Collaboration Networks for Innovation and Socio-economic Development: European and Latin American Perspectives on Digital Ecosystems Research, Local Readiness, Deployment Strategies and Their Policy Implications

International cooperation and knowledge transfer among countries has become increasingly important in the last decades, giving opportunity to a set of multiple interaction programs particularly amongst developed and developing regions. This paper discusses the feasibility of the adoption of Digital Ecosystems (DEs) in the Latin American context, based on the experience of deployment of DEs in the European Union. Different deployment experiences in the European context revealed the need of a methodology for planning and implementing DEs that resulted in a set of tools for measuring the maturity grade of localities related to the deployment of DEs and the need of an impact index for understanding its long-term implications of the dynamics of their implementation. This paper proposes a new methodological framework that integrates concepts related to ICT adoption, connectivity and absorption capacities and recognises the strong influence of social capital over these. The paper concludes with the description of a methodological tool oriented towards the mapping, evaluation and modification of scenarios related to ICT adoption process among multiple agents.