create
conditions for a part of the ecosystem to start to flourish,
which brings energy and more stakeholders to the process.
6. Set achievable, “next step” goals
Once specific areas of challenge and opportunity have been
identified, successful ecosystem builders focus first on the
most practical, near-term aspect of that challenge — an area
where a “small win” is possible in the near term. These initial
successes clear the way for initiatives to gain momentum
and to build trust and comaraderie among participants.
They also built participants’ confidence and skills to tackle
more complex challenges involving collective action, such
as changes to regulations.
7. Create opportunities to learn by seeing and doing
A common challenge in innovation ecosystems is that actors
lack specific technical, business, or leadership skills they
need to move forward. An effective way to build these skills
is to provide actors with context-specific opportunities to
learn from each other and from existing experts (both within
and beyond the system), through learning journeys, peer
demonstrations, processes of joint design, experimentation,
and participatory research.
8. Celebrate progress publicly
To expand participation in ecosystem-strengthening beyond
the initial core group, it is important to publicly celebrate
progress and “wins.” Showcasing successful innovators,
organizing public celebrations and festivals, running feature
news stories, or organizing official “launch parties” all help to
bring awareness and attention to ecosystem-strengthening
work, energizing existing participants and motivating others
to join.
Note: Adapted and expanded from a previously published piece by Elizabeth
Hoffecker, “Why Cultivating Your Innovation Ecosystem is Worth the Work,”
Stanford Social Innovation Review (September 2018). Five of these strategies
are described there in more depth.
Strategies for Strengthening Innovation Ecosystems
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In November 2018, D-Lab included, for the first time, a series of ecosystem building sessions within the context of a week-
long Co-Design Summit in the city of Laâyoune. Laâyoune is the main city of the Laâyoune-Sakia Lhamra province, a coastal
desert territory in the south of Morocco, where D-Lab is engaged with the Phosboucraa Foundation in an ongoing innovation
ecosystem cultivation project.
Morocco is investing heavily in the economic development of the region, and Laâyoune is experiencing economic growth.
Compared to other nearby regions, though, there continues to be high unemployment and relatively little dynamism in the
entrepreneurial and innovation sphere. To address this, the Phosboucraa Foundation invited the MIT D-Lab Practical Impact
Alliance to help strengthen local innovation capacity in 2017.
Given the nascent stage of the innovation ecosystem in Laâyoune, the Phosboucraa Foundation and D-Lab agreed that the
program’s priority should be to help local intermediaries better understand the realities and best practices of innovation
ecosystem cultivation, and to build relationships between them, with the entrepreneurs they serve, and with others in the
Moroccan ecosystem, to create a strong platform for future coordination and collaboration.
Leading up to the Co-Design Summit, the project team conducted market and stakeholder analysis, trained 12 local facilitators
in D-Lab’s Creative Capacity Building (CCB) methodology, and, together with these facilitators, conducted CCB trainings
for 30 local, early stage, and aspiring entrepreneurs. We also offered one-day Introduction to Design Thinking workshops for
ecosystem actors from Laâyoune and other Moroccan cities. The summit itself gathered some of those aspiring entrepreneurs
with local and national entrepreneur supporters and international development practitioners, and formed them into teams.
Each team used co-design to explore local business opportunities for one or two of the entrepreneurs and develop proposals
for new ventures or growth strategies for existing businesses.
GOALSANDOBJECTIVES
This co-design methodology is designed to build empathy
and forge connections among disparate stakeholders, but
we included three new sessions to accomplish our goal of
building understanding of the innovation ecosystem and
inspire momentum to improve it.
These three ecosystem sessions were designed to:
Provide a Shared Framework: establish a shared vocab-
ulary for talking about the ecosystem and give participants a
broader picture of where their efforts fit in, how the system
currently functions, and where they might find opportunities
to strengthen it.
Chart a Path Forward:
help identify specific top-priority
areas for development within the support ecosystem that
could increase successful innovative entrepreneurial activity.
Change Mindsets:
help the entrepreneurs feel empowered
to contribute to the improvement of the system as a whole,
and help the supporters of entrepreneurship feel motivated
to collaborate with others in the system, including the entre-
preneurs themselves, to achieve their shared goals.
