The paper focuses on the bibliometric review of the Scopus database in the field of innovation ecosystem development, aiming to reveal the key trends in this fast-growing area of interdisciplinary research in terms of different quantitative and qualitative parameters. The bibliometric analysis followed PRISMA protocol guidelines for finding and extracting relevant scholarly papers based on the selected national, institutional, demographic, and scientific variables. The PRISMA procedure resulted in 401 selected open-access articles published on the topic of innovation ecosystem development from 2013 to 2023. The key findings indicate that research on innovation ecosystem development has seen late growth, which is a sign of still underexplored fields for potential pioneers. Researchers and institutions from the Nordic countries and the UK are most active as far as publications on innovation ecosystem development are concerned. However, researchers from the USA, Australia, and the UK dominate the citation records. Research collaborations help increase productivity and citation levels. The most cited articles fall into 4 clusters based on citations: innovation, smart tourism, digitalization, and entrepreneurship. Future research synergies can also be envisaged with the domains of digitalization, sustainable development, and the smart environment.

This conceptual paper focuses on the importance of extending thecollaborative dynamic capabilities(C-DCs) view and its emphasis on the boundary spanningstrategic communities(SCs) fromfirm-centric to thenetwork-centric perspective. The C-DC view is an original theoretical perspective that offers a good explanation of corporate-level transformations in the context of cross-sectoral convergence. Although the focus of prevailing research on large firms as cornerstones of SCs is valid, it does not fully capture the more complex dynamics that take in the horizontal networks of firms. We show that C-DC and SC theoretical perspectives can be adapted to the context of regional industrial clusters and contribute to their strategic renewal. The paper conceptualizes the different challenges and nature of leadership that prevail in SC-based firms networks. It also presents the different enabling aspects of collaborative DCs (with regard to trust building, co-specialization and capability synthesis) in firm- vs. network-centric environments.

The development of complex organisational ecosystems that reflect complex adaptive systems (CASs) calls for radically different strategic approaches with respect to the case of classical, stable hierarchical systems. A need for such strategic approaches especially increases in the contexts that lack cooperation traditions and trust and often require an explicit or implicit leadership in order to encourage and maintain development. However, the scientific literature still gives limited attention to strategic approaches to development by emphasising the latter’s dynamism. In order to contribute to filling this research gap, a qualitative, multiple case study of nine Lithuanian clusters representing a variety of industrial settings was conducted to reveal the enablement of the development of complex organisational ecosystems. The performed research enabled to reveal different strategic approaches in two different stages of the development of complex organisational ecosystems. In the initial stage, the experimentation strategic approach, the external agent strategic approach and the strategic approach of the ad hoc clustering of fellow professionals can be distinguished. In later stages, strategies that vary by the degree of involvement of the ecosystem members, such as the strategic approach of self-organisation, the strategic approach of coordinated self-organisation and the strategic approach of active coordination, are more explicit.

The paper focuses on the issues of transforming the geographically spread co-working spaces of start-up firms into the open knowledge ecosystems, i.e. hubs of growth-focused organizations characterised by sharing and generating new industrial knowledge. The presented insights are based on the combination of theoretical review and empirical survey of 92 managers of start-ups and SMEs in Lithuania. This is an emergent community of regional start-up firms with rudimentary linkages and elements of knowledge sharing. The paper looks into the key issues that could contribute to strengthening the knowledge-based collaborations and synergies in such community, while assessing both the current situation and the evolutionary potential of such collaborations. We present the critical discussion in the light of ecosystem-as-structure vs. ecosystem-as-affiliation (Adner, 2017) approaches. Ecosystem-as-affiliation approach stresses the affiliation of ecosystem actors (to the network or focal actor), while ecosystem-as-structure views ecosystem through the lense of value proposition that network actors are co-creating. The first view has a more open-ended network perspective where spontaneous collaborations may lead to different outcomes and the network welcome different members with no prior objective in sight. The second view is more focused on aligning the resources and activities of multilateral set of partners for materialising specific value propositions, and members are invited to join based on these specific needs. The research has shown that, on one hand, the emergent start-up community relies on institutional coordination while retaining the element of openness. On the other hand, there is an explicit need for leadership in building the shared vision and designing the knowledge partnerships for delivering the shared value propositions. One should stress the importance of focal organizations and boundary spanners - both in terms of the organizational and knowledge boundaries. The shared business interests, network leadership and trust have been identified as the key cornerstones for further development of network into an open knowledge ecosystem, yet they are also associated with the greatest challenges to sustained knowledge sharing in the network.

The paper explores the key strategic tensions in the development of organizational ecosystems as well as the applied responses. It presents a conceptual overview of the key tension areas faced by the coordinators of complex inter-organizational systems and the results of empirical case studies conducted in knowledge-intensive industrial clusters in Lithuania (in the fields of high-technologies, information and communications technology, medical innovations and wellness products, cinema and game industries, machinery production and tourism). The research presented in the paper identifies eight strategic tensions faced by the leaders responsible for the development of organizational ecosystems: (1) focused interventionism vs. self-organization; (2) hierarchy-based structures vs. network-based (eco)systems; (3) under-connectedness vs. over-connectedness; (4) central rules vs. emerging metanorms; (5) short-term vs. long-term orientation; (6) focus on elements vs. relationships in the system; (7) big wins vs. small wins; and (8) exploitation vs. exploration. Case studies and expert interviews with the coordinators of different industrial clusters revealed the diversity of adopted approaches. The more mature the social and industrial context of the industrial cluster is, the less pronounced are the strategic tensions, and there is less need for focused interventions. In cases where such interventions are needed, the leaders of ecosystems adopt one of the following approaches: (1) take a position on one of the extremes by seeking to leverage the situation; (2) adopt a trade-off approach by seeking a point of balance; (3) capitalize on both extremes at the same time. The adopted approach may vary from one strategic tension to another within the same organizational ecosystem.