Innovation Ecosystem Emergence Barriers: Institutional Perspective

Abstract

Innovation ecosystems are built around new technologies, ideas, and innovations and their supporting actors and structures. However, the emergence of ecosystems is constrained by a host of institutional, system-level barriers in the existing organizational field that inhibit the legitimacy, resourcing, and growth of new initiatives. Through an empirical study in the Finnish energy sector, we find a strong and interdependent set of regulative, normative, and cultural–cognitive barriers that restrict the emergence of innovation ecosystems with new technologies. In particular, we identify a set of barriers and related field-sustaining mechanisms. The findings offer important implications for the theory and practice of innovation ecosystem emergence and related system-level barriers.