Ecosystem Companies: The Stages of Development and Limits

Abstract

The article discusses ecosystem companies. This is a set of enterprises that produce a wide range of goods and services in various industries and under a single brand. The development of an ecosystem forms an attitude towards it as a brand, and not as a legal entity or a group of companies. This brand is represented as a set of goods and services from different industries. This study clarified the boundaries of the concept of socio-economic ecosystem and the target properties of its elements. These elements are harmony, complementarity, universality, seamlessness and connectedness. The article formulates the sequence of transformations of the company into an ecosystem. Transformation occurs through micro-, meso- and industrial levels of activity. This allowed us to structure the levels of ecosystem development. The initial level is a separate enterprise, then to the industry structure and, as a result, to the industrial structure. Ecosystem companies form a new approach to managing large and complex structures. Its main difference is a set of cyclic and point solutions. Such control is characterized by milder effects. Ecosystem management is a set of unique non-cyclic solutions that form the concept of ecosystem development. There are three ways ecosystems interact with each other. The first is an explicit partnership, the second is secretive in a parasitic form, and the third is indirectly through an intermediary ecosystem. Similar ways of interaction in the future will lead to integration processes of merging and absorption of ecosystems. These processes require a particular managerial staff, taking into account large and complex structures.