Ecosystem orchestration: Matching new ventures and established organizations to catalyze innovation

Innovation ecosystems have emerged as novel ways how to facilitate resource mobilization in order to develop innovative products and services. In such multi-actor settings, orchestrating firms play an especially interesting role; however, it is not fully understood how they attract, guide, and bring actors together. To comprehensively address this question, we draw on existing insights on network orchestration and combine them with novel theory on ecosystems. We seek to explore which mechanisms innovation ecosystem orchestrators use to identify matching resources among new ventures and established organizations, and how these ecosystem orchestration mechanisms differ from known network orchestration mechanisms. We conduct a single-case study of a Germany-based innovation ecosystem managed by one orchestrating firm. We thereby generate insights into general ecosystem management and specialized innovation programs in which the orchestrator “matches” established organizations and new ventures to identify opportunities for value co-creation. We illuminate how ecosystem orchestrators enable new ventures and established organizations to identify non-generic, multilateral complementarities. In this regard, we distinguish the outcomes of formal matchmaking programs and more informal engagement in the ecosystem. In addition, we show how the ecosystem orchestrator blends stakeholder-based network orchestration approaches with ecosystem-specific attitudes and practices. Lastly, our research adds to the dialectical perspectives on ecosystems by pointing towards key tensions that orchestrators need to manage.