Value creation within campus-based ecosystems : toward evidence-based guidelines

The ecosystem approach to value creation is becoming increasingly popular in industry, but the body of empirical work in this area is still limited. As a result, it remains unclear how ecosystems add value to value creation processes at the company level. Moreover, most ecosystem research suffers from the divide between academia and management practice. In this study, we therefore adopt a design science perspective on value creation in (campus-based) ecosystems, to explore how residents assess value sources available within the ecosystem as well as how ecosystem managers can enable value creation for different types of residents. We first develop a system-theoretic perspective on value sources of business ecosystems. Drawing on a multi-level framework, we define a set of ecosystem properties and link these to value creation sources. Subsequently, based on a case study of a Dutch high-tech campus, we develop a set of design principles for enabling and supporting value creation in this type of campus-based ecosystem. As such, our study demonstrates how individual residents perceive and value a campus-based ecosystem, as well as provides evidence-based principles for enabling value creation from this ecosystem.