Sustainable Ecosystems

Dear Colleagues, 

The notion of business ecosystems has been around for almost three decades and researchers have identified and studied different types of ecosystems serving different purposes and operating in various contexts such as innovation ecosystems and entrepreneurial ecosystems. Despite these advances in our knowledge, to date, our understanding of ecosystems remains largely fragmented. This might partly stem from the fact that the nature and purposes of ecosystems have shifted over time. For instance, more recently, ecosystems have internally become more group-serving and ‘egalitarian’, and have started to tackle long-term, societal-level problems (whether those be environmental or societal issues) aimed at sustainable living. This implies that, to achieve their goals, ecosystems themselves need to be sustainable, which raises the following question: 

What does it entail for an ecosystem to be sustainable? 

Whereas an organisational-level view of ecosystems suggests that they consist of long-term collaborative arrangements among organisations, in practice, it is boundary-spanning individuals and teams that build relationships and collaborate with each other across organisational boundaries. Therefore, for ecosystems to be sustainable, it might imply that the underlying boundary-spanning individual- and team-level relationships need to also be resilient and sustainable. 

The purpose of this special issue is to combine a set of contributions that help us understand what it entails for ecosystems to be sustainable, by focusing not only on the organisational level, but by also taking into account the individual-, team- and any potential cross-level effects. We invite contributions from different disciplines (e.g., strategy, innovation, entrepreneurship, organisational psychology, management, organisational behaviour, etc.) and particularly welcome multi-disciplinary perspectives and research. Papers can be conceptual, case study-based, survey-based or grounded in other qualitative or quantitative methods. Implications for practitioners need to receive ample attention. 

With this call we would like to invite you to contribute to our special issue for Sustainability entitled “Sustainable Ecosystems”. The focus of collaborative innovation research (e.g., the alliance literature, the network literature, the Open Innovation literature), has increasingly shifted towards studying ecosystems (Bogers, Sims, & West, 2019; Ritala & Almpanopoulou, 2017). Ecosystems are long-term, complex systems of collaborative relations among a wide variety of different types of partners (e.g., entrepreneurs, large companies, governmental agencies, research centers, universities, etc.). These partners usually strive towards achieving common goals and engage in joint strategizing; that is, they co-create a shared vision, jointly create and deliver value, and share returns. Usually these ecosystems are led or organized by an orchestrating partner that establishes governance, stimulates interaction and relationship-building, develops a shared culture, etc. (Leten, Vanhaverbeke, Roijakkers, Clerix, & van Helleputte, 2013). 

The notion of business ecosystems has been around since the early 1990s (Moore, 1993), and researchers have identified and studied different types of ecosystems serving different purposes and operating in various contexts: innovation ecosystems, entrepreneurial ecosystems, knowledge ecosystems (Adner, 2006; van der Borgh, Cloodt & Romme, 2012; Isenberg, 2014). Despite these advances in our knowledge, to date, our understanding of ecosystems remains largely fragmented. This is partly due to the fact that our knowledge largely relies on insightful, yet possibly unique case studies (El Sawy, Amsinck, Kraemmergaard & Lerbech Vinther, 2016). It is also partly due to the fact that the nature and purposes of ecosystems have shifted over time. For instance, whereas orchestrating organizations used to create ecosystems in order to serve their own (competitive) interests with the help of partners, recently, ecosystems have started to increasingly be geared towards accommodating all partners’ interests equally (Kapoor, 2018). Similarly, whereas ecosystems used to be primarily focused on creating value via high-tech innovations, more recently, ecosystems have started to focus on providing sustainable solutions that create value for society at large (e.g., dealing with inequality, solving environmental problems, etc.) (Visnjic, Neely, Cennamo & Visnjic, 2016). In short, ecosystems have 1) internally become more group-serving and ‘egalitarian’, and 2) have started to tackle long-term, societal-level problems (whether those be environmental or societal issues) aimed at sustainable living. This implies that, to achieve their goals, ecosystems themselves need to be sustainable, which raises the following question: 

What does it entail for an ecosystem to be sustainable? 

For instance, an organizational-level view of ecosystems suggests that they consist of collaborative arrangements among organizations and that they undergo a number of development phases (initiation, growth, maturity, adjourning or rejuvenating). Yet, these macro-level processes, often find their foundations at the micro-level. In practice, it is boundary-spanning individuals and teams that build relationships and collaborate with each other across organizational boundaries (e.g., Foss, Husted, & Michailova, 2010). These individuals and teams need to get to know each other, establish and build trust, coordinate work, balance competition with cooperation, resolve potential conflicts, deepen or abandon the relationship, etc. In other words, if we assume that ecosystems themselves need to be sustainable to tackle long-term societal-level sustainability issues, this might mean that the underlying boundary-spanning individual- and team-level relationships need to be resilient and sustainable. 

The purpose of this special issue is to combine a set of contributions that help us understand what it entails for ecosystems to be sustainable, by focusing not only on the organizational level, but by also taking into account the individual-, team- and any potential cross-level effects. We invite contributions from different disciplines (e.g., strategy, innovation, entrepreneurship, organizational psychology, management, organizational behaviour, etc.) and particularly welcome multi-disciplinary perspectives and research. Papers can be conceptual, case study-based, survey-based or grounded in other qualitative or quantitative methods. Implications for practitioners need to receive ample attention. 

In particular, we invite researchers to address the following questions:

• How do we define sustainable ecosystems?
• What is the role of sustainable ecosystems in solving societal and environmental challenges?
• What are antecedents of sustainable ecosystems?
• How are sustainable ecosystems set up and managed?
• How do sustainable ecosystems evolve?
• What are outcomes of sustainable ecosystems and how do we measure these outcomes?
• What makes sustainable ecosystems successful and what leads to their (premature) demise?
• How do we define resilient and/or sustainable relationships among individuals and teams?
• How do we build resilient and/or sustainable relationships among individuals and/or teams in ecosystems?
• How do we create shared goals, co-create value and enhance collaborative capability to enable sustainable ecosystems?
• How do we encourage trust-building, open information-sharing and optimal decision-making to facilitate sustainable ecosystems?
• How do leadership processes help or hinder the development of sustainable ecosystems?

Prof. Nadine Roijakkers
Dr. Diana Rus
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• ecosystems
• sustainability
• open innovation
• collaboration
• human relations