Tourism Innovative Ecosystems for Competitiveness

More and more firms today face situations where “knowledge is generated through the repeated combination and re-configuration of diverse disciplines and expertise in flexible forms of organization” [Lam, (2000)]. As a consequence firms can no longer afford to rely on value created singularly or autonomously [Prahalad and Venkatraman, (2008); Prahalad and Krishnan, (2008)] or on just their internal knowledge and skills. The firm’s ability to exploit external knowledge has become a critical component of its innovative capabilities [Cohen and Levinthal, (1990)]. In an open innovation context, firms jointly create value through a number of non arm-length transactions in so-called value networks. Thus, collaboration and the establishment of ties and relationships with different enterprises as well as with customers, competitors, public and private institutions as potential sources of external knowledge, is imperative for firm innovation. Networking allows firms to acquire additional knowledge and skills for innovation processes as an important way for firms to augment their innovation capability [Gatignon, Tushman, Sith, and Anderson, (2002); Hauser, Tellis, and Griffin, (2006)]. While collaboration and interaction between different business actors has always been important, the widespread deployment of the Internet has greatly enhanced the ability of firms to engage in collaborative innovation in several ways. It is the aim of this article to present the features and characteristics of a tourism innovative ecosystem for competitiveness that comprise a multiplicity of autonomous, interdependent, and self-organizing actors, without physical borders of separation from the environment, that rely on the Internet infrastructure to integrate and exchange value.