Designing Institutional Complexity to Enable Innovation in Service Ecosystems

摘要

In this paper we build on a view of change and innovation stemming from institutional complexity in service ecosystems, that is, institutionally enabled and constrained systems of service systems, and give suggestions on how such conditions can be designed to facilitate innovation. W e conceptualize service ecosystems as near-decomposable complex systems in which change is enabled through the co-existence of alternative, overlapping and conflicting institutionalized views on problems and solutions, and draw from social network theory to understand how such institutional complexity emerges both between and within actors in service systems. We then connect these theoretical insights with practice and give guidance on how institutional complexity can be created and how opportunities for interaction and collaboration between diverse and conflicting views on problems and solutions can be fostered.