This paper addresses how the speed of the creation and function of innovation ecosystems can be increased in the face of global challenges. It provides a case study of the successful and rapid development of a Covid-19 vaccine by the University of Oxford and the pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca: a vaccine that saved millions of lives. Its review of the innovation ecosystems literature reveals there has been little consideration of the speed of development at innovation ecosystem scale, and on the role of universities with public good objectives within innovation ecosystems. The case study, primarily based on interviews supplemented by some data analysis, provides a deep, detailed, and contextualised analysis of the development of a successful vaccine within an innovation ecosystem. It finds that speed was enabled by concurrent development, such that the usual processes for vaccine development were significantly compressed without significantly diminished safety; also evident was shared and greater tolerance for risk across the ecosystem, high levels of trust, and skilful communications. The discussion considers the implications of the study, including lessons for the study of innovation ecosystems and for government and university policies. It offers reflections on the paper’s contributions, its shortcomings, and implications for future research.

This chapter introduces the concept of "project innovation ecosystems" to explain a new approach to creating and capturing value through innovation in complex projects. We begin by distinguishing the concept from that of "project ecologies" before moving on to highlight the importance of complementarities to innovation. With this foundation established, we turn to our case study of innovation management on the UK's Crossrail project, a complex project tasked with bringing Transport for London's recently opened Elizabeth Line to life. Our analysis focuses on the challenges that motivated Crossrail to begin designing a meta-organization to better orchestrate innovation and reveal how understanding project innovation ecosystems can inform the future study and management of projects.

Big science projects are major contributors to industrial innovation. Using the case of the development of fusion power, this chapter shows how investments in large, basic science projects encourage industrial innovation upstream and downstream in industries including construction and manufacturing and in data and digital technologies. As well as drawing on project management expertise to conduct big science projects, such projects also contribute to the development of this expertise. The chapter argues that industry can benefit most when scientific projects are at their most ambitious.

Professional Services Firms (PSFs) are an important form of knowledge-intensive organization with an educated and professionalised workforce and a partnership model of governance. This article repo...

This chapter sets the context of China’s innovation machine. It introduces its characteristics, including massive numbers of innovators embedded in China’s manufacturing and supply chains that offer efficiency, flexibility, and resilience; the emergence of the digital economy; and pragmatic government policies that have seen the nation progress from a period of catch-up with world leaders to a position of leadership in some fields. It explains the importance of Chinese culture for innovation and the ability of the nation to operate with ‘multiple institutional logics’ of state control and market forces. Challenges confronting China’s innovation machine are outlined, including in some areas of advanced technology and basic research, the fracturing of globalization, and the reascendancy of central planning.

This chapter explores how order emerges from chaos in China’s innovation machine. It emphasizes how innovation is emergent, evolutionary, and complex and cannot be centrally planned and controlled. Innovation involves experimentation, the initial growth of which requires some protection, but the scale and scope of which can be rapidly amplified in an interdependent digital economy. The challenges facing the innovation machine are outlined. These include the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the impending clash of political ideology between China and the West manifested by a technology cold war over issues such as technological standards. The chapter argues that, despite numerous shortcomings, China’s innovation machine is remarkably successful and robust and can even strengthen as result of external pressures. It does, however, face specific internal policy challenges, including whether the government can maintain the pragmatism of recent policies with continued development of the market, and strengthened transparency on the nature and purpose of China’s approach to innovation, and the nation’s greater assumption of leadership roles in international forums. How China handles these challenges will significantly impact the future of global economic development and political cooperation.

This chapter explains the development and significance of China’s mega supply chains and their position in the global division of labour. It explains the importance of modularity, standardization, and complementarity in supply chains. It analyses how efficiencies and resilience are achieved and balanced in supply chains and the importance of platforms, both geographical clusters, such as industrial bases in Shenzhen, Chengdu, and Suzhou, and digital platforms, such as Alibaba and Pinduoduo. The chapter also argues that China’s mega supply chains have become regional hubs supplying intermediate products to manufacturing facilities in countries with lower labour costs. It discusses the extent to which China is progressing towards Industry 4.0, with smart supply chains, and how the country is responding to the challenges from growing global trade tensions.

This chapter analyses the different institutional logics surrounding China’s innovation machine, including the ‘visible hand’ of the state and ‘invisible hand’ of the market. The idea of innovation in China resulting from centralized decisions in government is shown to be a myth; instead, it results from the interaction of initial bottom-up innovations and subsequent top-down direction, support, or correction. The cultural roots of China’s multiple institutional logics are explained, including the role of hierarchy, the tolerance of ambiguity, and the search for unity. Balance is sought within Chinese bureaucracies, between central and local governments, and between formal and informal authority. The chapter analyses Chinese policy frameworks for science and technology, innovation, intellectual property, education and talent, environment, industry, and the reform of state-owned enterprises. A case study of the car industry is provided, focusing particularly on how policy instruments are used to encourage carmakers to capitalize on the opportunities presented by the new technology trajectory of new energy vehicles.

This chapter shows how much China caught up in the global innovation race, using international indices of innovation performance, and data on R&D expenditures, higher education, scientific outputs, and patents. Frameworks such as ‘windows of opportunity’ are used to explore how China catches up in innovation and is changing policies from importing innovation to developing ‘indigenous innovation’. The bottlenecks confronting China’s catch-up and leadership are examined using the case of semiconductors, Huawei, and 5G, and the chapter poses the question whether the country can overcome such bottlenecks in core technologies. To do so, it is argued that greater investment is needed in basic research, especially by enterprises.