Innomediary agency and practices in shaping market innovation

In today's business world, the role of the Schumpeterian entrepreneur is dwarfed by that of the variety of market actors who co-create innovation by interacting with and integrating resources within performative practices. New actors have entered the market and changed how market innovation occurs. This study focuses on the “innomediary” as a new category of market actor. By moving beyond the mainstream research, we offer a fresh conceptualisation of innomediary agency and practices in shaping market innovation. Acting as catalysts of creativity and knowledge, innomediaries collect information, expertise, skills and experiences from a heterogeneous mass of actors, and encourage the interchange of ideas, tools, images and languages. Innomediary agency enables the deployment of four practices: 1) engaging; 2) exploring; 3) exploiting; and 4) orchestrating. Each practice involves a set of actions and resource integration.