Attributes of a Successful Innovation Ecosytem

A model is presented that describes the ecologic, economic, and societal attributes of an emerging global innovation ecosystem centred on the work of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia, USA and its affiliated programmes of education, research, and economic development at Georgia Tech Lorraine in Metz, France. It explores the role of leadership, specifically based on social courage, in a successful innovation ecosystem in Atlanta, Georgia (USA) and its extension to Europe. An analogy is made to the Civil Rights Movement in the Southeast United States in the early 1960s where a networked community of leaders built a shared view of a more just, sustainable, and prosperous world. This concepts undergirds a system-focused strategy for a regional innovation ecosystem in the Southeast United States, a research methodology for its continuous improvement and assessment with results and analysis over a multi-year period, and lessons learned. It postulates necessary ecologic, economic, and societal attributes for an innovation ecosystem, illustrates how these attributes are the basis for success within the region, and describes how this is a basis for extension to its affiliated programmes in France.