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This paper is amongst the first to examine coopetition strategy for sustainable development at the network level. Companies who want to successfully implement complex innovative technologies that support sustainable development need to collaborate with other actors of the innovation ecosystem, including their competitors, so that they can develop standards, interoperable products, pool knowledge, and resources and bundle forces to compete against other technologies. Collaboration with competitors brings benefits, but also many risks. We investigated how firms cope with these risks when establishing an innovation ecosystem to implement a new technology in society. We conducted research in the Dutch smart grids sector and explored how these firms minimize inherent risks of coopetition. We found that system-building actors in the Dutch smart grid field not only minimize inherent risks, but from the start of their collaboration they implement so-called enablers to prevent these risks upfront.

Companies that wish to launch innovative sustainability technologies can collaborate in strategic networks of actors from industry, government and research institutes to pro-actively build a business ecosystem around their new technology. This is called collective system building. In this paper, we examine how to effectively manage networks for collective system building. Based on a review of the literature, we identify the key factors of effective network management and we propose a conceptual framework for network management at the network level. Subsequently, we conduct a multiple-case study in the Dutch smart grid sector to examine how these key factors are implemented by system-building networks. We find differences with the existing network management literature regarding network composition, network management structure, governance modes, decision-making processes, project management, the free-rider problem and trust-building mechanisms. Our study contributes to a better understanding of effective management of system-building networks, which in turn can lead to greater success in establishing new business fields. We contribute to the literature on strategic business networks, specifically on emerging business networks building new business fields.

Open online idea calls are an increasingly popular way to crowdsource ideas. Such calls tend to attract a diverse crowd who suggest a variety of ideas. To detect the most promising from this mass of ideas, we identify online behavioural characteristics of successful ideators, i.e. those who suggest ideas that are implemented. Our study is based on binary logistic regression analyses of a dataset from a call for ideas crowdsourced by the city of Munich. We found that characteristics linked to suggesting possible solutions and to showing positive attention towards other ideas are key features of how successful ideators behave online. We also found that the first is a characteristic of ideators who are likely to suggest an idea that is implemented but not novel. The latter is a characteristic of ideators who are likely to suggest an idea that is implemented and novel. Paying attention to other ideas before suggesting one's own and providing constructive input to other ideas are not found to be characteristic for successful ideators. The findings contribute to a better understanding of successful ideators' online behaviour and thereby open up new opportunities for the detection of ideas that the idea-seeker wants to implement.