7. Ecosystem Leverage

Excellent organizations effectively leverage their (innovation) ecosystems. The consequences of intensified interactions with stakeholders of various nature and the necessary delegation of control in such ecosystems will be discussed. The insights presented reflect the fact that many organizations are becoming part of distributed value chains nowadays, moving away from the vertically-integrated conglomerates of the past. Only by focusing on some aspects of the value chain while strengthening cooperation with other parts, sufficient value can be added while maintaining enough flexibility with respect to the technological and market changes that are going on. Examples will be given from the development of the Brainport region in The Netherlands as innovation ecosystem during the first two decades of the new millennium. These will make clear that interactions between many parties change simultaneously in such ecosystems during a co-creation process. The role of anchor companies in maintaining supra-regional connections will be highlighted. Culture and knowledge-management changes that are involved will be discussed. Finally, it is indicated how the overall effectiveness of the approaches can be evaluated, and the results of such evaluations are discussed.