Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to clarify the role of technology as it has been framed within Innovation System (IS) and Innovation Ecosystem (IE) literature research streams. The methodological choice is a systemic review that allows to focus on theoretical proposals by scholars and the identification of the commonalities regarding the pivotal role of technology and the differences in describing innovation-based mechanisms in both literatures. Results show that the key elements are the overall idea of technology as pivotal in driving innovation, the actors affecting technology and contributing to reach innovation-based goals, and the decisional process emerging because of technology. Furthermore, emerging features on evolution through time and knowledge-transforming mechanisms favored by technology in IE show an opportunity to learn in-depth from specific insights generated in both the literatures and to delineate a more comprehensive approach to technology related to innovation in wider interconnected contexts.
Highlights
IntroductionInnovation is said to take place in wider interconnected contexts more than in single firms, and scholars focusing on understanding innovation as a multiactor and collaborative-based phenomenon are growing in number as time goes by [1,2,3].On one hand, large firms or institutions are unable to afford innovation alone because of rapid changes spurred by great challenges that society has to face, while on the other, opportunities that innovation produces are more useful than before, spreading into further change when innovation is open and its results are shared [4,5,6].An important feature of this new complexity is that innovation is usually seen as strategically developed around a specific technology, increasingly involving a great variety of actors and networks [7,8,9,10]
The contribution of this research is the opportunity to learn from specific insights generated in both the literatures and to allow for a more comprehensive approach to technology related to innovation in wider interconnected contexts
The Innovation System (IS) perspective provides more opportunities to take a comprehensive view of the analyses of the overall IS, and to look more in depth at the detailed dynamics of knowledge flows within the system [28]
Summary
Innovation is said to take place in wider interconnected contexts more than in single firms, and scholars focusing on understanding innovation as a multiactor and collaborative-based phenomenon are growing in number as time goes by [1,2,3].On one hand, large firms or institutions are unable to afford innovation alone because of rapid changes spurred by great challenges that society has to face, while on the other, opportunities that innovation produces are more useful than before, spreading into further change when innovation is open and its results are shared [4,5,6].An important feature of this new complexity is that innovation is usually seen as strategically developed around a specific technology, increasingly involving a great variety of actors and networks [7,8,9,10]. One of the most recent and all-embedding approaches to the role of new technologies in furthering innovation was by Ardito et al [13]; they proposed the IoT as a technology shaping new solutions and offering additional knowledge to provide new opportunities to a multitude of actors. They recorded the beneficial effects related to businesses, policymakers, and managers towards innovative activity design
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