Conceptualizing and analyzing business ecosystem service offerings

Abstract

Business ecosystems are dynamic structures of various actors who co-create value. By combining complementary and substitute services, these actors create integrated offerings. This paper proposes a conceptual model which supports the analysis of ecosystems by decomposing the offering into distinct modules. Each module represents a beneficiary-provider duality with a specific value proposition and activities to be performed. It further describes, how different service modules contribute and may change the network-level purpose. The research follows design science and was facilitated in a consortium setup to integrate practitioners' insights. The paper contributes by developing design principles for a service configuration model, identifying relevant activities to describe service creation, providing a logic to configure distinct services into a whole, and introducing the concept of substitutes into the discussion.