A digital ecosystem as an institutional field: curated peer production as a response to institutional voids revealed by COVID‐19
研究了开源COVID-19医疗用品网络如何通过数字创业生态系统和同伴生产，快速填补国家和私营部门失败造成的制度空白，为理解制度空白中的创业机会提供了新视角。
This paper investigates the ecosystem dynamics of the Open‐source [COVID‐19] Medical Supplies network that arose to fill the institutional void revealed by state and private sector failures to stockpile and supply enough personal protective equipment. Theoretically, the paper adds correctives to extant institutional theory accounts of entrepreneurship filling institutional voids, showing that these can be filled rapidly and normatively by digital entrepreneurial ecosystems allied with peer production networks. These were able to transform the boundary conditions of a routinized system, refixing its autopoiesis innovatively. The COVID‐19 epidemic galvanized hundreds of thousands of volunteer “makers” around the world to cooperate to meet urgent demand for medical supplies. A digital entrepreneurial ecosystem arose in response to the problem of critical equipment shortages, connecting global, expert‐curated know‐how with local production equipment. We contribute to the theory of institutional voids by documenting and analyzing how the formation and emergent processes that created and sustained a Digital Peer Production Ecosystem based on self‐organization, expert curation and scalability, successfully catalyzed local initiatives worldwide. Institutional voids are not just barriers to entrepreneurship; they are also opportunities.