CASESTUDYLAÂYOUNE
Getting Started
Build Relationships:
help stakeholders identify promising
opportunities for those collaborations where their priorities
and personalities align with others in the room.
MIT D-Lab Found ing Director Amy Sm ith (standing, center) and facilitator
Taylor Cruz (standing, le) confer ring over a team co-design exercise.
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Understanding Innovation Ecosystems: A Framework for Joint Analysis and Action
Establishing a Shared Framework
Using the ecosystem framework, participants were able
to clearly articulate some of the most important gaps
in the existing ecosystem, including the following four,
which we recommended that Phosboucraa Foundation
and its local training center, the Laâyoune Learning
Center, prioritize in the year to come.
Information: Entrepreneurs don’t know what they need
to do to be successful or what resources are available
to help them. Connection: There is not currently
enough coordination between the different support
programs for entrepreneurs in Laâyoune. Infrastructure:
Entrepreneurs have trouble accessing the space and
materials they need to do their work effectively. Training:
In spite of existing programs, entrepreneurs in Laâyoune
lack key “so” skills — team and financial management,
strategic planning, communications, etc.
Charting a Path Forward
A few concrete proposals emerged from the ecosys-
tem problem-solving sessions to address those four
challenges, including 1) a committee to coordinate local
ecosystem activities, 2) an interactive ecosystem resource
guide, 3) a local co-working space, and 4) new training
programs for entrepreneurship instructors and new
experiential learning opportunities for students.
A few of these are becoming reality. Phosboucraa
Foundation has established an incubator program to
strengthen the existing entrepreneurship offer of its
training center, the Laâyoune Learning Center. D-Lab
staff are helping to cra the curriculum and train local
facilitators to deliver it.
The plans for the incubation program include a robust
mentor matching feature, to help address the information
and connection gaps in the system and ensure that the
training remains grounded in real-world experiences. The
Laâyoune Learning Center is also planning to establish a
co-working and networking space for the entrepreneurs.
Changing Mindsets & Building Relationships
The WhatsApp group created for participants remained
active for months following the event, most oen with
appreciations of local ecosystem actors for providing
mentorship to the local entrepreneurs or connecting
them to training, funding, and other support opportu-
nities. Some of these actors will be participating in the
new incubator program as mentors.
OUTCOMES
ACTIVITIES
INTRODUCTIONS
In the first ecosystem session, we introduced the ecosystem
framework, inviting participants filling each actor role to share
an illustrative story from their own experience. Then each
participant in the room wrote their name and organization
on a sticky note in a color that indicated their actor type,
and placed it on a big printout of the ecosystem model in
a position to indicate the role they play in the ecosystem,
with a colored dot indicating whether they operate locally,
nationally, or internationally. We then invited participants to
identify patterns they observed and other participants with
whom they might want to connect. This visual stayed in the
space for the remainder of the week.
IDENTIFYINGCHALLENGES
At the end of the Co-Design Summit, aer teams had gen-
erated business ideas, we asked them to map out the assets
available locally and nationally, within different areas of the
ecosystem, to support entrepreneur(s) in realizing their ideas
and addressing the challenges they would face in the process.
Each team placed those challenges on a matrix according to
how much of an impact each would make for the entrepreneur
if the challenge were addressed (Important) and how diffi-
cult they thought it would be for local and national actors to
address it (Achievable). Each team selected three challenges
they recommended that ecosystem actors address, including
at least one highly achievable challenge, and presented them
to the whole group.
PROBLEMFRAMINGANDSOLUTIONS
We aggregated the selected challenges into a master list of
eight that were both concrete and achievable enough for the
participants to address over the year to come. There was at
least one challenge related to each of the actor roles within
the framework. On the last day of the Co-Design Summit, we
asked participants to step out of their entrepreneur’s team
and select one of these challenges to work on.
Groups formed to address five of the challenges, and each
group spent an hour discussing the root causes of their
selected challenge and proposing some possible solutions.
