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Literature review
Since a concept of ecosystem has a widespread appeal within scientific context it seems worthwhile to frame the focus of investigation on innovative ecosystems appeared within several high-technology clusters like the Silicon Valley or Boston innovation ecosystem. The following review will be based on a systematical studying of the literature dedicated to this problem.
Recently numerous attempts have been made to broaden a theoretical basis of this concept and accomplish the revision on its nature. A modern trend reflects this potentially important drive toward deepening and pushing forward a theoretical thinking about the general field of science.
Although an innovative ecosystem is a rather new happening, a definition “ecosystem” itself appeared last century. At first it was a biological term and nowadays it is still more associated with the science. The actual history of this branch of study can be traced to research of Charles Darwin in XIX century. Works of the modern scientists based on Darwin’s approach investigates economy as an ecosystem. For a long time the research on society as an ecosystem addressed only most elementary issues, but Charles Darwin tried to improve this approach. Unfortunately the studies of Charles Darwin on a society as an ecosystem transformed into an idea of fascism and were ably criticized for that reason. However, Darwin's studies have a great impact on population. In 1990s the idea underwent a shift and a new approach called Bionomics appeared [6]. Scientists of this new wave underlined that they were completely different from social Darwinists. The subject can be found in numerous publications and gained a significant number of followers. The idea of Bionomics in a nutshell is that cultural shifts are caused by evolution and not by gens like Darwin’s followers thought and that economics is not a mechanism but a living system, therefore it can't be tuned. Bionomists compared economics with tropical forest: there were a lot of companies connected with each other that tried to survive. Continuing the comparison bionomists declared that books, data bases, scientific magazines and people's minds were analogs of DNA in biological ecosystems.
The key difference between biological ecosystem and economic ecosystem is speed of changes: technological and cultural breakthroughs are more often than gen changes. Economy is more likely to be a living self-organized system than a stable mechanism, so the government should take a role of a gardener rather than a watchmaker because it can influence economy only indirectly. Otherwise it will not be effective.
Bionomists made a significant contribution to developing the concept of ecosystems in economy. Their idea is becoming popular not only among scientists but also among politicians. Czech president Vaclav Klaus admits that economy is an ecosystem and carries out his policy according to this approach. The American politician Brian Stark declares that all elements of economic ecosystem should be balanced [1]. He compares money with blood and insists that money should circulate to make economy evolve. Matia Mialich expandes this theory and declares that everyone should have treated market according to Darwin’s approach [5]. He says that natural selection is a market pressure and creativity of inventors and imagines marketing as an ecosystem.
However the problem has not received all the attention it deserves and still requires a closer examination and will be further examined in this project proposal.
The hypothesis of innovative ecosystems seems to become commonplace but it does not provide any sufficient explanation why they appear and what factors are catalyzers. Recent studies tend to underestimate a practical impact of this theory. One of the possible ways to solve this problem lies in careful studying of existing innovative ecosystems and revealing hidden reasons why they exist.
In my project proposal I rely heavily on a comparing approach to conduct a research. There is an indefinite multiplicity of ways to treat a definition of “ecosystem” which urges scholars to seek a unified framework. It will simplify the analysis if all the units of the economic ecosystem are allocated to a certain position. This practice enables predictions to deciding which factors are essential keys for developing an economic ecosystem.
It was decided to broaden the field of refereed literature and to include non-academic source in it. The significance of different Internet blogs, video and text presentations dedicated to a concept of innovative ecosystem could not be overestimated. Due to the fact that such Internet blogs are written by business angels and developers from The Silicon Valley it is a valuable source of first-hand information that can be easily found and extracted, It is always essential to have a view from inside because such a complex event as “an innovative ecosystem” cannot be described without a view from inside.