The role of design principles in partners' alignment toward innovation ecosystem emergence. The autonomous connected mobility case

This article aims at shedding light on the role of design principles in the process of alignment of partners during the structuring phase of an innovation ecosystem. Ecosystem emergence and management is under current scrutiny as all major economic and societal challenges involve innovation solutions at ecosystem level. As structures, processes, technology standards, demand and offer system, regulations are not defined, the selected phase requires partners to collective explore the unknowns. Literatures provides elements on ecosystem emergence factors (Hannah & Eisenhardt, 2018), and on partners' alignment relevance toward such emergence (Adner, 2017). Design perspective contributes to identify rules (LeMasson et al. 2012) and principles (Olilla and Ystrom 2016) for actors to perform collective exploration, but it is not clear how design principles can foster the process toward the alignment of actors. Research was conducted applying the inductive multiple case study methodology, and action research protocol on three initiatives, all contributing to the structuring of the autonomous connected mobility ecosystem. Data collected through the participation to meetings, and the realization of semi-structured interviews, were analyzed through coding. Main results are the definition of the path of alignment of partners in the context of ecosystem structuring as well as the confirmation of design principles in such strategic process. We contribute to the characterisation of the design principles by identifying specific conditions for the effective application of the them. Furthermore, we identified a sixth design principle related to the role of artefacts management in collaboration toward new arrangements and interdependencies exploration. This research is relevant to the conference as it is focused on contributing to the modellization of ecosystem structuring at the intersection of sectors boundaries, with implications on the boundaries of organizations. Autonomous connected mobility is a field of innovation situated at the intersections of sectors, with high economical and societal values.

Giulia Marcocchia Associate. The role of design principles in partners' alignment toward innovation ecosystem emergence. The autonomous connected mobility case. Innovation in an era of disruption, R&D Management, Jul 2021, Online (Paris), France. ⟨hal-04530159⟩