Individual people as champions in building an emerging software ecosystem

Abstract

An increasing amount of software service providers tend to evolve their platforms into business ecosystems. In the mainstream of extant literature, the ecosystems have been seen as an interconnected system of organizations, mainly ignoring the individual level. However, some previous studies have suggested that collaboration—such as building a new ecosystem—may be depending on individual key persons who are development-oriented and capable of seeing the ecosystem’s value potential already in its early phases. Based on the results of a single-case study, this short paper proposes a new conversation on an unexplored area of key persons as enablers—‘champions’—for a new ecosystem creation. The empirical analysis was based on a single case study on a recently launched new software business ecosystem. As a result, four different capability areas and six, partly overlapping, roles for a champion, were identified. In future work, the findings on individual’s roles and required capabilities may provide fruitful research avenues to understand better the process of emergence of new ecosystems.