Data Ecosystem Business Models: Value and control in Data Ecosystems

Purpose: Organizations evolve from using and governing data internally towards the exchange of data in multi-organizational data ecosystems. The purpose of this research is to determine a business model framework for actors operating in and/or entering a data ecosystem. Methodology: To determine a business model framework in data ecosystems. an analysis was made based on how the research fields of “business models”, “data governance”, “data ecosystems”, “data sharing”, “business ecosystem” complement each other. A business model framework was created, which was applied to three use case studies in the field of Smart Cities and Urban Digital Twins: The Helsinki Digital Twin, the Rotterdam Digital Twin, and the Smart Retail Dashboard in Flanders. Findings: The business model of actors in a data ecosystem is determined by value and control factors. Value is determined by the capability to create value through the exchange of data in the ecosystem, and to capture value through revenue (sharing) models and cost (sharing) models. Control is determined by ecosystem control. Governance models on the ecosystem level are required to enable the collaboration and to ensure trust to allow for the willingness to share data. Additionally, data governance on an ecosystem level is required, enabling the data exchange between the actors. Research Limitations: The model was applied to three use cases in Smart Cities and Urban Digital Twins. Consequently, the data ecosystems concern a high presence of public actors, yet also includes private companies. The applicability needs to be identified in other sectors in further research. Additionally, as the scope of the study was on business models, data governance, data-sharing and data ecosystems, abstraction was made of fields of study beyond these topics. Value and practical implications: The Data Ecosystem Business Model framework can serve as a guideline for organizations entering a data ecosystem, as well as for actors aiming to establish novel data ecosystems. Additionally, the framework can serve as a high-level overview for further research into the field of business models in data ecosystems.

A Comparative Analysis of Social Enterprise in South Korea and Indonesia

Social enterprise (or, institutionally, social business) is a business practice that focuses on social activities in which both market and government fail to deliver social benefit, welfare, justice, and sustainability. Some countries such as South Korea, the United Kingdom, the USA, and others have progressively developed a suitable ecosystem for social enterprise. Indonesia, with its growing social enterprises in society, also needs a suitable and favorable ecosystem to ascertain the progress and sustainability of such enterprises. This study is intended to design a business ecosystem ideal for Indonesia’s social enterprises. It was conducted by comparative analysis of the social enterprise ecosystem in Indonesia and South Korea South Korea is considered a country with the most progressive social enterprises in Asia through a systematic literature review. The comparative analysis result is further analyzed using the BEEP (Babson Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Project) Model. This study shows that there are several significant differences and gaps between Indonesia and South Korea’s business ecosystem for fostering the progress of social enterprises notably in the areas of government policy, finance, and human capital in which Indonesia needs to reflect on developing and fostering her social enterprise ecosystem. The interplay of factors and players of the social business ecosystem in Indonesia will thrive if the government can properly nurture existing social culture, promote proper policies, roll out appropriate and accessible levels of the playing field, and develop a consistent and impartial legal framework. Keywords: social enterprise ecosystem, social business, entrepreneurship ecosystem, systematic literature revie

Managerial Views of Corporate Impacts and Dependencies on Ecosystem Services : A Case of International and Domestic Forestry Companies in China

A line of research is emerging investigating the private sector impacts and dependencies on critical biodiversity and ecosystem services, and related business risks and opportunities. While the ecosystem services narrative is being forwarded globally as a key paradigm for promoting business sustainability, there is scarce knowledge of how these issues are considered at managerial level. This study thus investigates managerial views of corporate sustainability after the ecosystem services concept. We analyse interviews conducted with 20 managers from domestic and international forestry companies operating with a plantation-based business model in China. Content analysis was employed to analyse the data, with a focus on four key areas: (1) interviewee familiarity with the ecosystem services concept; (2) their views of corporate dependencies and impacts on ecosystem services; (3) related business risks and opportunities; and (4) viability of existing instruments and practices that can be employed in detecting and addressing business impacts and dependencies on ecosystem services. Through an inductive approach to the empirical findings, we refined a framework that holds operational value for developing company response strategies to ecosystem services impact/dependence assessment, ensuring that all issues are addressed comprehensively, and that related risks and opportunities are properly acknowledged.Peer reviewe

