Since Paul Bloom and Gregory Dees first urged social entrepreneurs to cultivate their ecosystem a decade ago, “ecosystem” frameworks for innovation and entrepreneurship are finally moving into mainstream economic development practice. These frameworks use the metaphor of a biological ecosystem to refer to the complex, dynamic environments in which innovators operate—environments characterized by an array of interacting organizations, individuals (collectively referred to as “actors”), elements, relationships, and conditions that either enable or impede innovation.
Image: MIT D-Lab Innovation Ecosystem Builders Fellows and Scale-Up Fellows at a convening in April, 2018. (Photo courtesy of MIT D-Lab)
