Innovation Ecosystems: How Driving Forces and Success Factors Affect Opportunities for Business Innovation

This book is about geography, economics, society, and innovation. Why did different regions evolve in different ways? What caused economic priorities and activities to go in one direction or another? The author believes that happenstance played a relatively minor role in this process. There were and are driving forces, as well as success factors.

In each ecosystem, ambitious immigrants arrived, displaced native populations, and proceeded to develop and exploit the geography of their ecosystem, which included leveraging water resources for transportation, commerce, irrigation, etc. They often invented the means of development and exploitation, including unfortunately slavery, but also various technical methods, tools, and devices. Inventions that became innovations enabled industries, revenues, profits, and economic growth, initially for the ecosystem and then more broadly.

The impacts of geography and economics are profound. Available resources strongly affect the options available for sustainable economic growth. This growth is fueled by technological innovations, that are significantly affected by the physical, economic, and social characteristics of the ecosystem of interest. The eight case studies in this book illustrate how patterns of these characteristics impact innovation.

The eight case studies depict changes over centuries, rather than just decades or years. Today’s crises are often just blips in the ongoing evolution of an innovation ecosystem. There are ups and downs, but the physical, economic, and social characteristics of the ecosystems dominate their evolution. These factors largely determine what potential innovations are pursued, who leads these pursuits, and why they think they can succeed. People and organizations dominate the factors influencing success.

All of the descriptions of places are factual and based on a range of documentation, as well as experiences. Descriptions of people are factual as well, but portrayals of interactions among people are sometimes synthesized from minimal empirical evidence. The author intended to portray the spirit of the times to which these people richly contributed. Thus, there is a bit of creative non-fiction.

The stories in this book are inherently strongly influenced by the author’s personal experiences. Indeed, the order of the chapters follows my lived experiences. These experiences are leavened with supporting evidence to the extent possible and reasonable. These personal experiences were profoundly affected by the author’s mentors and colleagues along the way. he is immensely grateful to the many people who befriended me, looked out for me, and provided guidance and advice. Innovation Ecosystems reflect the stories enabled by these relationships.

William B. Rouse, Ph.D., is a Research Professor in the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University and Professor Emeritus and former Chair of the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He has served on the facul7es of Tuon (Routledge, 2023), Transforming Public-Private Ecosystems (Oxford, 2022), Failure Management (Oxford, 2021), and Compu>ng Possible Futures (Oxford, 2019).

Among many advisory roles, he has served as Chair of the committee on Human Factors (now Board on Human Systems Integra7on) of the Na7onal Academies, a member of the advisory committee for the Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education of the Na7onal Academies, a member of the U.S. Air Force Scien7fic Advisory Board, and a member of the DoD
Senior Advisory Group on Modeling and Simulation. He has been designated a life7me Na7onal Associate of the Na7onal Research Council and National Academies.

Rouse is an elected member of the Na7onal Academy of Engineering and has been elected a fellow of four professional societies -- Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), the Institute for Opera7ons Research and Management Science (INFORMS), and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES). He received his B.S. from the University of Rhode Island, and his S.M. and Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.