The Co-Evolution of Digital Ecosystems

Digital ecosystems continue to evolve, as new external APIs continue to enter into it. Not all new APIs, however, have the same fate: some are successfully connected with existing APIs and spark major changes in the ecosystem, while others are simply ignored. Particularly, some of the components end up playing a major role in shaping the structure of the ecosystem. To systematically explore what determines the fate of different APIs, we hypothesize how the network property and non-network property of external APIs affect the probability of the APIs becoming a part of the newly generated structure of a digital ecosystem. For the empirical test, we used plug-in source code data collected from Wordpress.org from January 2004 to December 2014. Using a survival analysis, we found that external APIs are more influential than APIs offered by a focal platform system in the growth of a digital ecosystem

Essays on Business Value Creation in Digital Platform Ecosystems

Digital platforms and the surrounding ecosystems have garnered great interest from researchers and practitioners. Notwithstanding this attention, it remains unclear how and when digital platforms create business value for platform owners and complementors. This three-essay dissertation focuses on understanding business value creation in digital platform ecosystems. The first essay reviews and synthesizes literature across disciplines and offers an integrative framework of digital platform business value. Advised by the findings from the review, the second and third essays focus on the value creation for platform complementors. The second essay examines how IT startups entering a platform ecosystem at different times can strategically design their products (i.e., product diversification across platform architectural layers and product differentiation) to gain competitive advantages. Longitudinal evidence from the Hadoop ecosystem demonstrates that product diversification has an inverted U-shaped relationship with complementors success, and such an effect is more salient for earlier entrants than later entrants. Earlier entrants should develop products that are similar to other ecosystem competitors to reduce uncertainty whereas later entrants are advised to explore market niche and differentiate their products.The third essay investigates how platform complementors strategies and products co-evolve over time in the co-created ecosystem network environment. Our longitudinal analysis of the Hadoop ecosystem indicates that complementors technological architecture coverage and alliance exploration strategies increase their product evolution rate. In turn, complementors with faster product evolution are more likely to explore new partners but less likely to cover a wider range of the focal platforms technological layers in subsequent periods. Network density, co-created by all platform complementors, weakens the effects of complementors strategies on their product evolution but amplifies the effects of past product evolutions on strategies.This three-essay dissertation uncovers various understudied competitive strategies in the digital platform context and enriches our understanding of business value creation in digital platform ecosystems

Emergence of Digital Business Ecosystems: A theoretical framework

This paper seeks to determine what triggers the emergence of Digital Business Ecosystems. To reach this aim, Traditional Business Ecosystems are considered as the initial state from which Digital Business Ecosystems arise. Thus, both of the concepts are defined, stating their characteristics, roles of the actors and stages of formation. Moreover, organizational change theory is adopted in order to explain the cited emergence. Disruptions from the use of ICTs and the digital transformation initiatives prompt the evolution of Digital Business Ecosystems approach and stimulates the adoption of more innovative means of conducting business. Therefore, organizational change theory is suitable to explain the motives behind the potential shift of Business Ecosystems from Traditional to Digital. The inherent triggers can take place within each organization of the ecosystem and thus systems theory is advocated; the emphasis on fixing the appropriate organizational goals that involve innovation is the key to meet change. Transition can also emerge from people’s own will and the desire to evolve along with the new digital environment, or out of a conflictual situation where norms and rules evolve to embrace the new possibilities that digital offers. The results of the conceptual literature review confirm that the potential shift towards Digital Business Ecosystems is a reality that could be tackled by encouraging organizational development and fostering co-creation of value in a constantly changing environment. The findings offer a relevant conceptual contribution to bridge a gap in the DBE existing research regarding the origins of this concept and its driving force.   Keywords: Business Ecosystem, Digital Business Ecosystem, Organizational change theory. JEL Classification: M19 Paper type: Theoretical researchThis paper seeks to determine what triggers the emergence of Digital Business Ecosystems. To reach this aim, Traditional Business Ecosystems are considered as the initial state from which Digital Business Ecosystems arise. Thus, both of the concepts are defined, stating their characteristics, roles of the actors and stages of formation. Moreover, organizational change theory is adopted in order to explain the cited emergence. Disruptions from the use of ICTs and the digital transformation initiatives prompt the evolution of Digital Business Ecosystems approach and stimulates the adoption of more innovative means of conducting business. Therefore, organizational change theory is suitable to explain the motives behind the potential shift of Business Ecosystems from Traditional to Digital. The inherent triggers can take place within each organization of the ecosystem and thus systems theory is advocated; the emphasis on fixing the appropriate organizational goals that involve innovation is the key to meet change. Transition can also emerge from people’s own will and the desire to evolve along with the new digital environment, or out of a conflictual situation where norms and rules evolve to embrace the new possibilities that digital offers. The results of the conceptual literature review confirm that the potential shift towards Digital Business Ecosystems is a reality that could be tackled by encouraging organizational development and fostering co-creation of value in a constantly changing environment. The findings offer a relevant conceptual contribution to bridge a gap in the DBE existing research regarding the origins of this concept and its driving force.   Keywords: Business Ecosystem, Digital Business Ecosystem, Organizational change theory. JEL Classification: M19 Paper type: Theoretical researc

