STI Policies to Augment Innovation Ecosystems

Despite its popularity among scholars, practitioners and policymakers, there is still no consensus around the term “innovation ecosystem” and related concepts. Ecosystem approach, which focuses on relationships between innovation system players and their interdependence to co-create value, role of private sector and small firms, role of digital technologies, open innovation, and market forces and demand side of innovation, can provide a complementary approach to innovation system to help augment innovation systems. In this paper, different ecosystem approaches are introduced and innovation ecosystem components, ecosystem life cycle phases, and policies to strengthen innovation ecosystems are reviewed. Since ecosystem literature is more focused on firm strategies than government policies, there is still no comprehensive framework for innovation ecosystem policies, so in this paper different innovation ecosystem policies are reviewed. Innovation ecosystems’ success depends on multiple factors, and different innovation ecosystem policies were introduced in literature, including supporting ecosystem transition, supporting shared vision creation, supporting co-evolution, supporting geographic proximity, supporting platform creation, and supporting desired ecosystem properties. At the end, Iran’s biopharmaceutical innovation ecosystem is introduced as a case study.       * Corresponding author: elyasi.atu@gmail.com