Competing in the Digital Economy?: The Dynamics and Impacts of B2B E-commerce on the South African Manufacturing Sector

ICTs, B2B e-commerce, manufacturing sector, South Africa

Platforms and Digital Transformation in Logistics (PLATO):TNO 2024-R10279 // 11206387-002-GEO-0002

Final report of the PLATO projec

The Darker Side of Fintech: the Emergence of New Risks

The financial sector has always been recognized as a traditional activity. One of the biggest challenges facing the financial sector recently is the introduction of new technologies. Financial innovations, and especially the development of financial technologies (FinTech), contribute to changing the way the entire financial system, including the banking sector, changes in the digital economy. The changes brought about by financial innovations and technologies condition all market participants, and especially banks, to continuously improve their business in order to keep up with the competition. FinTech enable easier access to financial services, improvement of traditional services, provide greater efficiency, lower costs and automation of regulatory reporting. They have changed the way we perceive financial institutions. Banks can increasingly be seen as an application on the phone and computer through which financial services can be performed, less and less as a grand building that instils confidence. However, it should be borne in mind that the application of financial innovations, in addition to the advantages, carries with it many risks, in a way that it can be said that digital technologies change existing ones, but also bring new risks in the field of financial services. The key risks caused by these technologies include strategic, operational and cyber risk, the risk of business compliance with data protection regulations, as well as liquidity risk. The importance of outsourcing risk is not negligible. It is precisely because of the speed of change and innovation that new risks are constantly emerging. With the growing importance and number of these firms, as well as the speed of their cross-border transactions, the fact is that it is necessary that these firms must adjust the way they measure risk in accordance with the speed and pace of their development. The importance of risk management must be one of the key points for FinTech companies, both now and in the future. Due to the observation of advances in financial technologies and the assessment of the risks that financial innovations bring, there is a need to harmonize regulatory frameworks, in order to ensure that none of the financial service providers would be at a disadvantage. However, regulatory bodies must carefully consider the dynamics and manner of regulation, bearing in mind that in a rapidly changing environment, excessive and rapid regulation carries the risk of undesirable outcomes in a way that does not exploit the full potential of innovative technologies. The development and increasing use of financial technologies affects the activities of all participants in the financial market, which imposes the need for continuous learning and adaptation of users and providers of these services, as well as supervisors and regulators. An additional challenge for financial institutions is the fact that competition in the provision of financial services comes from IT companies, which necessarily imposes the need to adapt its business models. Financial institutions are facing one of the biggest business challenges. All this brings special challenges for the creators of regulatory standards (RegTech) and the development of supervision based on new technologies (SupTech)

B2B e -Marketplaces. What´s In It For Me?

(WP28/02 Clave pdf) Commerce among firms through the Internet, the so-called B2B commerce, constitutes a newly developed area in which most theses are yet to be demonstrated. The value proposition for firms in B2B commerce suggests the creation of highly efficient markets, access to a larger number of suppliers and/or customers, or even internal productivity increases. However, firms´ perceptions of such benefits have not been empirically researched yet. In this study, 152 large Spanish firms are surveyed to gain some insights about their perceptions and developments regarding B2B....B2B, Electronic commerce, Internet, Marketplace, Electronic markets

German and Israeli Innovation: The Best of Two Worlds

This study reviews – through desk research and expert interviews with Mittelstand companies, startups and ecosystem experts – the current status of the Israeli startup ecosystem and the Mittelstand region of North Rhine- Westphalia (NRW), Germany. As a case study, it highlights potential opportunities for collaboration and analyzes different engagement modes that might serve to connect the two regions. The potential synergies between the two economies are based on a high degree of complementarity. A comparison of NRW’s key verticals and Israel’s primary areas of innovation indicates that there is significant overlap in verticals, such as artificial intelligence (AI), the internet of things (IoT), sensors and cybersecurity. Israeli startups can offer speed, agility and new ideas, while German Mittelstand companies can contribute expertise in production and scaling, access to markets, capital and support. The differences between Mittelstand companies and startups are less pronounced than those between startups and big corporations. However, three current barriers to fruitful collaboration have been identified: 1) a lack of access, 2) a lack of transparency regarding relevant players in the market, and 3) a lack of the internal resources needed to select the right partners, often due to time constraints or a lack of internal expertise on this issue. To ensure that positive business opportunities ensue, Mittelstand companies and startups alike have to be proactive in their search for cooperation partners and draw on a range of existing engagement modes (e.g., events, communities, accelerators). The interviews and the research conducted for this study made clear that no single mode of engagement can address all the needs and challenges associated with German-Israeli collaboration

Twenty years of electronic markets research: looking backwards towards the future

Over the past 20 years the field of electronic markets has seen a considerable proliferation and differentiation. This position paper takes the opportunity of the 21st volume of “Electronic Markets” to look back at important developments and insights, suggesting a framework that captures the multiple facets and indeed empirical breadth and depths of this concept. It comprises three perspectives which include the market environment, governance choices by economic actors as well as the entrepreneurial dynamics of firms who initiate and operate market platforms as their business. In addition, we propose to study the interplay of technological, market, and institutional drivers in order to understand the phenomenon of electronic markets, which is also a precondition for designing electronic markets. Both activities involve more than an economically motivated choice between the discrete alternatives of markets and hierarchies. Rather, electronic markets are configurations across multiple, interdependent dimensions: Technology is an important force in shaping the field, but needs to be complemented by considerations of the competitive environment and the setting of rules in order to ensure efficient and effective plays of the game. Based on this framework, this position paper develops six propositions for the future of electronic markets. Overall, the advantages of intermediated structures, an ongoing technological sophistication, as well as further innovation in market mechanisms and services make electronic markets an ena-bler for many interorganizational value chains. While we are confident that the ingenuity of inventors will yield a flow of innovations, recent economic crises have shed a dark shadow over the sustainability of electronic markets. They call for suitable rules and regulation amenable to economic prosperity and stability to be agreed upon on a broad level

E-BUSINESS MODEL: A CONTENT BASED TAXONOMY OF LITERATURE

The rapid worldwide growth of e-commerce and the resulting great interest on the digital business, caused a proliferation of contributes by academics and practitioners, that identified by different points of view, the fundamental concepts, codes and functions of e-business models. The quantity and the variety of approaches adopted made the concept of e-business model fuzzy and vague, with little consensus about its ontology and definition. The relevance of the topic asserts a claim for the classification of contributions as a first step to a general definition of the concept of e-business model. This paper provides an integrated literature review of contemporary academic writings to ascertain and classify the various approaches to the study of e-business models. The literature examined is classified in a content based taxonomy which highlights the relevant characteristics of e-business model, emerging from the analysis of literature. The framework proposed points out some significant implications that are a first step for further research leading to a research agenda for further investigation on this topic