A framework for mapping actor roles and their innovation potential in digital ecosystems

Abstract

As digital connectivity continues to unlock new ways to interconnect activities from heterogeneous organisations, our need to understand how actors exercise control over these interdependencies to innovate the ecosystem becomes an imperative. This study proposes a conceptual framework building on a new construct – the ecosystem business model – to specify actors' roles based on the functional activities they manage and their structural positions, and explain why different roles drive innovation in the ecosystem's joint value proposition at different intensities. These arguments are illustrated with two cases of digitally enabled ecosystems from the air transport and healthcare sectors with different connectivity governance rules. This paper contributes to the ecosystem literature by explaining the mechanisms through which governance structures and innovation dynamics interact, providing a new explanation of ecosystem evolution that is compatible with contemporary digital connectivity trends. The framework also serves as a guiding tool for practitioners to map out actor roles and the degree in which they can potentially drive innovation in the ecosystem's value proposition.