Innovation Labs as Value Co-Creation Platforms in Research Ecosystems

Abstract

Digititalisation has significantly altered economic structures and has increased the speed of innovation. One result of this development is that competition does no longer exclusively take place between individual organisations that offer similar products and services, but also between entire sectors and ecosystems that disrupt the usual value creation logic. Taking this ecosystem perspective into account, value creation is no longer limited to single organisations but increasingly requires interaction and cooperation between organistions. Focus shifts towards a value co-creation approach, in which companies create joint value propositions towards common target groups. Consequently, collaboration and coopetion are widely discussed themes within the business research agenda. However, in order to convince organisations to participate in a value co-creation ecosystem, there must be added value for the co-existing actors within the ecosystem. This is especially challenging when the added value cannot be directly measured in terms of revenue or monetary performance indicators. This often applies to research ecosystems or – more broadly – where the public sector is involved. In this context, academia is lacking insights on how inter-organisational interaction and value co-creation can be facilitated within the research ecosystem itself. At the same time, innovation labs have become increasingly popular for co-creating product and service innovations within the business context. The aim of this paper is to examine, whether and how the approach of innovation labs can act as platform for value co-creation in research ecosystems.Our research is based on a literature review in which we analyse and compare exisiting research on value creation in ecosystems and innovation labs. Focus will be laid on detecting reccuring themes and major concepts. In a subsequent step, casaul mapping will be applied in order to outline and examine the network and links between different key concepts. In addition, established concepts such as the Value Proposition Design as well as the Jobs-to-be-done theory will be examined for applicability to value co-creation ecosystems.This paper helps to establish deeper knowledge, facilitate theory development, and uncover blind spots in value co-creation in research ecosystems. Based on a literature review, a conceptual model will be derived, outlining networks and links between actors of the research ecosystem and how innovation labs can act as platform or nucleus within this research ecosystems in order to facilitate value co-creation. The identification of key concepts and connections between concepts will open up future research potential. By collecting empirical data in subsequent research endaveours, the model can be further developed and refined. Furthermore, exisiting literature gaps and blind spots in academia on research ecosystems are highlighted.