Overview

Delivered by Martin Mata, CEO of an innovation centre in the Czech Republic, this introductory training session explores how incubators, accelerators and other Business Support Organisations (BSOs) can better understand their innovation ecosystems.

Rather than presenting an ecosystem as a static collection of universities, startups, investors, government institutions and support organisations, the session encourages participants to examine the relationships and flows connecting these actors. These include flows of funding, information, talent, opportunities and decision-making power, which determine how the ecosystem functions in practice.

The session also addresses power imbalances, gatekeepers, bottlenecks and organisational positioning. Drawing on participants’ experiences from different regions, it highlights the importance of local context, collaboration and realistic data collection when mapping an ecosystem and identifying opportunities for intervention.

What You Will Learn

The training covers:

• Innovation ecosystems as dynamic networks: understanding ecosystems through interactions and flows rather than lists of institutions.
• Actor-centred versus flow-centred mapping: examining how money, information, people, opportunities and decisions move between ecosystem actors.
• Multiple centres of influence: recognising that leadership and influence shift depending on whether the issue concerns funding, talent, regulation, knowledge or market access.
• Power asymmetries and gatekeepers: identifying actors that control important resources, decisions or access to opportunities.
• Bottlenecks and blocked flows: diagnosing where ecosystem relationships are weak or where resources fail to reach the actors who need them.
• Organisational positioning: assessing an organisation’s actual contribution without automatically placing it at the centre of the ecosystem.
• The “disappearance test”: considering what would change in the ecosystem if an organisation ceased to exist as a way of evaluating its relevance and added value.
• Collaboration and competition: understanding how constructive competition can encourage innovation while cooperation and mutual support strengthen ecosystem resilience.
• Innovation as practical problem-solving: recognising new or improved products, services and processes that address real needs and produce meaningful results.
• Context-sensitive ecosystem development: adapting approaches to local political, economic, institutional and cultural conditions rather than directly copying models from elsewhere.
• Ecosystem data collection: combining formal information with insights into informal relationships, incentives and power dynamics that may not appear in public sources.

Key Takeaway

Innovation ecosystems are shaped not only by the actors they contain but, more importantly, by the relationships and flows between them. The presence of incubators, universities, investors or government programmes does not guarantee that funding, knowledge, talent and opportunities move effectively across the system.

By mapping these flows, identifying bottlenecks and understanding who controls key resources and decisions, BSOs can develop a more accurate picture of their ecosystem and their own role within it. This provides a stronger foundation for collaboration and for designing locally relevant interventions that generate measurable and sustainable impact.