Challenging intermediation in innovation ecosystems: towards a new multidimensional taxonomy

Abstract

Innovation ecosystems are becoming increasingly critical for addressing complex societal challenges, yet they often fail due to their governance rigidity. While the literature acknowledges the importance of intermediaries, it often treats intermediation as a static role performed by fixed entities, failing to account for how coordination needs evolve as ecosystems mature. This paper challenges the static view by suggesting an adaptive intermediation perspective. Building on ecosystem governance and legitimacy dynamics, we argue that creating legitimacy conditions is what intermediaries can do. Legitimacy is derived from demonstrable coordination value, such as friction reduction, resource mobilization, and bottleneck resolution. It enables intermediaries to sustain brokerage in stable conditions and to shift toward more directive integration as urgency increases. The paper develops a conceptual framework to a set of propositions that clarify conditions under which different intermediation configurations become feasible and how governance mechanisms should be aligned accordingly. By foregrounding legitimacy as a missing aspect in processual accounts of intermediation, the study offers a complementary explanation for emerging intermediary role configurations by suggesting a new multidimensional taxonomy of intermediation to explain governance mechanisms in innovation ecosystems.