Delivering Sustainability Through Ecosystem Innovation: A Multilevel Framework for Sustainability Transitions

This introduction to the special issue examines how ecosystems can operate as arenas through which sustainability transition can be organized and enacted. Drawing on the articles included in this special issue, it analyses the mechanisms through which ecosystems generate and diffuse sustainable innovation by combining three complementary perspectives: (1) governance and coordination across plural logics, (2) redefinition of value creation, and (3) cognitive and learning dynamics supporting collective adaptation. Building on these insights, our introductive paper theorizes a multilevel framework that links microlevel cognition, mesolevel governance, and macrolevel institutions as recursive components of collective learning. It positions ecosystems as organizational interfaces that translate local experimentation into systemic transformation and argues that research methods should reflect this complexity through participatory, design-based, and data-enabled inquiry. We conclude by outlining several avenues for future research on sustainable ecosystem innovation as a continuous process of organizing, learning, and alignment across actors at different levels.