Ecosystem Value Creation and Capture: A Systematic Review of Literature and Potential Research Opportunities

Abstract

Collaboration, co-creation, and competition are essential strategies for success in today’s modern businesses. In comparison with former ways of doing business in isolation, ecosystems nowadays have created ample opportunities for generating significantly more values. However, there are also potential threats in the pathway towards success in ecosystems. Ecosystem value creation and capture (EVCC) has recently gained significant attention in the academic literature of business and management. Yet, due to the complex structures of ecosystems and ambiguity in understanding value creation and capture in ecosystems, the contributions heretofore are fragmented, where scholars analysed different aspects of EVCC. The present study offers a systematic review of the literature to shed light on the EVCC studies. The content analysis of a fine-grained sample of articles relevant to EVCC revealed that despite the initiation of discussions in 2007, the topic did not gain noticeable attention until 2016. A 150% increase in the number of papers has since been observed. The paper contributes to the intersection of strategy and studies on EVCC by synthesizing existing knowledge, illuminating current EVCC research, and highlighting potential research avenues.

Keywords

• ecosystem
• strategy
• systematic literature review
• value capture
• value creation