Episodic and Systemic Powers in a Context of Institutional Entrepreneurship

Ecosystems of innovation are known for favoring entrepreneurship (Moore, 1996). This presumes that innovation occurs in an almost natural way within these networks, especially within strategic public-private initiated ones. An ecosystem in which innovation projects do not take place would be artificially and deliberately maintained in status quo by some powerful agents. In fact, power is the central concept in networks analysis (Thorelli, 1986). This paper contributes to better understand the interplay between episodic and systemic power in ecosystems of innovation. It analyses agents' rhetoric in an ICT ecosystem with a high entrepreneurial agenda whose members were known for using their episodic power (Lawrence, 2008) to perpetuating an intriguing "status quo" situation. As "power operates to normalize and naturalize certain values and practices" (Khan, Munir and Willmott, 2007), it is necessary to identify the artificial and deliberate processes that led to the durability of the status quo but also to understand the determinants of such practices. Two key dimensions will be highlighted: the processes through which actors affect the institutional context and disrupt their ecosystem (the episodic power), and the decision makers' rhetoric which points out the systemic power (Clegg, 1989). This paper highlights the interplay between these two kinds of power.