Coopetition and sustainable competitiveness in business ecosystem: a networks analysis of the global telecommunications industry

Abstract

Over the past few years, academics and practitioners have started to pay more attention to a new ecology of coopetition and new kinds of business models which can be better defined on the basis of business ecosystem platforms. Developing strategies to help sustainable competitive advantage in this new business environment is a key challenge for businesses and economies around the world. Using the World Input–Output Database of intermediate goods and services, this study explores the business ecosystems of the global telecommunications industry and conducts a networks analysis of the sector. The paper illustrated an exploratory study of identifying business ecosystems as well as the influence of each country/industry in the global telecommunications industry. While this area of the study is still in its early stages of development, making strategic and policy decisions from the results is a challenging task that require elaborate case-by-case analytical investigation of results from different perspectives.