The role of regional policy for Industry 4.0 adoption: A study of Finnish South Karelia

Igboanua C.O.; Sinkovics R.R.; Kuivalainen O. European Management Journal. DOI: 10.1016/j.emj.2025.06.005.

This paper explores the critical role of regional policy in facilitating the adoption of advanced technologies, focusing on Industry 4.0 in the South Karelia region of Finland. Drawing on diverse perspectives from managers and regional development experts, the study examines key drivers and barriers to adoption and how the regional context shapes them. The findings highlight that successful adoption requires an approach tailored to region-specific conditions and supported by a strategic mix of four governance roles: advocacy, ecosystem and network development, targeted funding, and skills and human capital development. These roles influence firm-level transformation not directly, but by enabling organisational drivers and mitigating barriers, underscoring the importance of context-sensitive, adaptive regional governance in advancing digitalisation. © 2025 The Authors.

Exploring strategic resources and open innovation practices in regional wine clusters: insights from SMEs in Brazil

Schneider Hahn I.; Camargo Junior A.S.; Passarin L.; Oliveira Júnior M.M. International Journal of Wine Business Research. DOI: 10.1108/IJWBR-09-2024-0049. 

Purpose: This study aims to examine the strategic resources and open innovation practices of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) within a Brazilian wine cluster, focusing on their knowledge management strategies for product and process development and their openness to external collaborations. Design/methodology/approach: The research uses a mixed-methods approach, based on interviews, questionnaires, field observations and document analysis conducted with 19 wineries in the Midwest region of Santa Catarina, Brazil. Data were transcribed, coded and analyzed using a systematic methodological framework to ensure robustness and validity. Findings: The findings indicate that knowledge appropriation for product and process innovation remains low, with wineries predominantly relying on industrial property registration as a protective mechanism against knowledge spillovers. While firms exhibit strong engagement with suppliers and customers, their interactions with universities, research institutes and sector associations are limited, suggesting a preference for a semi-closed innovation model. Research limitations/implications: Its focus on a single regional cluster limits the generalizability of findings. Practical implications: The study highlights the need for enhanced engagement in open innovation among SMEs in traditional industries. Strengthening collaboration with external knowledge sources, such as research institutions and industry associations, could enhance the innovation capacity and market positioning of wineries. Social implications: Adopting open innovation practices could drive local economic development, create jobs and strengthen the regional innovation ecosystem. Originality/value: This research advances the literature on open innovation in traditional industries by integrating resource-based theory and open innovation frameworks. It provides empirical insights into how SMEs in a wine cluster manage strategic resources and interact within their innovation ecosystem, offering relevant implications for policymakers and industry stakeholders. © 2025, Emerald Publishing Limited.

A game theory analysis of regional innovation ecosystems

Shakiba H.; Belitski M. Journal of Technology Transfer. DOI: 10.1007/s10961-024-10131-4. 

Despite the popularity of innovation ecosystems in the regional studies literature, the organization of knowledge cooperation and transfer within these ecosystems remains largely unexplored, particularly in countries and regions where the government plays a significant role. Regional studies and innovation literature have not addressed how and under which conditions actors start cooperation in the ecosystem, often assuming that knowledge cooperation between agents is a truism. This paper employs a Game Theory approach to examine the knowledge cooperation networks within the Nishapur Innovation Ecosystem. The model results demonstrated that seven key actors are pivotal in explaining knowledge cooperation within the ecosystem. Eighteen feasible states were identified based on the actors and their strategies. Results indicated that with the current actors and their current preferences, the current state is most likely to continue, therefore, the probability of operationalizing one model of behavior in the Nishapur innovation ecosystem is low. The results obtained from the reverse game analysis revealed that appropriate regional policies are required to ensure that the ecosystem is socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2024.

The Impact of Supplier Innovation and Competitiveness on Local Content Compliance: The Moderating Role of Firm Size in the UAE Oil and Gas Sector

Al Marzooqi M.; Haouas I.; Cherian J. Business Strategy and Development. DOI: 10.1002/bsd2.70140.

