Designing Sustainable Ecosystem Business Models in the Regional Context

From the perspective of innovation management, designing a sustainable business model for an ecosystem is one of the most essential aspects to ensure the realization of the value for the ecosystem members and for society in general. However, the current understanding on ecosystem business models is relatively limited. Based on the case analysis of the regional ecosystem, we provide new empirical evidence on ecosystem business models. In the case study of the water management ecosystem, we will present how it has evolved since the 1980s and what have been the key elements as part of the business model design. Based on the analysis, we see that ecosystem business models need to take into account the regional characteristics and the dynamic nature (i.e. life cycle) of the ecosystem. The results can be used to help policy makers and ecosystem members to drive value capturing via ecosystem business models.