CR are neither seen as markets nor as hierarchies (Powell, 1990). They are seen as interdependent structures that strongly influence each other (Håkansson and Ford, 2002) as already explained above.
BEs as one form of CR are also seen as being located between market and hierarchies (Moore, 2006;
Scaringella and Radziwon, 2017). In BE theory the increasing complexity of collaborations due to a high variety of interconnected agents (Williamson and DeMeyer, 2012; Heikkilä and Kuivaniemi, 2012) is faced as well as the influence of environmental (Rong et al., 2010; Adner, Oxley and Silverman, 2013) and complex economic changes on CR (Borgh, Cloodt and Romme, 2012).
Companies aim to collaborate in order to exchange resources and to create innovative ideas, products or strategies (Van de Ven, 1986) and reach competitive advantage (Adner and Kapoor, 2010).
Nevertheless, they also face strong challenges when crossing company boundaries (Dyer and Singh, 1998). Depending on the environment the company is in, being stable or less stable (Lawrence and
Lorsch, 1976; Stacey, 1995), ‘low or high velocity’ (Eisenhardt, 1989b, p.543), within ‘smooth or abrupt development’ (Suarez and Lanzolla, 2007, p.384) the challenges differ (Adner and Kapoor, 2010). Adner and Kapoor (2010) see the challenges faced by companies in networks relative to the position of the network in the industry. Furthermore, industry specifics impact CR dynamics. How companies can quickly adapt to a changing environment, gain knowledge and realise innovation as fast as possible, are currently important research subjects in BE research (Williamson and DeMeyer, 2012).
While business network research focuses on the development of relationships and resource capturing, BE theory concentrates on industry and cross industry developments. The changing environment and how to reduce evolving uncertainty is investigated (Borgh, Cloodt and Romme, 2012; Rong and Shi, 2015). Furthermore, network research aims at understanding networks as a whole but the role of the individual organisation remains unclear (Berthod, Grothe-Hammer and Sydow, 2017). In contrast to that, BE theory offers an understanding on what agents exist in CR and how they are influenced by their environment (Peltoniemi, Vuori and Laihonen, 2005).
Consequently, BE theory addresses several continuously upcoming subjects in CR, such as the paradox of collaboration and competition, which is named co-evolution (Peltoniemi, Vuori and Laihonen, 2005), the reaction to a fast changing environment (Adner and Kapoor, 2010), as well as the importance of certain network positions and agents (Iansiti and Levien, 2004a). Company boundaries start to blur in CR and the environment of the organisation becomes essential to the survival of the individual firm (Den Hartigh and Van Asseldonk, 2004).
In order to link BE theory to the above described aspects of CR, the subsequent sections are built up as follows. After a first description of BE theory, important research streams are introduced. As a next step, the structural perspective of BE theory is outlined as well as how it complements and is complemented by network theory. How this can be related to KS in certain network positions is discussed after that, resulting into the creation of a conceptual model.
2.5.1.1 Business ecosystem theory
Today companies need to adapt quickly to changing environments (Rong and Shi, 2015; Hu et al., 2014) by gaining resources such as knowledge. Knowledge accessed can contribute to innovative ideas (Sorenson, Folker and Brigham, 2008). Therefore, questions about the environment, what it has to offer and how the company can operate in it and actively maintain the health of its surrounding (Rong and Shi, 2015) become more important. Different to research on business and social networks, BE theory couples the changing environment with the organisation acting within the ecosystem (Peltoniemi, Vuori and Laihonen, 2005).
The BE terminology is derived from biological systems (Moore, 1993; Moore, 1996) and outlines the interdependency of ecosystem actors within the system performing different roles (Li and Garnsey, 2014). Many authors reproduce either Moore’s (1993; 1996) or Iansiti and Levien’s (2004a) definitions of BEs (Williamson and DeMeyer, 2012; Adner, 2017; Peltoniemi and Vuori, 2004;
Battistella et al., 2013; Brusoni and Prencipe, 2013; Gawer and Cusumano, 2013; Isckia, 2009).
Moore’s (1996, p.26) defines BEs as “An economic community supported by a foundation of interacting organizations and individuals –the organisms of the business world”. Iansiti and Levien (2004a, pp.8-9) refer directly to network analogy “We found that perhaps more than any other type of network, a biological ecosystem provides a powerful analogy for understanding a business network. Like business networks, biological ecosystems are characterized by a large number of loosely interconnected participants who depend on each other for their mutual effectiveness and survival. And like business network participants, biological species in ecosystems share their fate with each other”. Heikkilä and Kuivaniemi (2012) see BEs as well as an advancement of the loosely connected partners, which no longer build up strategies on their own. “The BE perspective offers a new way to obtain a holistic view of the business network and the relationships and mechanisms that are shaping it, while including the roles and strategies of the individual actors that are a part of these networks” (Anggraeni, Den Hartigh and Zegveld, 2007, p.11). Similar to a biological ecosystem the focus of BEs lay on the ‘complex system of organisms’ or actors as well as their relationships and
how they live and develop (Battistella et al., 2013, p.1194). The analogy to network theory is therefore easy to discover, in particular when authors refer to BEs as communities of supply chain partners, stakeholders, governments and public institutions, customers and financing partners (Moore, 1993;
Rong et al., 2010). BE theory therefore offers a new perspective to investigate CR (Rong and Shi, 2015).
