A Systematic Mapping-Driven Framework for Vetting Participation in Business Ecosystems

A key strategic option for many organizations across the globe is to examine whether and how business ecosystems can help them survive and thrive amidst continuous changes in business realities. Joining a business ecosystem, though, is not a straightforward decision. Current research efforts are falling short of fully identifying a concise and practical set of decision-making factors that potential ecosystem participants can meaningfully use. To address this limitation, the authors developed a framework of decision-making factors (motivations, prerequisites, ecosystem attractiveness), based on (a) their findings of a systematic mapping study they conducted and (b) their parallel research efforts in business ecosystems operations. The proposed framework encompasses a concrete “vocabulary” of decision-making factors that can enable complex “dialogs” between existing and new business ecosystem stakeholders. As a result, this research effort (a) offers a clear and unambiguous categorization of previously overloaded and ambiguous decision-making factors; (b) captures relationships between the three core components of the proposed framework, thus considering upfront any synergies or conflicts among them; and (c) makes the candidate organization’s decision-making process pragmatic, i.e., misalignment among the proposed factors should be considered a ‘red flag’ that may drive the candidate organization to pivot its decision-making process towards another business ecosystem.