Surviving through reconfiguration: capital dynamics in innovation ecosystems

Innovation ecosystems require actors who remain autonomous yet repeatedly align their contributions toward collective innovation. Political capital, the resources actors mobilize to influence decisions and outcomes, is central to this alignment, but its ecosystem-level consequences remain poorly understood: research treats it mainly as an asset that benefits the actor who holds it, not as a property of the wider system. We address this gap through a longitudinal case study of a placebased innovation district that persisted formally while falling short of its expected results, drawing on 33 interviews, a qualitative survey, observation, and one author's embedded participation in its governance. We identify two configurations linking political capital to dysfunction: ecosystem power imbalance, where concentration produces asymmetric influence and declining ownership, and ecosystem power fragmentation, where dispersion produces competing agendas and an absent coordinating function. Both erode functional survival even as formal structures persist, extending political capital research from the actor to the ecosystem level.