THE BRIGHT AND DARK SIDE OF FINANCIAL SERVICES ECOSYSTEM

In this brief contribution we focus on the co-evolution of cybercrime and cybersecurity practices in the banking and financial sector. We draw on previous studies on outlaw innovation and organizational morphing to reconstruct the parallel and mutually influenced evolution of the bright and dark side of financial services. We identify five phases from the late 90s to the post-2015 period that show the paired configuration in actors, techniques, collaborative actions, and venues in the morphing of the two opposing sides. This paper constitutes the first step towards a broader empirical analysis on the generativity of opposing forces in digital ecosystems

Digitale Transformation aus unternehmensübergreifender Perspektive: Management der Koevolution von Plattformbesitzern und Komplementoren in Plattformökosystemen

Digital platforms have the potential to transform how organizations are doing business in their respective ecosystems. Motivated by this transformation, the purpose of this thesis is to increase the understanding of digital transformation from an inter-organizational perspective. Therefore, this thesis clarifies the phenomenon of digital transformation, and models and analyzes multiple digital platform ecosystems. Building upon that, this dissertation reflects on multiple case studies on how platform owners can manage the co-evolution of their complementors in digital transformations in digital platform ecosystems.Digitale Plattformen haben das Potential, die Art und Weise, wie Unternehmen in ihren jeweiligen Ökosystemen Geschäfte machen, zu verändern. Motiviert durch diese Transformation, ist das Ziel dieser Arbeit, das Verständnis von digitaler Transformation aus einer inter-organisatorischen Perspektive zu erhöhen. Daher erläutert diese Arbeit das Phänomen der digitalen Transformation, und modelliert und analysiert mehrere digitale Plattformökosysteme. Darauf aufbauend reflektiert diese Dissertation in mehreren Fallstudien darüber, wie Plattformbesitzer die Koevolution ihrer Komplementoren in digitalen Transformationen in digitalen Plattformökosystemen steuern können

Digital Ecosystems: Ecosystem-Oriented Architectures

We view Digital Ecosystems to be the digital counterparts of biological ecosystems. Here, we are concerned with the creation of these Digital Ecosystems, exploiting the self-organising properties of biological ecosystems to evolve high-level software applications. Therefore, we created the Digital Ecosystem, a novel optimisation technique inspired by biological ecosystems, where the optimisation works at two levels: a first optimisation, migration of agents which are distributed in a decentralised peer-to-peer network, operating continuously in time; this process feeds a second optimisation based on evolutionary computing that operates locally on single peers and is aimed at finding solutions to satisfy locally relevant constraints. The Digital Ecosystem was then measured experimentally through simulations, with measures originating from theoretical ecology, evaluating its likeness to biological ecosystems. This included its responsiveness to requests for applications from the user base, as a measure of the ecological succession (ecosystem maturity). Overall, we have advanced the understanding of Digital Ecosystems, creating Ecosystem-Oriented Architectures where the word ecosystem is more than just a metaphor.Comment: 39 pages, 26 figures, journa

Ab Initio Modeling of Ecosystems with Artificial Life

Artificial Life provides the opportunity to study the emergence and evolution of simple ecosystems in real time. We give an overview of the advantages and limitations of such an approach, as well as its relation to individual-based modeling techniques. The Digital Life system Avida is introduced and prospects for experiments with ab initio evolution (evolution "from scratch"), maintenance, as well as stability of ecosystems are discussed.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figure

A systematic review of the literature on digital transformation: insights and implications for strategy and organizational change

In this article we provide a systematic review of the extensive yet diverse and fragmented literature on digital transformation (DT), with the goal of clarifying boundary conditions to investigate the phenomenon from the perspective of organizational change. On the basis of 279 articles, we provide a multi-dimensional framework synthesizing what is known about DT and discern two important thematical patterns: DT is moving firms to malleable organizational designs that enable continuous adaptation, and this move is embedded in and driven by digital business ecosystems. From these two patterns, we derive four perspectives on the phenomenon of DT: technology impact, compartmentalized adaptation, systemic shift and holistic co-evolution. Linking our findings and interpretations to existing work, we find that the nature of DT is only partially covered by conventional frameworks on organizational change. On the basis of this analysis, we derive a research agenda and provide managerial implications for strategy and organizational change.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Biology of Applied Digital Ecosystems

A primary motivation for our research in Digital Ecosystems is the desire to exploit the self-organising properties of biological ecosystems. Ecosystems are thought to be robust, scalable architectures that can automatically solve complex, dynamic problems. However, the biological processes that contribute to these properties have not been made explicit in Digital Ecosystems research. Here, we discuss how biological properties contribute to the self-organising features of biological ecosystems, including population dynamics, evolution, a complex dynamic environment, and spatial distributions for generating local interactions. The potential for exploiting these properties in artificial systems is then considered. We suggest that several key features of biological ecosystems have not been fully explored in existing digital ecosystems, and discuss how mimicking these features may assist in developing robust, scalable self-organising architectures. An example architecture, the Digital Ecosystem, is considered in detail. The Digital Ecosystem is then measured experimentally through simulations, with measures originating from theoretical ecology, to confirm its likeness to a biological ecosystem. Including the responsiveness to requests for applications from the user base, as a measure of the 'ecological succession' (development).Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure, conferenc