Imagined ecosystems and future-making: Orchestrating the digital pill venture - 25 Sep 2024

We hosted a research seminar with Distinguished Visiting Professor Michael Barrett and Professor Eivor Oborn from the University of Warwick at the House of Innovation.

Start time: 2024-09-25 at 12:00

End time: 2024-09-25 at 13:30

Location: On-site at the Stockholm School of Economics. Registration required.

Paper title and abstract

Imagined ecosystems and future-making: Orchestrating the digital pill venture

Abstract: This paper furthers our understanding of digital ventures in commercializing an innovation and orchestrating a future ecosystem de novo. We examine the dramatic rise and fall of a digital pioneer – the inventor of the first ingestible digital pill. Our findings from a qualitative field study show how this novel startup drew upon fictional expectations to coordinate upstream component providers and downstream complements of the focal product (a MEMS-based biosensor) in a yet-to-be ecosystem that existed only as an imagined future. We conceptualize such ecosystems as imagined ecosystems, which like other phenomena espousing radical uncertainty, are characterized by points in time wherefundamental and irreversible shifts occur, and which we suggest can be recognized and analysed through turning points. We identified three types of futures – emergent, desired distant and competing futures that are particularly significant for digital ventures and with implications for ecosystem emergence. Additionally, we highlight three related future-making practices entailed in orchestrating an imagined ecosystem – configuring action with emergent futures; prefigurative action towards desired distant futures; and inattentive inaction towards competing futures with pragmatic implications for the development of digital ventures.

About Michael Barrett

Michael Barrett is Vice Dean and Professor of Information Systems & Innovation Studies at Cambridge Judge Business School (CJBS). He is also Distinguished Visiting Professor of Innovation at the House of Innovation, Stockholm School of Economics. Michael is Academic Director of Cambridge Digital Innovation and conducts research focus on digital innovation and transformation. Key projects include: trajectories of emerging digital technologies, digital health and new models of healthcare, and how digital innovation is enabling financial and social inclusion in developing countries. Professor Barrett is Editor-in-Chief of Information and Organization and has held senior editorial roles at MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Information and Organization, and the Journal of the Association of Information Systems. Michael has served as Vice Dean of Research, Vice Dean of Programmes, and was the founding Head of the Organization Theory and Information Systems group at CJBS.

About Eivor Oborn

Eivor Oborn is current Professor of Healthcare Management in the area of Innovation andOrganisational Change at Warwick Business School, UK. She earned her PhD at Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge in 2006, and is currently an honourary Fellow at Cambridge Judge Business School and Fellow at the Cambridge Centre for Digital Innovation (CDI). She teaches in the area of Change Management, Strategic Health Leadership and Corporate Entrepreneurship. Eivor is Senior Editor at Information Systems Research and has published work in leading journals, including Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, Information Systems Research and MISQ. Her research interests span the fields of healthcare, knowledge translation, digital innovation & ICTs, as well as entrepreneurship in ecosystem contexts.

House of Innovation Health Entrepreneurship Innovation Technology Lunch seminar Research seminar