Innovation from the Leviathan: How do SOEs build ecosystems in transition economies

In transition economies, the emergence of innovation ecosystems is closely shaped by the interplay between market dynamics and institutional forces. Yet, existing literature has paid limited attention to how state-owned enterprises (SOEs) leverage their dual positioning in institutional and market domains to build ecosystems. To address this gap, we conduct a longitudinal case study of Hikvision, a Chinese security technology SOE that evolved into a cross-industry AIoT ecosystem orchestrator. Our analysis reveals a phase-contingent process of ecosystem emergence driven by institutional-market duality. The focal SOE progressively manages this duality through three logic reconciliation strategies: decoupling through structural buffering to build internal organizational foundations; recombination through institutional entrepreneurship to establish sectoral standards; and hybridization as a strategic asset to design a multi-layer nested architecture. These findings shift the conventional understanding of SOEs from reactive institutional adapters to proactive ecosystem orchestrators and suggest that, under geopolitical fragmentation and technological decoupling, ecosystem architecture may function as a form of organizational resilience.