Overcoming Brazilian and Global grand challenges (e.g., climate urgency, deindustrialization, and inequality) might require radical innovations characterized by high uncertainties and complexity. Rarely are these innovations developed by a single actor. Research on innovation history has shown that radical innovation developments often involve creating and orchestrating different types of ecosystems (e.g., innovation, entrepreneurial, circular).
As each ecosystem is a unique phenomenon involving diverse actors from distinct industries and sectors, conceiving and managing ecosystems for mitigating grand challenges are complex tasks. We still need more theoretical insights and empirical guidance on ecosystem management (EM) concerning different ecosystem categories.
Narrowing this gap requires bringing knowledge from distinct scientific and practical fields, notably management, economics, policy-making, and social sciences. However, there is a lack of density of practitioners and scholars on EM for addressing grand challenges, notably in the State of São Paulo and Brazil context. Therefore, creating a center on research, innovation, and diffusion might represent an inflection point for unleashing the emergence and development of a new scientific field and practice community on EM for grand challenges.
Bridge aims to develop methodologies, tools and technologies into innovative solutions to mitigate major social and environmental challenges across three axes:
• Climate Urgency
• Inequality
• Deindustrialization.
In this vein, the center’s mission is to be a major global knowledge and innovation platform on EM for overcoming grand challenges. Such a platform would encompass three significant discoveries:
(i) global ecosystem management for the grand challenges index;
(ii) a broad portfolio of theories, frameworks, and tools for EM concerning grand challenges; and
(iii) a digital platform composed of software related to EM for grand challenges. To do so, we set eight research programs focused on different ecosystem types and perspectives of EM for addressing three grand challenges: climate urgency, deindustrialization, and inequality.
We hope that the center will contribute significantly to different stakeholders. The center will provide guides, managerial technologies, and software for creating, managing, and transforming ecosystems for entrepreneurs and established firms.
We hope to offer universities a new set of unique orchestration capabilities. For policy makers, we will provide a new portfolio of frameworks and tools focused on creating and nurturing ecosystems rather than increasing the knowledge stock in society. Beyond promoting startups and knowledge transfer to these actors, the center will diffuse knowledge through scientific and practical congress, acceleration programs, and a learning platform composed of master classes, digital toolkits, podcasts, newsletters, and news.
