Emerging issues on business innovation ecosystems: the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for knowledge management (KM) and innovation within and among enterprises

Emerging issues on business innovation ecosystems: the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for knowledge management (KM) and innovation within and among enterprises Introduction to the special issue: ICTs in KM and innovation Nowadays, ICTs operate as a large network infrastructure system or digital platform, where distinct business agents exchange information and knowledge.This "innovation ecosystem" (Adner and Kapoor, 2010;Nambisan and Sawhney, 2011) or "ecology of complex innovation" (Dougherty and Dunne, 2011) has been defined as the innovation context where employees, customers, suppliers and business partners play an active role in supporting innovation.There are both direct and indirect network externalities between and among the different business agents and partners, which enable the creation of an innovation ecosystem.For instance, an interaction occurs when a web "surfer" joins a page or a profile created by an enterprise and shows an interest in the firm by expressing his/her idea on the digital platform.This interaction calls for a knowledge exchange process from which more innovations are generated (Scuotto, Del Giudice, Della Peruta and Tarba, 2017;Soto-Acosta et al., 2010).Likewise, digital platforms involve users from both the outside and inside of the organizational environment.For instance, the wide spread of the intranet among all different forms of business ( from small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to corporate companies) is supporting the knowledge exchange process and, in turn, the improvement of KM systems (Scuotto and Mueller, 2017;Soto-Acosta et al., 2014, 2017).Alongside, innovation ecosystems and their associated ICTs enable employees to feel more committed to the organizational environment and, therefore, digital platforms are prone to deliver innovative ideas.This has resulted in overcoming companies' boundaries and bringing a heterogeneous set of knowledge in the process of idea generation (Scuotto, Del Giudice, Bresciani and Meissner, 2017).In a nutshell, ICTs facilitate interaction between employees to execute the innovation process with users and business partners from remote places.Thus, ICTs enhance knowledge creation and sharing by bringing together partners and/or employees with diverse expertise and experience and, in turn, enabling open and closed innovation (Martinez-Conesa et al., 2017;Vrontis et al., 2017).Furthermore, ICTs enhance companies' innovation ambidexterity as the capability of simultaneously pursing incremental and radical innovation with equal dexterity (Scuotto, Santoro, Bresciani and Del Giudice, 2017;Soto-Acosta et al., 2018).Although there is research analyzing the network effects and their impact on platform adoption and use (e.g.Gallaugher and Wang, 2002;Katona et al., 2011;Nair et al., 2004;Clements and Ohashi, 2005;Lee and Mendelson, 2008), this special issue advances existing theoretical and practical research by examining the impact of the use of digital platforms on business performance, innovation as well as KM.The papers of this special issue offer worldwide empirical studies on the role of ICTs for KM and innovation, using different methodologies-from a quantitative (e.g.structural equation modeling) to a qualitative approach (e.g.case study). Overview of the special edition papersCrammond, Omeihe, Murray and Ledger conduct a research on Scottish SMEs entitled "Managing knowledge through social media: modeling an entrepreneurial approach for