Strategies for a Small to Medium-sized Enterprise to Engage in an Existing Ecosystem

Abstract

Finally, the article concludes by summarizing the results, discussing the implications for theory and practice, as well as providing limitations of the study and future research avenues. Recent advances in ecosystem theory prescribe that companies need to develop offers that are modular and form unique or supermodular complementarities with other offers. However, both academic and managerial knowledge of the strategies that especially small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) can use to engage in existing ecosystems for value creation remains scattered and predominantly vague. This article thus aims to explore applicable ecosystem engagement strategies from the perspective of SMEs, as discussed in previous scholarly literature. In so doing, the article puts forward and elaborates three distinct strategies that SMEs can apply to become part of value-creating ecosystems. In this way, the findings contribute to the literature on ecosystems. This article aimed to explore applicable ecosystem engagement strategies from the perspective of SMEs as discussed in previous literature on ecosystems. The findings showed that various strategies are possible for SMEs to engage in existing ecosystems. The first strategy proposed in this project was based on the theory of ecosystems as articulated by Jacobides et al. (2018). The second strategy was built based on a summative model that synthesizes the findings from the literature by several authors, which also includes the definition and classification of complementarities by Jacobides al. Both strategies suggest that SMEs collaborate with ecosystem complementors by