Dynamic Capability in Business Ecosystems as a Sustainable Industrial Strategy: How to Accelerate Transformation Momentum

Abstract

From a sustainable development perspective, continuous industrial growth is an important issue. In recent years, it has become difficult for companies to survive in an increasingly competitive and rapidly changing business environment. To align with these changes, companies must not only rapidly transform their own organizations but also their current business domains. However, it is difficult for a leading company alone to transform existing business domains. While it is known that the transformation of a business area requires cooperation with partners, the mechanism of sustainable growth in existing business ecosystems is unclear. To solve this problem, this paper aims to unveil the role of transformation momentum in the business ecosystem in the IT (information technology) industry, which is rapidly changing from traditional IT services to cloud-based services. This study has selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure as IoT case studies, as these cases have successfully transitioned from their original business domains to new ones. Based on these cases, we established a Sustainable Business Ecosystem Transformation (SBET) model for transforming industries using the business ecosystem’s dynamic capabilities. The SBET model demonstrates how transformation momentum can be created using business ecosystems in four phases (Exploration, Creation, Formation, and Mutation). The SBET model contributes to expanding the business ecosystem concept by adopting sustainable growth and accelerating transformations to enhance global IT business ecosystems. Using the model in this study, companies can achieve continuous growth not only in their own organizations but also in their partners in the wider business domain.