Crisis as a catalyst of idle innovation ecosystems: Evidence from ecosystem exaptation of a water partnership

The pandemic challenged industries and entire social systems. Hence, investigating overarching innovation ecosystems in this context can uncover the intriguing effects of innovation and technological change. Based on an inductive case study of a water ecosystem in Catalonia, Spain, with eleven interviews and a follow-up focus group, we observe how an idle innovation ecosystem was crucial to rapid technological change. This finding demonstrates that common innovation objectives and urgency born from a crisis can activate seemingly idle ecosystems—a novel concept in the literature—and suggests that society benefits from the development of ecosystems even when there is no initial joint value proposition. This ecosystem exaptation, i.e., the alignment of an existing ecosystem to a new value proposition, extends the concept of technological exaptation. Thus, business model innovation is a result of, and not an antecedent to, the emergence of an innovation ecosystem.