At the end of the session, we asked each participant to record
the ideas they were most interested in seeing pursued and
the commitments they were willing to make to advance their
chosen challenge’s solutions.
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We conducted a one-day ecosystem workshop in Kampala, Uganda, in March 2018, while engaged in laying the groundwork
for a Co-Design Summit similar to the one we had recently conducted in Laâyoune. Unlike the ecosystem sessions in Laâyoune,
the Kampala workshop was framed as a standalone event and an opportunity to meet a number of ecosystem players we
had not worked with before, rather than as the culmination of a year of work.
In this case, we were working in a local ecosystem where there was much more activity already on the ground. The inno-
vation-driven entrepreneurship ecosystem in Kampala is growing rapidly and attracting the attention and investment of
international actors. For our event, we were able to build off of the ecosystem assessment that the Aspen Network of
Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) had commissioned as Part 1 of the Uganda Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Initiative (UEEI).
The report, produced by the Centre for Development Alternatives (CDA), Enterprise Uganda, and Koltai & Co, lays out a
detailed assessment of the local assets and limitations of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Kampala, as well as suggestions
for what sorts of improvements should ideally be made to move forward.
To identify what unique value we could offer through our workshop, we spoke with representatives from ANDE, the CDA,
Enterprise Uganda, and Koltai & Co so we could coordinate with the UEEI Phase 1 and Phase 2 efforts. We also spoke with
staff from Innovation Village Kampala, a local co-working space and incubator already working to build international awareness
and local energy, momentum, and collaboration that would strengthen the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Kampala.
GOALSANDOBJECTIVES
Our preparation for our visit taught us that there were two
opportunities for us to add value to existing ecosystem work.
First, only some progress had been made to clarify what
actions the local actors could take to begin accomplishing the
goals set out as recommendations in the UEEI Phase 1 report.
Second, although there were a number of different insti-
tutions actively working to increase attention and support
to local innovative entrepreneurs, there was relatively little
coordination or collaboration among them.
For our day-long workshop, we decided to focus on address-
ing that lack of connection and collaboration through an
agenda focused on information sharing and problem-solving
around specific action pathways. Our objectives were to:
Build awareness: Provide an opportunity for local actors to
share information with one another about relevant resources
and activities already present in Kampala.
Change mindsets: Overcome the tendency towards inde-
pendence and competitiveness and build motivation to work
together, while also building confidence in these local actors
that they could change the system as a whole.
CASESTUDYKAMPALA
Building Connection
Chart a path forward: Identify a few “easy win” opportunities
for productive collaborations that could offer improvements
to the ecosystem in the short term, along the action pathways
suggested by the UEEI Phase 1 report, or priorities voiced
by the participants during the session.
SETTINGANDPARTICIPANTS
Innovation Village hosted the event in their space, which is a
large and fairly well-established co-working space for local
entrepreneurs, and shared the event with some members of
the recently formed Kampala Entrepreneurship Ecosystem
Steering Committee. We also worked with one of our local
entrepreneurship education partners, Kyusa Uganda, to iden-
tify additional participants to invite, including some who were
not as well-connected to the work that Innovation Village was
already conducting.
The 26 attendees represented a variety of actor types, most
of which provided a mix of services to the ecosystem:
• 2 successful entrepreneurs
• 10 entrepreneur training programs
• 3 business support service providers
• 3 investment funds/financing agencies
• 1 research & analysis firm
• 1 local and 1 international backbone ecosystem
convener and multi-role actor
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Understanding Innovation Ecosystems: A Framework for Joint Analysis and Action
Building Awareness
It became clear during the morning that there were many
resources already available in the Kampala ecosystem
that not everyone was aware of, including affordable legal
services and other business support for entrepreneurs,
and a non-branded website that two of the groups had
created to act as a go-to resource for entrepreneurship-
oriented information in Kampala:
www.starthereuganda.com.
Charting a Path Forward
The group selected four areas to address: 1) the sparse-
ness of effective training offerings for entrepreneurs,
2) the cultural obstructions around sharing stories
of failure and struggle that made it challenging for
entrepreneurs to support one another, 3) the difficulty of
providing/finding affordable business support services
for entrepreneurs, and 4) the limited extent to which
the government was creating policies supportive to
innovation-oriented entrepreneurial activity.
