While corporate social responsibility (CSR) is prevailing, the concept of creating shared value (CSV) by coordinating business activities and social concerns brings a great opportunity to transforming the business model for sustainable development. To better understand the systems comprising corporate shared value chains would be beneficial to economics, society, and sustainability. This study refers to the ecosystem as the theoretical lens in the exploration of the CSV components and contexts, and takes Macy’s as a focal case. In terms of academic contributions, this study generalizes the CSV components, including markets, social innovations, social performances, new business models, corporate entrepreneurship, and social network support. The research findings contribute to conceptualize and systemize the concept of CSV. In terms of practical contributions, the contexts for the operation of CSV, as summarized by this study, can serve as a template for corporate planning of CSV activities and sustainable development.

The present study explores the impacts of corporate strategic orientation on innovation ecosystems through the perspective of systems thinking. Multiple-cases method was adopted to analyze three representative companies of different industries. In terms of academic contribution, the results of this study verify an innovation ecosystem model in a generalized manner, and find that market orientation, interaction orientation, and entrepreneurial orientation generate a positively reinforcing effect on the paths of the innovation ecosystem model in all phases, thus, diversifying the available literature of innovative ecosystems. In terms of practical contribution, this study presents a dynamic context of the development of new business, and describes the links between innovative activities and the market. Enterprises can refer to the proposed framework as well as strategic architecture in this study to effectively transform innovative activities into market performance.