5. Open Innovation Ecosystems

As you learned from open innovation, partnerships accumulate knowledge and accelerate innovation and growth. This chapter builds upon research on value constellations and their role in open innovation as an iterative model with the ability to create an ecosystem. Innovation ecosystems that are strategically linked through firms to foster idea generation, co-development, and collaboration are explored. As the first, we introduce hyperconnectivity as one fundamental principle of a business ecosystem. The world is a digital network, characterized by interdependency and integrated collaboration where everything is connected; hence, value can only be generated through mutual exchange. We broaden your understanding about how incumbents, fintechs, and non-banks link financial services to create ecosystems that provide clients with new experiences and added value. By tapping into the Silicon Valley, as the case in point of a geographically localized ecosystem, we introduce other smaller ecosystems relevant for blockchain like the Crypto Valley. The financial inclusion ecosystem of Ningbo represents how they can be used for developing rural areas and fighting poverty. In contrast, highly efficient cross-sector ecosystems that emerged in China out of the Alibaba Group became rapidly a dominant force also because they are increasingly spreading their reach into financial services. Based on our research, we discuss the success factors of an ecosystem incubator. Like economic areas and alliances, we assume global competition will be between ecosystems without borders of sectors rather than companies.