The groups developed ideas to address the first three,
respectively: a new teacher training program for
entrepreneurship educators, a new “Fail Fair”-type social
event or anonymous story-sharing platform for entrepre
-
neurs, and a worksheet-based business support service
toolkit that would help boil down expert guidance into
an affordable, easily distributable form. In each case, one
or two specific organizations took responsibility for the
follow-through.
Changing Mindsets
More than once, someone in the room mentioned that
they wished it had not taken so long for this group of
people to get together in one place and share informa-
tion, and that they hoped the group would continue to
gather on a more regular basis.
At the end of the day, one of the entrepreneurs in
the room shared that, “For the first time, aer today, I
actually believe that we can be the ones who solve these
problems; that we don’t need someone else to come and
solve them for us.”
OUTCOMES
ACTIVITIES
INTRODUCTIONS
Participants introduced themselves to the others at their
table. We briefly introduced ourselves and explained our
intentions in facilitating this day’s activities, and then we
introduced our ecosystem framework and the UEEI Part 1
Report Action Pathways as a starting point for the groups
to build off of.
SHARING
We placed large pieces of white paper on the walls around
the room, one with each of the Ecosystem Actor Roles from
our framework, and any corresponding UEEI recommended
Action Pathways listed at the top. We asked each person
to sit quietly for a few minutes, think of any updates they
had to contribute on activities happening within each role’s
domain, and write them down on sticky notes.
Then we invited everyone to leave their seats, add their
notes to the appropriate actor role paper, and circulate
the room to read through what other people had posted.
Playing music in the background during these and other
silent activities helped to keep the energy up.
PROBLEMIDENTIFICATION&TEAMFORMATION
Participants shared observations on what they’d read:
new things they had learned and areas that struck them
as remaining problematic within each domain. Then the
facilitators shared the list of problem areas that had most
strongly emerged from the discussion, and participants
selected the area they most wanted to work with that
aernoon, before breaking for lunch.
PROBLEMFRAMING&SOLUTIONS
Participants explored the ultimate consequences and root
causes of the problem area they had identified. Then they
generated ideas for ways they could potentially address
the challenge, and selected one idea that seemed both
worthwhile and feasible with the resources and connections
of the people at the table. Finally, they began to explore
what resources would be required to execute on that idea.
CONCLUSION
Each group briefly shared their problem, their proposed
solution, and any ways others in the room could participate
or contribute. They briefly shared reflections on the day’s
experience before closing at 3:30pm with tea.
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This case study describes a half-day workshop that took place as a stand-alone event in the city of Guadalajara, Mexico
in December 2018. The four-hour workshop was organized by the MIT Enterprise Forum (MITEF) Mexico, a not-for-profit
organization based in Guadalajara and affiliated with MIT.
Guadalajara is Mexico’s second-largest city and home to the country’s most robust innovation and entrepreneurship
ecosystem. It has been branded “the Silicon Valley of Mexico” for its role as an important technology and soware hub,
yet some ecosystem actors would prefer a self-defined identity. Guadalajara offers an abundance of initiatives, events, and
resources for entrepreneurs and innovators, but these can be challenging to navigate because the ecosystem lacks strong
coordinating mechanisms.
Taking this context into consideration, workshop organizers identified a need to convene ecosystem actors to understand the
extent and nature of existing collaboration and to start a conversation about the ecosystem’s identity. There was also interest
in discovering to what extent actors shared a common sense of purpose or vision for the ecosystem’s future development.
ORGANIZERS
MITEF Mexico convened the ecosystem workshop to learn
more about who the actors in the ecosystem were and how
they were or were not connecting and collaborating. To create
a balance in the workshop between collecting information
about the ecosystem from participants and facilitating
real-time connections, MITEF Mexico invited MIT D-Lab
to co-design the workshop and deliver some of the content
and sessions.