This study examines the effects of supplier innovation and long-term competitiveness on local oil and gas content compliance, considering the United Arab Emirates (UAE) economic diversification and sustainability objectives and the moderating influence of firm size. Using a quantitative research design to survey 462 oil and gas suppliers in the UAE, and resource-based view (RBV) and institutional theories, we examined innovation, competitiveness, and local content requirements (LCRs) compliance. Long-term competitiveness and supplier innovation positively increase LCR compliance more optimally by larger suppliers, making firm size a key moderator. Special initiatives are necessary to support smaller suppliers, overcome resource constraints, and improve competitiveness. This study contributes to the literature by providing insights into the interplay between innovation, competitiveness, and policy compliance in emerging economies. We provide recommendations for improving supplier innovation, aiding smaller firms, and synchronizing LCR policies with sustainability objectives for policymakers and industrial stakeholders. © 2025 ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

A taxonomy of the knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship: firm types and knowledge sources

Civera A.; Schenkenhofer J.E.; Vismara S. Journal of Technology Transfer. DOI: 10.1007/s10961-025-10227-5.

Knowledge-intensive firms increasingly harness geographical proximity to enhance collaboration and knowledge exchange within dynamic clusters. This paper examines knowledge spillovers and their impact on innovation within dynamic clusters, focusing on how different firm types – startups, spin-offs, unicorns, and hidden champions – absorb and utilize external knowledge. We develop a taxonomy categorizing these firms based on their unique characteristics, knowledge sources, and absorptive capacities. By analyzing how these distinct firm types engage with the cluster environment and leverage knowledge spillovers, this study provides valuable insights for entrepreneurs, policymakers, and researchers. The framework contributes to a deeper understanding of knowledge diffusion dynamics and informs strategies for fostering innovation within technology transfer ecosystems. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2025.

Middle managers at the crossroads: Navigating legitimacy tensions in pursuit of radical innovation in nascent ecosystems

Ellis S.J.; Khanagha S.; Aalbers R.; Tuertscher P. Research Policy. DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2025.105287.

To pursue radical innovation in emergent digital ecosystems, middle managers need to balance the often conflicting expectations and interests of internal and external stakeholders. Our longitudinal field study of Atos, a leading IT company, follows a team of middle managers aiming to collaborate with novel financial technology firms—so-called fintechs—to catalyze radical innovation. We explore how they navigated contradictory legitimacy issues arising from stakeholders both internal and external to the firm. In doing so, we outline how they adopted and adjusted a changing mix of legitimacy-seeking behavior over time to generate and sustain an array of radical innovations. Our findings show how legitimacy issues continuously evolve as middle managers embed their innovation efforts, driven by shifting stakeholder expectations, leading them to adjust their legitimacy-seeking approach. We contribute to the literature on collaborative innovation ecosystem strategies, emphasizing the central role of middle managers in connecting the internal organizational stakeholders to external ecosystem actors. © 2025.

Overseas innovation ecosystem collaboration in the healthcare sector

Pikkarainen M.; Hurmelinna-Laukkanen P.; Iivari M.; Jansson M.; Hong-Gu H. Technovation. DOI: 10.1016/j.technovation.2025.103302.

