Engagement in innovation ecosystems and commercialization of innovation: geography of collaboration, uncertainty and risk

This study demonstrates that the relationship between the breadth of engagement with innovation ecosystem actors across four geographical dimensions shapes innovation outcomes and is subject to firms’ perceptions of risk and uncertainty. Using firm-level data for 14,382 innovative firms and 28,913 firm-year observations from 2004 to 2016 in the United Kingdom (UK), we find a strong link between the breadth of engagement with innovation ecosystem actors regionally, nationally, and internationally and the commercialization of innovation. Economic risk and market uncertainty condition the collaboration–innovation relationship, but the robustness of these effects show that geographical location of partners matters. Identifying this idiosyncratic relationship contributes to the open innovation and innovation ecosystems literature by demonstrating that changes in knowledge collaboration with ecosystem actors increase innovation and that uncertainty and risk act as boundary conditions for innovation.