GOALSANDOBJECTIVES
The primary goal of the workshop was to learn more about
Guadalajara’s ecosystem from the perspective of key actors
in it. Specifically, through the workshop, the organizing teams
sought to gain insights into the following questions:
1. Who are the principal players in Guadalajara’s innovation
and entrepreneurship ecosystem?
2. How are these players connecting and collaborating with
each other?
3. Do ecosystem actors currently have a shared vision or
sense of purpose for the ecosystem and if so, what is it?
4. What are the strengths and assets of Guadalajara’s eco-
system that could serve as building blocks for the construction
of a unique identity beyond “the Silicon Valley of Mexico”?
CASESTUDYGUADALAJARA
Discovering Identity and Collaboration
PARTICIPANTS
The workshop brought together 47 actors representing 34
organizations in the ecosystem, which reflected a diversity
of both actor types and roles. The actor types represented
included universities and research centers; co-working
spaces, incubators and accelerators; public and private inno-
vation centers; representatives of networks and associations
of entrepreneurs and innovators; chambers of commerce;
representatives of the state and municipal government; and
one representative of the press (a leading magazine for the
tech industry). The event was hosted at Centraal Bosch, an
open innovation center, co-working, and meeting space
administered by a German technology company.
Participants discuss the ecosyste m’s purpose in small gr oups
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Understanding Innovation Ecosystems: A Framework for Joint Analysis and Action
ACTIVITIES
PRESENTATIONSHAREDFRAMEWORK
We opened the workshop by sharing the goals for the day,
background information on the organizers, and an intro-
ductory presentation on the ecosystem framework used by
MIT D-Lab as well as a model of actor roles developed by
MITEF Mexico.
27
This helped build shared understanding
through a common set of definitions and framework to
inform subsequent activities.
TABLEDISCUSSIONPURPOSE
Interspersed throughout the main presentation, we paused
for participants to engage in small-group discussion at their
tables. In the first activity, they used a worksheet to discuss
and identify the purpose of their ecosystem, starting by
identifying the results (both intended and unintended) that
the system was producing and then moving to the desired
results they would like to see.
By identifying what results they envisioned the system
producing, they could identify the purpose they wanted
it to serve.
TABLEDISCUSSIONASSETS
In the second activity, participants used a different work-
sheet to identify and analyze key resources, assets, and
opportunities within their ecosystem. Aer discussing in
small groups, participants each filled out their own work-
sheet and posted these on the walls.
We then used a break for a “gallery walk” where partici-
pants could read what others had written, discuss informally
between themselves, and make connections.
INFORMATIONSHARING
In the final activity of the day, 34 participants filled out
an online questionnaire designed to gather information
about the extent and nature of their collaborations with
other ecosystem actors, including those not present in
the workshop.
The information collected through the questionnaire was
subsequently analyzed by members of the organizing team
to produce a detailed social network map of the collabo-
rations between ecosystem actors, who were categorized
by their roles.28
OUTCOMES
Mapping Actors and Connections:
The information shared by workshop participants through
the questionnaire administered during the workshop
resulted in the identification of 188 ecosystem actors
and 474 collaborative interactions between these actors.
These interactions were analyzed using social network
mapping methods and soware to determine their
directionality (who sought to collaborate with whom),
intensity, and the level of effort required to establish
successful collaborations. A paper describing the results
of this analysis and sharing the social network maps of
collaboration in the ecosystem is forthcoming.
Identifying Assets:
By analyzing the worksheets participants completed, we
identified assets of the Guadalajara ecosystem, including
resources such as a strong technological base, a well-re-
nowned and competitive higher education sector, and
abundant human capital (including youth talent), as well
as cultural assets within the enabling environment such
as an openness to innovation, change, and diversity.
These assets combine with aspects of Guadalajara’s
history, heritage, and traditions to generate points of
strength that can anchor the ecosystem’s identity and
help to differentiate it from other globally-relevant
innovation ecosystems.
Creating a Shared Vision:
Through worksheets, each participant shared their
individual perspective on the current purpose of
Guadalajara’s ecosystem, the results it was producing
intentionally and unintentionally, and their desired vision
for the ecosystem’s purpose.
