The authors' background interest is in innovation and entrepreneurship as elements of business strategy. Business ecosystems are viewed as complex adaptive systems, and engagement with such systems is explored utilising an analytical technique based on an agile structuration theory model. In this model, motivated knowledgeable agents act within an institutional (structuration) framework to implement a business idea, drawing on accessible resources from a broader business ecosystem and then learn from the outcomes. In a particular instance, this learning may lead to enhanced agent absorptive capacity, to an adaptation of an institutional framework, and to enhanced ecosystem resources that may be built on in another instance. Formal and informal interaction across boundaries is seen as important in accessing a broader socio-economic ecosystem which may be time-place sensitive. Longitudinal studies of one business model innovation and one technological innovation case, both embedded in the same regional business ecosystem, provide an illustration of the model's application.