Ecosystems Thinking and Modern Platform-Based Ecosystem Theory

The emergence of business ecosystems and platforms represents a very recent development that is having a significant impact upon traditional industries and product/service markets. The speed at which this new form of business model innovation has gained momentum has been largely the result of new technologies in the ICT sector such as the Internet (Web 1.0 and Web 2.0), the increasing digitisation (and dematerialisation) of products, the rapid diffusion of mobile communications, big data and cloud computing. This trend is set to continue with the roll out of the Internet-of-Things (IOT) and the increasing connectedness that will result from this. Chapter 4 will define what is meant by the terms ecosystem and platform and evaluate a broad range of theories relating to these two highly inter-related concepts.