While there was some convergence around a vision of
the ecosystem oriented around technology and high-im-
pact entrepreneurship, there was sufficient diversity
within the visions to warrant additional work among
ecosystem actors in this area. Future convenings, work-
shops, or gatherings could provide a space for actors
to build consensus around a shared vision to guide the
ecosystem’s development.
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1. See Hoffecker (2018).
2. Complex adaptive systems (CAS) are systems in which many heterogeneous actors interact, adapting their strategies and actions
based on the actions of other actors and on changing system conditions and contributing to these changing conditions through
their evolving responses to them (Douthwaite and Hoffecker, 2019).
3. For an excellent introduction to the properties and behavior of complex systems — and to systems thinking more generally — see
Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella Meadows (2008).
4. See Wieczorek and Hekkert (2012).
5. See Mytelka (2000) and Spielman (2010).
6. See Acs, et al. (2017).
7. A common approach to categorizing actors is to group them by major sector of the economy; e.g., government, industry, and
academia, which is known as the Triple Helix model (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, 2000). Others have expanded this to a Quadruple
Helix, including as the fourth element either entrepreneurs, finance, or “a media and culture-based public” (see Colapinto and
Porlezza, 2012). The MIT REAP program adds a fih major category, “risk capital,” to create a model with 5 major stakeholder
groups (MIT REAP 2017). Steven Koltai of Koltai and Co. has expanded this further to create a model with 6 actor types and 6 roles
(ANDE, 2018).
8. In a review of 57 cases of innovation processes in smallholder agricultural in Sub-Saharan Africa, Triomphe et al. (2016) found that
these processes typically included a mix of all of the main actor types listed in our model.
9. Following other authors who have researched innovation systems and entrepreneurship ecosystems, we use the term “role” to
refer to the key activities an actor performs for or in the ecosystem. The roles that diverse actors play, in combination with other
elements of the system, combine to enable the system as a whole to perform various key functions in support of innovation, such as
providing mechanisms for potential solutions to be tested, piloted, and iterated upon within market contexts.
10. See Tedesco and Serrano (2019).
11. See Asayehegan, et al. (2017).
12. See Hoffecker (2018).
13. For more on the role of “innovation brokers” in facilitating innovation and improving the effectiveness and functioning of local
innovation ecosystems (particularly agriculturally-oriented systems) see “The Role of Innovation Brokers in Agricultural Innovation
Systems” by Lauren Klerkx and Peter Gildemacher (2012).
14. See Hoffecker (2014).
15. For more on Innovation Platforms, see Klerkx, et al. (2013).
16. See: Douthwaite and Hoffecker (2017) and Devaux, et al. (2009).
17. “Innovation domains” refer to the sector or area within which innovation takes place, for example, innovation within livestock
production, horticulture, post-harvest processing technology or marketing, each of which are seen as a domain within which
innovation can occur.
18. See Woolcock (1998).
19. See Uphoff and Wijayaratna (2000).
20. See Nguyen and Rieger (2017).
21. See UNDP (2008).
22. See Campbell (2019).
23. See Hounkonnou, et. al. (2012).
24. See North (1990).
25. See Crawford and Ostrom (1995).
26. See Wieczorek and Hekkert (2012).
27. For a full description of this model, see Tedesco and Serrano (2019).
28. An overview of this analysis and the resulting network map is presented in Tedesco and Serrano (2019) and a full report detailing
the results of the analysis of actor interactions in the ecosystem is forthcoming.
ENDNOTES
MIT Practical Impact Alliance
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Understanding Innovation Ecosystems: A Framework for Joint Analysis and Action
Acs, Z., Stam, E., Audretsch, E. and O’Connor. A. 2017. “The lineages of the entrepreneurial ecosystem approach.” Small Business Economics.
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Technology.
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Cambridge: MIT D-Lab.
Hoffecker, E. 2018. “Why Cultivating your Innovation Ecosystem is Worth the Work.” Stanford Social Innovation Review. Stanford: Stanford
University. Retrieved on May 5, 2019 at https://ssir.org/articles/entry/why_cultivating_your_innovation_ecosystem_is_worth_the_work
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REFERENCES
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