Three levels,
one ecosystem.
Underground, middleground, upperground: a way of reading ecosystems born from research on creative cities, and now our everyday working tool. At the scale of a country as much as a company.
// the signal only travels if the three levels are connected — that is the work of the control room
UPPERground
Who?
Large companies, financial institutions, public institutions, policy-makers, corporate governance.
What plays out there
This is where direction, funding and the rules of the game are decided. A powerful level, but often far from the ground, with its own codes and its own tempo.
What Ovation does there
We translate. Decision-makers’ objectives become programmes that can actually be run in the field; field realities travel back up in language governance can hear. Masterclasses for decision-makers, diagnostics, reporting that means something.
MIDDLEground● where we anchor
Who?
Support organisations, incubators, accelerators, coaches, local partners, middle managers.
What plays out there
The connective tissue. This is where ideas from below meet resources from above, or never meet them at all. An ecosystem without a solid middleground is an ecosystem that fades out.
What Ovation does there
This is where we anchor, not our only ground: we work across all three levels, in a virtuous circle. We train the coaches (Train-the-Trainers), we equip the support organisations and we professionalise the intermediaries, so the dynamic holds without us. On the strategic EU-Africa corridors it is the same move: wiring the demand of large buyers to the supply of the local entrepreneurial fabric.
UNDERground
Who?
Entrepreneurs, project owners, operational teams, creative communities.
What plays out there
Those who do the work. The energy, the ideas and the answers are already there; what is missing is method, pace, and access to the other two levels.
What Ovation does there
We equip. Incubation and acceleration programmes, the Ovation Academy, field events — to surface the answers project owners already hold.
A model born from research,
proven in the field.
A territory's creativity comes neither from the top nor from the bottom: it emerges from the middleground that connects them.
The underground · middleground · upperground vocabulary comes from the work of Patrick Cohendet, David Grandadam and Laurent Simon (HEC Montréal) on the anatomy of creative cities: what makes a place produce innovation is not the sum of its talent or its institutions, but the quality of the links between the three levels.
We have seen it hold everywhere we work: an entrepreneurial ecosystem follows the same anatomy. When the levels know each other, talk, and build together, the dynamic becomes unstoppable. When they ignore each other, even the best programmes fade out.
Your ecosystem has three levels. Let us connect them.
See our ecosystems offer