In an era saturated with digital platforms, it is easy to mistake connections for collaborations in innovation ecosystems.

A growing list of contacts on LinkedIn or entries in a CRM database may signal reach, but they rarely deliver the trust, reciprocity and shared purpose that underpin effective co-operation and collaboration. For innovation ecosystems, this distinction is critical.

For decades, marketing firms have relied on customer relationship management systems to strengthen links between businesses and their current and prospective customers. In parallel, LinkedIn has emerged as a platform where professionals connect around shared interests. Some of these connections develop into genuine collaboration. Yet, the dynamics of co-operation extend far beyond these transactional or platform-based interactions.

In innovation ecosystems, the contemporary emphasis is on building more effective relationships between research organisations, businesses, and governments to enhance research, development, and innovation outcomes. LinkedIn is widely used by researchers, innovation managers, and policymakers, but meaningful collaboration requires more than simply accumulating contacts.

This Innovation Insight explores how interactions between individuals and organisations within an ecosystem can evolve from connections to co-operation, and ultimately to collaboration founded on trust-based relationships.

Innovation ecosystems have emerged as the main framework for understanding how knowledge, talent and capital come together to create economic value. Despite the many mapping exercises, network diagrams, and systems analyses presented in policy documents, there is still a significant gap between the structural representation of these ecosystems and their actual functioning.

The typical approach to ecosystem thinking resembles electrical engineering: identify the components, outline the potential connections and assume their proximity and complementarity will naturally create productive relationships.

This mechanistic perspective misses an important point about human networks: there is a significant difference between simply having someone’s contact information, even on LinkedIn, and genuinely engaging and collaborating with them. The difference is what determines whether an innovation ecosystem generates real value or remains merely an appealing diagram.

The anatomy of dormant networks

Many innovation ecosystems are defined more by their structural potential than by their actual functionality. Universities are home to researchers whose work has the potential to transform industries, but their discoveries often remain confined to academic publications. Corporations have the technical expertise to address urgent social issues, but they often lack connections to community organisations that can help them understand these problems. Government agencies have valuable regulatory knowledge that could speed up innovation, but they often work independently from the entrepreneurs who require their guidance.

These dormant connections remain because being close in structure does not necessarily lead to functional interaction. Physical colocation, shared membership in industry associations, and formal partnership agreements can nurture collaboration, but they do not ensure it will occur. The ecosystem may be perfectly structured, but without current — whether it be information or knowledge — flowing through its connections, it remains inactive.

The challenge is identifying what activates these latent relationships. Research in network theory suggests that activation involves three key elements: recognising opportunities, aligning capacities and investing in relationships. Opportunity recognition refers to the ability of potential collaborators to see the mutual benefits of working together.

Capacity alignment necessitates that organisations possess complementary resources and compatible working styles. Investing in a relationship requires individuals to dedicate time and energy to building trust and shared understandings.

Activation mechanisms

The shift from mere contact to genuine connection starts with interactions that focus on solving problems, rather than simply building relationships through networking. Successful ecosystem activation typically focuses on specific challenges that demand a variety of expertise to address. Climate adaptation, digital transformation and health system innovation serve as focal points that allow various stakeholders to contribute their specialised knowledge while working towards common goals and outcomes.

Participants focus on specific problems that showcase the benefits of combining their capabilities, rather than engaging in abstract discussions about potential synergies. For example, a clean technology start-up collaborates with university researchers and government regulators on energy storage solutions, discovering synergies through their shared commitment to problem-solving.

The trust equation

These collaborations are founded on trust and respect. They develop through repeated interactions focused on specific challenges. There can also be an emphasis on opportunities to create something new or achieve beneficial and lasting change.

Every successful collaboration enhances partners’ confidence in each other’s capabilities and reliability, laying the groundwork for more ambitious joint ventures. This process is inherently iterative. Trust cannot be imposed or created artificially; it must be earn’t through demonstrated personal commitment and competence. A common saying is that people perform better when they trust one another.

