Digital ecosystems and their influence on business relationships

Abstract Our study focuses on digitalization and its effects on business relationships, particularly on the innovative aspect of how the development of digital ecosystems influences these relationships. Digital ecosystems are defined as socio-technical environments in which individuals, organizations, and digital technologies develop collaborative and competitive relationships to create value for their end customers through shared digital platforms. The main characteristics of a digital ecosystem include the existence of digital platforms and symbiosis, which refers to the interdependence between business ecosystems. Methodologically, we adopted a case study research strategy to capture the nature of the activities, resources, and actors involved, as well as the effect of digital ecosystems on the development of business relationships. This study demonstrates that digital ecosystems enhance collaboration and influence companies’ activities and resource ties by enabling real-time communication and information sharing among different actors. This collaboration extends to entities from different industries and digital platforms, which effectively integrate data between companies in real time. Furthermore, actors embedded in digital ecosystems gain several advantages, such as cost reduction, lower network latency (due to the proximity between actors), greater flexibility in establishing new connections within a shorter time frame, and accelerated time-to-market (due to the availability of multiple actors within the same environment). Moreover, actors seek to foster both cooperative and competitive relationships among participating companies, allowing each entity to purchase or transact services in a significantly simpler and more efficient manner.