Understanding Innovation Ecosystems as Organizations

By Giuseppe Ceci

Innovation today no longer emerges within closed organizational boundaries but takes shape in open and interdependent ecosystems where firms, universities, public institutions, and communities collaborate and coevolve. Despite the growing centrality of the innovation ecosystem concept, its organizational foundations remain underexplored. This work moves beyond ecological metaphors and conceptual ambiguity by interpreting innovation ecosystems as organizational forms in their own right. By integrating organizational theory, design research, and complex systems thinking, the volume identifies key dimensions as structure, control mechanisms, processes, roles, leadership, and internationalization, that explain how these systems generate coherence without hierarchy. Ecosystems thus emerge as adaptive organizations capable of combining intentional design and selforganization, stability and transformation. Collective innovation is not a spontaneous outcome, but the result of distributed organizational dynamics grounded in coordination, legitimacy, and continuous learning.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 6209470955
• ISBN13: 9786209470950
• Release Date: February 2026
• Publisher: Scholars' Press
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.49 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"