Value creation mechanisms in a social and health care innovation ecosystem – an institutional perspective

This study explores value-creation mechanisms in an institutionally diverse social and health care ecosystem, specifically through the lenses of institutional logics and institutional work. The research context is the social and health care innovation ecosystem in Tampere, Finland, comprising actors from various institutional backgrounds. The research method is an inductive interpretivist analysis, frequently used in studies on institutional logics. The alternation between empirical data—derived from interviews (n = 21), surveys (n = 23), and memos (n = 71)—and the theoretical framework yields new insights. Specifically, the empirical and the theoretical evidence provides practical examples of value-creation mechanisms, institutional logics, and modes of institutional work in social and health care innovation ecosystems. This article is one of the few papers that integrate institutional logics and institutional work to study value creation in a diverse social and health care innovation ecosystem. It contributes to the existing literature on collaborative value creation and the social and health care ecosystem by identifying how different value-creation mechanisms are manifested as hybridity in the ecosystem and how institutional work fosters collaborative value creation. This study fills a research gap by refining the understanding of collaborative value-creation mechanisms and their institutional underpinnings in social and health care ecosystems, thereby enriching both bodies of literature. These insights promote a nuanced understanding of collaborative value-creation practices in institutionalized settings, with implications for both policymaking and further research.