How do we get There Together? Making Sense of and Exploring Ecosystem Orchestration as Practice

An ecosystem perspective recognizes how a complex set of independent, yet interdependent actors collaborate to co-create value toward a shared goal. Such ecosystems are often actively facilitated by an ‘orchestrator’ who, in many cases, is an individual who has been allocated the task of coordinating an emerging or ongoing ecosystem. In this study, we focus on individuals in a third-party organization performing orchestration duties, alongside a team, helping to build and coordinate innovation ecosystems. Previous literature indicates that ecosystem orchestration involves mobilizing, coordinating, and integrating resources (often knowledge) and actors to achieve the ecosystem's goal(s). Nonetheless, it is still unclear how individuals make sense of ecosystem orchestration as a practice. Incorporating evidence from interviews, non-participant observations, and archival documents, we conduct a narrative analysis of the sensemaking of individuals performing ecosystem orchestration as a third-party actor. From an instrumental single case, we explore individual and organization level narratives making sense of ecosystems and ecosystem orchestration. We found that some take an embodied meaning of ecosystems, resonating more deeply with the concept, meanwhile others have a more ambiguous interpretation. Through the narrative accounts of our participants, our findings reveal the highly relational and social nature of ecosystem orchestration, complemented by frameworks and models. As a result, we suggest that ecosystem orchestration emerges from a set of intersubjective cognitive, social, and material practices, rather than from any individual capability or traits. First, we contribute to the orchestration literature, providing more nuanced insight into how individuals make sense of this role and how it unfolds from a practice perspective. Second, our study provides a methodological contribution to the literature on ecosystem orchestration by exploring the individual level through narrative inquiry. Third, this study offers practical insights for managers and third-party organizations on the knowledge and skill development that can be supported, particularly for developing ecosystem orchestration services.