Designing Knowledge Ecosystems Through Social, Mental, Material, and Moral Ecologies

Paper in proceeding, 2020

Knowledge ecosystems, where universities, public research institutions, and for-profit firms collaborate to develop new knowledge in a pre-competitive setting, have become increasingly important to address complex, societal challenges requiring creating, combining, and recombining knowledge. Still, additional insights concerning the emergence and evolution of ecosystems are needed to understand if and how knowledge ecosystems can be designed. Based on a longitudinal study of a knowledge ecosystem, this paper explores how four ecologies; social, mental, material and moral, emerging from social interaction are influencing the emergence and evolution of the ecosystem. The findings enhance our understanding of the microfoundations of ecosystems, not only through in-depth knowledge about the dynamic and emergent organization of a knowledge ecosystem and the ecologies that constitute it, but also of the collaborative work that takes place to continuously regenerate it."