The contribution of an outsider’s complementary assets to ecosystem emergence: Aldus Manutius and the printing industry in Renaissance Italy

Management and entrepreneurship literature have paid scant attention to the actors and activities transforming an industry into an ecosystem – that is, expanding the type of actors involved in product creation. To explore this important aspect, we investigate the role of Aldus Manutius – an influential and widely respected printer and editor in Renaissance Italy – in transforming the preindustrial printing industry into a modern ecosystem comprised not only of market actors such as printers and distributors, but also non-market ones such as humanist scholars. These non-market relationships and the activities that they facilitated constituted critical ‘complementary assets’ for the success of the Aldine printing press. We identify and classify the actors and activities that added to the business value proposition. By delivering the most comprehensive reconstruction of Manutius’ networks to date, this study illustrates the role of an outsider’s complementary assets in the transformation of an industry into an ecosystem.