A Business Model Assessment and Evaluation Framework for City Logistics Collaborative Strategic Decision Support

Several City Logistics (CL) initiatives have emerged in the last two decades with the aim to reduce the negative externalities of freight distribution in urban areas. Such initiatives can be public and/or private but need to not break or impeach current operations efficiency so to not hinder their profitability. In order to provide business value to CL initiatives and thus fostering their long-term success, it is necessary to understand the decision-making of private companies operating in the urban freight ecosystem. This paper proposes an ex-ante assessment and evaluation framework built around the concept of an ecosystem business modelling that includes the decision-making by CL stakeholders. A theoretical framework previously developed is extended to evaluate a collaborative business model of an Urban Consolidation Centre (UCC). Cost-Benefit analysis (CBA is used estimate the impact of the business model configuration. Finally, research and practice implications are also addressed

Valuing Nature in Business-A Case Study of Chemical Manufacturing and Forest Products Industries

Over the past several decades, there has been an increased realization of the extent to which the means of production in human society depend on and impact increasingly fragile natural systems. Working with our client, The Nature Conservancy, we researched trends in ecosystem valuation within the chemical manufacturing and forest product industries, discerning ways to identify and evaluate future ecosystem investment opportunities. This research resulted in a framework that businesses could use to identify future ecosystem service opportunities and then score the opportunities’ business values using a multi-criteria analysis approach. We identified potential ecosystem service opportunities by overlaying classifications of business risk on major operational subsectors within the industries, populating the resulting table with key ecosystem impacts and opportunities. Through the application of this process, we identified three hypothetical ecosystem service projects applicable to both the chemical manufacturing and forest product industries and used them to test our scoring framework. The identified projects were constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment, coastal habitat protection for storm surge protection, and forest carbon sequestration. We ranked the business value of each project using five criteria important to businesses: financial value, reputational benefits, environmental risk reduction, political and regulatory enabling conditions, and level of knowledge and activity in the field. According to our research, businesses emphasize financial benefits most highly when evaluating potential investments, so we weighted financial values most heavily in our ranking scheme. Our analysis indicated that a forest carbon sequestration project had the highest potential business value relative to the other project types due to its higher expected financial benefits. The constructed wetland project, which also had a relatively high expected financial benefit, followed second. Finally, the coastal habitat protection project had the lowest relative business value due to high costs, a low level of scientific knowledge, and weak regulatory support. The identification and ranking methodologies are designed to be flexible, allowing adaptation for use given varying business objectives. The weights on the five valuation criteria can be adjusted to reflect a business’s concerns. This scoring methodology is useful for businesses because few tools exist to enable comparative analysis of business ecosystem service investments. We believe this tool provides a useful approach to determining the value that nature and ecosystem services provide to a wide range of businesses, and we recommend its application outside the chemical manufacturing and forest products industry for further refinement

Aligning Business Analytics Programs with Industry Required Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

This paper describes results from a topic modeling analysis of online data analytics-related job advertisements. Five distinct clusters emerged, each with a focus on different knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) profiles. We labelled these clusters big data, systems analysis, business, healthcare, and technical research. Identification of these clusters provides a framework that can be used by information systems and business analytics faculty to offer customized and specialized information systems and business analytics programs that prepare graduates to fill specific roles in the data ecosystem of the workplace

BUSINESS IMPACT ASSESSMENT OF SELF-GROWING ENERGY EFFICIENT SYSTEMS

This paper investigates the business impact of two novel mechanisms that increase the energy efficiency of networks, i.e. sensor network decentralisation and system idle time estimation, which have been developed in the CONSERN project. The analysis consists of two distinct but interrelated phases, the objective of which is to combine a techno-economic analysis of actual gains as contained within the technical KPIs of optimisation techniques, with a strategic analysis of factors promoting or hindering the actual introduction of these mechanisms within mobile business ecosystems. In the first phase, the technical gains of the two mechanisms are translated into an estimation of Operational Expenditure (OPEX) savings for a number of typical configurations. Subsequently, a business impact assessment is performed, in which two commercial deployment modes – an operator based and operator independent mode – are outlined. After having drawn up the business ecosystem for these two deployment models, a number of business opportunities and challenges for the two mechanisms in the different deployment modes are identified using the business model framework developed by Ballon, and a scorecard is used to weigh the importance of the various business model parameters against each other. The paper concludes with some recommendations and steps to mitigate disjunctions and improve synergies between the key stakeholders, constituting a sustainable business ecosystem