Overall, the biological metaphor was introduced to describe the idea of firms acting within, and being dependent on, its environment in order to meet today’s challenging demands to the single firm (Rong et al., 2010). BE actors are bound together by a mutual aim or a shared vision (Iansiti and Levien, 2004a). The focus shifts from network structures and their performance towards a focus on the single firm and its influence within those structures (Williamson and DeMeyer, 2012). Firms are seen as interdependent elements (Stead and Stead, 2013; Baldwin, 2012) that co-evolve with each other (Basole, 2009; Moore, 1993; Mäkinen and Dedehayir, 2012). The concepts of interdependency and co-evolvement are explained further below.
In this work, building on the considerations outlined before, BEs can be seen as open systems of CR with blurred boundaries in which companies mutually interact with each other in order to exchange resources. Certain actors or agents in BEs follow their strategy while considering their own system dependency and influence. In the following, actors and agents as terms will be used simultaneously as done in most BE literature (Scaringella and Radziwon, 2017). The next subsection gives an insight into BE research streams and foci.
2.5.1.2 Research on business ecosystem theory
BE theory evolved out of different research streams such as studies on organisations and their ecology (Hannan and Freeman, 1977), business network and supply chain theory (Isckia, 2009; Rong et al., 2010), innovation networks (Sawhney and Nambisan, 2007), open innovation (Chesbrough, 2010) and open strategy (Bordreau, 2010; Whittington, Cailluet and Yakis-Douglas, 2011; Hautz, 2017).
All these research streams take the same principle of openness to collaboration of the single firm,
actor importance and resource dependency resulting in interdependency between agents as basis of research (Isckia, 2009). Nevertheless, during the past years BE theory has been built on different theoretical constructs approaching different aspects of BE theory. Some of the research is explained below.
Having outlined definitions and main contributing areas to BE theory, the following BE research foci can be identified. BE structure (Adner, 2017), capabilities (Scaringella and Radziwon, 2017), performance, outcome and health (Iansiti and Richards, 2006; Singer, 2009), evolution and life cycle (Rong and Shi, 2015) and ecosystem governance (Sawhney and Nambisan, 2007). Den Hartigh, Tol and Visscher, (2006) concentrated on health measuring and governance. Health is linked to diversity of partners (Iansiti and Richards, 2006), types of relationships, value creation (Battistella et al., 2013;
Peltoniemi and Vuori, 2004; Overholm, 2015) and niche creation (Iansiti and Levien, 2004a).
Anggraeni, Den Hartigh and Zegveld (2007) identified performance and governance as key research areas of BEs and Rong sees the BE life cycle, the process of fostering the BE as substantial (Rong and Shi, 2015).
Additionally, other ecosystem terminology evolved. Beside BE, innovation ecosystems (Adner, 2006;
Valkokari, 2015) knowledge-based ecosystems (Borgh, Cloodt and Romme, 2012) or knowledge ecosystems (Clarysse et al., 2014; Valkokari, 2015), industrial ecosystems (Tsujimoto et al., 2017) as well as entrepreneurial ecosystems (Prahalad, 2010) evolved. In this work BE terminology is used.
Findings from other ecosystem research is utilised when they are essential for the understanding of ecosystem dynamics.
BE research takes place on multiple level of analysis. The BE level (Tsujimoto et al., 2017), the network level (Nambisan and Sawhney, 2011; Rong and Shi, 2015; Shang, 2014) the organisational level (Stanczyk, 2017; Peltoniemi and Vuori, 2005; Lu et al., 2014) and the individual level (Nambisan and Baron, 2013; Zahra and Nambisan, 2012). Whereas the individual level is only approached from the entrepreneurial perspective so far (Nambisan and Baron, 2013; Zahra and Nambisan, 2012), organisational level research focuses on innovation leadership (Adner, 2006;
Nambisan and Sawhney, 2011), IT platform leadership or leadership in supply chain focused industries (Gawer and Cusumano, 2008; Tiwana, Konsynski and Bush, 2010; Rong et al., 2013). Very little research has emphasised on the organisation and its strategy (Bosch-Sijtsemaand Bosch, 2015;
Stead and Stead, 2013; Williamson and DeMeyer, 2012; Iansiti and Levien, 2004a). Due to the complexity of BEs, scholars recommend to approach BEs from a holistic perspective by considering multiple levels of analysis (Rong and Shi, 2015). Consequently, BE structure and architecture are outlined in the following, considering network and agents specifics as well.