Management theorist David Maister formalised this in his “trust equation”: Trust equals credibility plus reliability plus intimacy, divided by self-orientation.[1] Credibility is linked to one’s expertise and past experiences, reliability refers to consistent behaviour, and intimacy involves creating a sense of psychological safety when sharing information. Self-orientation, or the extent to which a person prioritises their own interests over those of others, is a major barrier to building trust.

Trust is fragile, especially when compared to the time it takes to build it. Broken commitments, inconsistent behaviour and poor communication can undermine months or even years of relationship-building in an instant. Once trust is damaged, it becomes very difficult to restore. Mitigation involves establishing realistic expectations from the beginning, maintaining honest and transparent relationships, and promptly acknowledging mistakes as they occur.

The role of system integrators is critical in this activation process. Successful ecosystems often include entities that specialise in laying the groundwork for effective collaboration. These integrators can include prominent and visionary leaders from the research, business, government, and community sectors. What sets them apart is their ability to understand and engage with the different languages and incentives that can drive collaboration towards breakthrough outcomes.

From connections to collaborations

Active connections are the foundation for deeper collaborative relationships; however, transitioning to true collaboration requires additional elements. Collaboration involves shared risk, collective decision-making, and aligned incentives, rather than simply exchanging information or engaging in other forms of transactional relationships.

The key difference is in how participants tackle problems. Connections typically involve organisations preserving their distinct identities and capabilities while sharing information and resources. Collaborations involve creating new hybrid capabilities that none of the partners could develop on their own.

Collaborative relationships need governance mechanisms that balance autonomy and coordination. Partners should maintain enough independence to leverage their unique strengths while also embracing a level of interdependence necessary to achieve common goals. The balance in innovation ecosystems is challenging because participants operate under different incentive structures: academic careers reward publication, corporate success relies on market returns, and government agencies prioritise policy outcomes.

Successful collaborations establish shared metrics and governance processes that recognise diverse criteria for success while also creating unified measures of progress. Joint intellectual property agreements, shared risk-reward frameworks and collaborative decision-making processes indicate a true partnership rather than a mere transactional relationship.

Transactional traps

The ongoing challenge in ecosystem development is to ensure that connections evolve from being merely transactional to developing into genuine, collaborative relationships or partnerships. Transactional relationships prioritise immediate exchanges, such as providing information and knowledge in return for payment, granting access to data, or offering services for a fee. Although these exchanges provide short-term benefits, they seldom lead to the long-term innovative capacity that characterises successful ecosystems.

Transactional relationships continue when participants perceive collaboration as a zero-sum game instead of a value-creating endeavour. Universities that prioritise licensing revenue, contract and commissioned research, and broader research income may overlook opportunities for more meaningful research partnerships. Companies that view start-ups solely as acquisition targets often miss the opportunity to build long-term innovative partnerships. Government agencies that prioritise compliance over collaboration may hinder their capacity to create genuine innovation.

To move beyond transactional relationships, it is essential to create interactions that ensure shared interests in outcomes, rather than just exchanging information. Joint ventures, collaborative research programs, and shared infrastructure investments align the interests of participants around a common purpose and success, rather than focusing on individual transactions.

Conclusion

Innovation ecosystems often hold significant untapped potential until inactive connections are transformed into active collaborations. The difference between a network diagram and a functioning ecosystem lies in the flow of interactions. In a true ecosystem, there are shared challenges that create mutual value, repeated interactions that build trust, collaborative governance that aligns the various incentives of organisations, and intentional efforts to counteract biases that exclude relevant organisations and talented individuals.

For policymakers and ecosystem builders, the emphasis should move from mapping potential connections to actively encouraging collaborations that ensure inclusive participation. This involves establishing key challenges that encourage diverse stakeholders to contribute their skills, supporting intermediary organisations and systems integrators that promote cross-sector collaboration, and designing incentive systems that reward cooperative behaviour.

The goal should be to ensure that information and knowledge flow in a way that harnesses the full range of available institutional capability and human talent to create value for all participants in the ecosystem and the broader community they serve.

Importantly, while ecosystem activation can be encouraged, it cannot be enforced. Successful interventions generate valuable collaborations by creating opportunities for it, allowing relationships to develop organically based on genuine shared interests.

Republished from Acton Institute for Policy Research and Innovation, August 2025

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.