Business models for accelerators: A structured literature review

Purpose:This paper aims to provide a better understanding of accelerators’ phenomenon, developing a business model framework for these organizations. The proposed framework aims to offer helpful guidance for practitioners and policymakers, together with various research opportunities for scholars. Design/Methodology/Approach:The study employs a structured literature review methodology, which guarantees the repeatability of the research and the validity of the outcomes. Additionally, to further test the results of our analysis, we interviewed ten practitioners from some accelerators located in Italy and Slovenia. Findings:Findings show that the literature on accelerators is still fragmented and under-investigated. The presented framework for an accelerator business model provides insights about the activity and the role of such organizations. The study offers fruitful avenues for future research on accelerators’ business models. Research limitations/implications:Given the fragmented nature and the novelty of the literature on the topic, there may be relevant papers and reports missing in our analysis. Further research should investigate the role of accelerators in the ecosystem they operate in and provide a clear and shared definition in collaboration with all stakeholders. Practical implications:The presented framework provides practitioners with useful insights for understanding an accelerator activity and valuable recommendations for managing these organizations in the future. Social implications:Since we consider society among the key stakeholders of an accelerator’s business model, this study provides significant insights about the social impact of accelerators in the ecosystem they operate in. Relevant implications may be useful especially for policymakers. Originality/Value:The main contribution of this study is the extent analysis of a novel topic in the entrepreneurial literature, providing a clear and broad perspective of the phenomenon. Furthermore, this study provides relevant insights on the role of accelerators in academic research as well as for practitioners and policymakers

Expanding entrepreneurship education ecosystems

Purpose The creation of start-ups using knowledge provided by universities has been identified as an important source of knowledge spillover and regional economic development. Entrepreneurship ecosystems in education have become the most important and efficient mechanism of business community engagement and knowledge transfer within university-industry-government framework creating value to society and regional economy. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach This study undertakes in-depth synthesis of eclectic literature on entrepreneurship ecosystems and knowledge spillover of entrepreneurship, examining the critical success factors and enablers of entrepreneurship ecosystems in education. Findings This study proposes entrepreneurship education ecosystems as an alternative unit of analysis when it comes to considering the role of university-industry-government collaboration in knowledge commercialization. The authors recommend key entrepreneurship education ecosystem enablers for knowledge commercialization and engagement with entrepreneurial communities. Originality/value The authors propose a framework for the creation of an entrepreneurship education ecosystem as a unit of analysis when considering the role of university-industry-government collaboration. It requires different approaches to teaching, research and business outreach, some of which have not yet been discovered or yet need to be created

Ecosystem Approach to the Formation of Goods Express Delivery Supply Chains in Aviation Logistics

The article shows that in the context of accelerating the processes of economic integration in aviation logistics at the micro, meso and macro levels, complicating the forms of business organization, the emergence of new forms of cooperation between companies and new ways of jointly creating added value, many organizational boundaries in the economy are becoming more blurred and dynamic. The use of the concept of "ecosystem" in research is growing. An attempt is made to consider the possibility of using the “ecosystem” design for economic analysis at the aggregated level and to highlight the elements of the aviation logistics ecosystem on which the attention of researchers will be focused. From the authors point of view, the aviation logistics ecosystem is a combination of aviation, logistics, transport and postal organizations, were provide goods express delivery supply chains with system of interconnected technologies use. In the framework of article analysis of air cargo industry framework, synchronization and digitization of service operations in air cargo service supply chain, express delivery supply chains were represented. The authors proposed a mathematical model that allows logisticians to optimize the supply chain of special categories of goods, which is one of the priority tasks of the aviation logistics ecosystem