Addressing Socio-Material Issues for an Emerging Innovation Ecosystem: Insights From Cultural Heritage

This article deals with how innovation ecosystems emerge and become established. It focuses on technologies and how they favor interaction among actors, resources, and practices to facilitate an ecosystem's workability from a long-range perspective. The intrinsically complex and systemic nature of an innovation ecosystem is investigated by looking at the social and material issues concerning the organizing of social interactions, technologies, and other resources. This article adopts an action research approach through the combination of theory and practice and the support of actors—including the authors—involved in the empirical context of the Technological District for Cultural Heritage (DATABENC). This article contribute to the innovation ecosystem literature by assuming that innovation ecosystems emerge from the interplay of deliberate and unforeseen processes. Prompted by technologies, three milestones emerge supporting innovation ecosystem viability: 1) setting the socio-material context; 2) establishing interdependencies among actors, activities, and resources; and 3) giving continuity to social- and material-oriented interactions. In this context, technology is not merely an artefact; it takes three different roles: context builder, mediating mechanism, and institutionalization process enabler.