Digitale Plattformen haben sich dank ihres disruptiven Potenzials als führende Geschäftsmodelle in einer Vielzahl von Branchen etabliert. Dieser Beitrag beleuchtet die Entwicklung der Ökosystem-Metapher von ihren Ursprüngen bis zu ihrer Anpassung an den digitalen Wandel und diskutiert drei unterschiedliche Perspektiven auf moderne Unternehmensökosysteme. Darüber hinaus werden zentrale Treiber der Wertschöpfung in der Plattformökonomie vorgestellt, die als Instrumente zur Steuerung der Wertgenerierung dienen. Abschließend wird ein Ausblick auf zukünftige Forschungsfelder zur Wertschöpfung in plattformbasierten Ökosystemen gegeben.

Digital platforms have emerged as leading business models across a wide range of industries due to their disruptive potential. This article examines the development of the ecosystem metaphor from its origins to its adaptation to digital change and discusses three different perspectives on modern business ecosystems. In addition, key drivers of value creation in the platform economy are presented, which serve as instruments for managing value generation. The article concludes with an outlook on future fields of research on value creation in platform-based ecosystems.

Single organizations encounter intricate challenges in meeting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on their own and thus are increasingly concerned with forming ecosystems. This is also the case in the e-commerce domain. It is assumed that particularly focal actors of such ecosystems have the power to foster initiatives towards more sustainability. We conducted an embedded multi-case study with 135 initiatives collected from three types of e-commerce ecosystems to uncover what sustainability goals are addressed by different ecosystem participants. This paper’s analysis explores (1) what sustainability initiatives are reported from focal actors and differences depending on a specific type of ecosystem, (2) dependencies between SDGs within the initiatives, and (3) the degree of involvement of other ecosystem actors and how they contribute to certain SDGs. Our work synthesizes existing initiatives towards sustainable development to give orientation and impulses for practice and academia as well as outlines avenues for future research at the intersection of ecosystems and sustainability.

Platform-based ecosystems dominate e-commerce, generating value through participant growth and resulting network effects. However, research has lacked any conceptualization of value creation in e-commerce ecosystems. This paper fills this gap by providing a theoretically grounded and empirically validated conceptualization of value creation and exchange, including roles, value creation activities, and value flows among participants. The model integrates insights from a systematic literature review and a multi-case study of ten leading e-commerce ecosystems. Furthermore, an extension to the e3-value notation is proposed by introducing ecosystem segments, allowing for a higher level of abstraction of meta-roles and individual ecosystem participants.

E-commerce is one of the most important sectors of the economy, with an expected global turnover of USD 7.4 trillion in 2024. Leading companies in the industry like Amazon and Alibaba leverage platform business models that orchestrate complex ecosystems of buyers and sellers. These ecosystems are characterized by globally intertwined networks of independent participants and multifaceted interactions, making their development hard to predict. We propose an agent-based simulation approach, following the three-step process of Haki et al. (2020), to predict the behavior of e-commerce ecosystems with a particular focus on the impact of premium subscription services. Simulation models offer the opportunity to tangibly visualize the effects of a participant's actions on the ecosystem level. Our simulation includes the key actors (i.e., buyer, seller, marketplace), their characteristics, and behaviors to draw conclusions about the evolution of the ecosystem and the strategic role of premium memberships in shaping these digital landscapes.

The spread of the Internet of Things offers companies the potential to exert a disruptive influence on existing market structures and entire domains. The shift from product to service orientation and the integration of the customer as a value co-creator makes the identification and development of value-adding, IoT-based offerings a central challenge. As a link between strategy and business processes, business models are a suitable tool to meet this challenge. However, present business models lack of consideration of IoT specific characteristics. Against this background we provide a taxonomy for the description of IoT-based business models based on systematic literature research. Furthermore, the taxonomy is applied to 103 business models, demonstrating its usefulness. We also provide insights into the design of business models within two domains. The taxonomy provides a tool for investigating busi-ness models, especially how IoT can be incorporated into them and also a conceptual basis for future research.