Giving Compass' Take:

• Stanford Social Innovation Review discusses new research that shows the benefits to strengthening the complex environments enabling local innovation.

• From sharing assets to developing new capacities, there are plenty of action items for organizations to internalize. Are we fully committed to creating an ecosystem where good ideas thrive?

• Here's how technology can play a role in social problem-solving.

Since Paul Bloom and Gregory Dees first urged social entrepreneurs to cultivate their ecosystem a decade ago, “ecosystem” frameworks for innovation and entrepreneurship are finally moving into mainstream economic development practice. These frameworks use the metaphor of a biological ecosystem to refer to the complex, dynamic environments in which innovators operate — environments characterized by an array of interacting organizations, individuals (collectively referred to as “actors”), elements, relationships, and conditions that either enable or impede innovation.

A growing number of educators, practitioners, and donors are recognizing the importance of these environments and focusing on ecosystem-strengthening initiatives (such as this state-level initiative by Harvard and this regional one by MIT REAP), as well as efforts to map innovation ecosystems at the city level (like these maps of Boulder and Sacramento) and beyond.

The Global Ecosystem Snapshot Initiative launched last month by the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE), for example, is aiming to produce a consistent set of ecosystem “snapshots” across 48 countries over the next several years.

However, despite the recognition of their importance for economic development, the concept of local innovation ecosystems remains fuzzy. Most research informing our understanding of them focuses on concepts that are related but distinct, such as work on entrepreneurial ecosystems and local innovation systems. And while these two concepts have been in use for over a decade, they are still defined in unclear (and at times contradictory) ways, leading to different models of what these systems contain, how they function, and why they matter.

Read the full article about why cultivating your innovative ecosystem is worth the work by Elizabeth Hoffecker at Stanford Social Innovation Review.