CONCEPTS CONCERNING DIGITAL ECOSYSTEMS- A REVIEW

Abstract

Digital transformation is anticipated to be the fourth industrial revolution. Considering this phenomenon, some economic entities tend to group and collaborate using digital technologies, thus forming economic ecosystems. The notion of ecosystem is a relatively recent concept used in economic language, coming from biology. Because of this, the ecosystem and the specific types of ecosystems, such as business and digital, are not consistently defined in the literature. There are multiple conceptualizations of these concepts, which in practice leads to confusion and even misuse of the terminology. The main purpose of the paper is to revise the concepts related to the ecosystem construct, but also the most important types of ecosystems for the world economy, namely the business and digital ecosystems. The methodology used is the analysis of the main sources dealing with ecosystems, particularly digital and business. We have reviewed papers from the following journals: Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Journal of Business Research, Technovation, Digital Business, International Journal of Information Management, and Technology Innovation Management Review. It is important to note that the analysis of the articles was carried out from a managerial point of view, without adopting a technical perspective. Following this analysis, we made a comparison between the two types of ecosystems, highlighting their common features.

Keywords

• digital ecosystems
• business ecosystem
• digital transformation