Leveraging innovation collaboration and introducing novel data-driven healthcare services in new markets typically depends on functioning innovation ecosystems that facilitate local and global collaboration between industry actors, hospitals, and academia. However, as the healthcare sector has unique features including ethical, regulatory and privacy restrictions and slow adoption of new technologies, it can be argued that existing theorizing may not fully capture the dynamics and development of overseas ecosystems in this field. Aligning disparate stakeholder interests can be notably challenging, and approaching hospital markets is complicated, time-consuming, and expensive, especially in international settings such as those bridging Western and Eastern countries. Many actors consider engagement in collaboration carefully, weighing the balance between benefits and costs. This study explores how overseas innovation ecosystem collaboration emerges and evolves in a healthcare context, focusing on the challenges and benefits influencing this development, and how these are addressed. Based on a seven-year longitudinal case study involving actors from Europe and Asia, we show how companies engaging in innovation ecosystem collaboration can benefit from the orchestration of such collaboration by other actors than companies. Extending earlier knowledge, we explicate how academic actors can step in to orchestrate collaborative innovation activities, influencing factors such as regulatory frameworks, funding instruments, resource availability, leadership and strategic alignment, and involvement of mature companies in a fashion that removes the related barriers or even turns challenges into enablers. © 2025 The Authors. 

Inside-out and outside-in: How entrepreneurial ecosystems can build legitimacy through signaling

Donaldson C.; Villagrasa J.; Theodoraki C. Journal of Small Business Management. DOI: 10.1080/00472778.2024.2394499.

The entrepreneurial ecosystem is increasingly drawing the attention of scholars and practitioners, underscoring the importance of collective dynamics between entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial-support intermediaries in fostering entrepreneurial activity. The entrepreneurial journey is characterized by information asymmetry, with entrepreneurial actors sending signals as representations of their underlaying qualities, hoping to acquire necessary resources. Current entrepreneurship research predominantly applies signaling theory to individual and venture-level activities. However, studies that explore signaling within the broader context of entrepreneurial ecosystems are scarce. This paper aims to bridge the entrepreneurial ecosystem-signaling gap by offering insight into how emerging entrepreneurial ecosystems gain legitimacy. We analyze a nascent, privately governed entrepreneurial ecosystem located in Valencia, Spain. Employing a conceptual model based on our findings, we introduce a key boundary condition for the study of signaling in an entrepreneurship context. © 2024 International Council for Small Business.

Oasis in the desert or icing on the cake? The impact of entrepreneurship accelerators across ecosystems

Qin F. Journal of International Business Studies. 10.1057/s41267-025-00780-4. 

The effectiveness of accelerators in fostering new venture development has traditionally been attributed to variations in their internal operations and design, with limited consideration of contextual factors. This study broadens the understanding of accelerators by situating their roles in relation to entrepreneurial ecosystems and introducing a multi-level framework on how macro-level institutions and meso-level accelerator programs interact to shape venture growth. By linking organizational theories on accelerators with institutional economics, this research juxtaposes and tests two perspectives: institutional voids and institutional support. On the one hand, accelerators address institutional voids by acting as intermediaries in entrepreneurial resource markets through knowledge and resource curation, network brokerage, and signaling. On the other hand, the effectiveness of these intermediation roles is constrained by the quality of institutions. Contrary to the prevailing belief that accelerators deliver greater value in underdeveloped institutional environments with inefficient entrepreneurial resource markets, the findings reveal that ventures in such contexts derive less growth benefit from accelerators. This study contributes to the growing body of comparative and international accelerator research and offers broader implications for meso-level intervention programs, suggesting these programs require working in concert with robust ecosystems rather than operating in isolation in order to achieve their intended objectives. © The Author(s) 2025.

The Interdependence Between Donors and Investors: Liability of Hybridity, Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Affordances, and Venture Financing

Ofem B.; Uzuegbunam I.; Nambisan S. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice. DOI: 10.1177/10422587251347059.

 This study investigates how spatial and digital affordances within entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) enable early-stage hybrid ventures to overcome the liability of hybridity and to secure funding from both philanthropic and equity funding sources. Using a simultaneous equation model with a U.S.-based sample of 2,723 hybrid ventures, we demonstrate that philanthropic and equity funding exhibit a statistically and economically significant complementary relationship. We further find that accelerator participation weakens this complementary relationship, while social media utilization strengthens it. These findings highlight the mechanisms through which EE-based affordances enhance hybrid ventures’ ability to navigate competing institutional logics and attract diverse funding sources. © The Author(s) 2025.