Abstract
This paper investigates how innovation evolves in a complex ecosystem. While innovation outcomes have been extensively studied in strategy and related literature, prior studies often abstract away from the interdependent nature of innovation within broader assemblies or systems of technologies. In this study, I examine those factors that shape the probability of innovation becoming integrated within a complex ecosystem in the context of Linux Kernel. This setting allows me to observe the complete history of both successful and failed innovations and the evolution of technological and actor interdependence. The final sample consists of over 600,000 innovations proposed by tens of thousands of different innovators between 2005 to 2019. I provide evidence of how technological interdependence and heterogeneous interests between system participants negatively impact innovation integration. The results also show that the uniqueness of innovation has a U-shaped relationship with innovation integration.
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