A matter of definition: Criteria for digital ecosystems

Digital ecosystems like Airbnb or Uber have fundamentally changed their respective domains, and an increasing number of organizations are now considering how they can benefit from the underlying concepts. While several examples of systems that are generally accepted as digital ecosystems exist in practice, there is no common understanding yet of what exactly constitutes a digital ecosystem. This lack of a clear definition and understanding substantially impedes any well-founded discussion, analysis, design, and establishment of digital ecosystems.

Digital ecosystems are strongly driven by practice, and research is following in a descriptive and analytical role. In search of a precise definition that matches the examples we see in practice, we analyzed the state of the art of digital ecosystems and closely related terms, such as {platform, business, software} ecosystems as well as the {platform, sharing} economy. While we found several common key properties in the literature, we identified a lack of a clear definition and a common understanding of the term.

To address this problem, we propose a definition of digital ecosystems based on a set of well-defined criteria. Our definition builds upon the traditional understanding of an economic service and extends it successively with digital and ecosystem characteristics. The resulting model is precise and consistent, and matches the general conception of digital ecosystems in practice. It allows clearly classifying systems as digital ecosystems as well as reasoning about their core service and assets, which we demonstrate using Uber as a prominent example. With this, our proposed model lays the foundation for the systematic development of specific digital ecosystem engineering approaches.