Description
Tackling climate change is a pressing and complex challenge that requires the collaboration ofheterogenous organizations in innovation ecosystems. To grasp the complex societal challenge of
climate change, these ecosystems need to develop comprehensive approaches. However, given the
severe time, organizational and resource constraints, tackling climate change also requires feasible
approaches that enable rapid and cost-effective scaling. Consequently, innovation ecosystems are faced with a constant trade-off between comprehensiveness and feasibility. Despite first insights into innovation ecosystems’ potential to generate innovative products or services to tackle climate change, less is known about the composition and interplay of the technological, organizational and contextual factors of an innovation ecosystem balancing such a trade-off when developing approaches with high climate impact. While both comprehensiveness and feasibility are vital, it might be difficult to achieve both at the same time. To contribute towards resolving this puzzle, we aim to explore how to design an innovation ecosystem that can manage this trade-off and unlock climate impact. Given the complexity of organizing innovation ecosystems for climate impact (e.g., Falcke et al., 2023), understanding how and why ecosystems can do so is theoretically and empirically challenging. In the current stage of the research project, we provide a theoretical basis for understanding approaches of innovation ecosystems that generate high climate impact through compatible ecosystem design choices across the technological, organizational, and contextual layers. We illustrate the conceptual value and possibilities for theorizing with two cases in the context of the clean energy transition and ocean sustainability. To investigate the climate impact of innovation ecosystems, we aim to use an innovative approach that combines a decentralized, collaborative reanalysis of qualitative data (e.g., Köhler et al., 2023) with Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) (Fiss, 2007). This methodological innovation can unlock novel ways for conducting large-scale systematic case comparisons without compromising on in-depth case knowledge. To gather structural insights, we are following an analytical protocol and are actively seeking out to get access to more cases that allow us to define a relevant outcome variable, refine our conditions, and gather the data. By presenting our research and methodological approach in the format of a research idea presentation at the BSR research seminar, we would like to gather feedback for further refining our approach and invite other researchers to join the research project based on their original case research.
| Period | 19 Mar 2024 |
|---|---|
| Event title | Business, Society & Responsibility Research Seminar |
| Event type | Seminar |
| Location | Rotterdam, NetherlandsShow on map |