Classroom Companion: Business

Foreword
It is my great pleasure to introduce this important book. While the impacts of 
digital technologies are growing with far-reaching magnitudes, the academic field 
of digital economics is still in its inception and definition phases, with even fewer 
textbooks. This book fills an important void by bringing together theories from 
economics, management science, system dynamics, and business modelling to pro-
vide overview and structure to this emerging field. The book will be useful both for 
graduate and under-graduate courses, and for researchers who wish to have a 
salient overview and introduction.
The book has a clear pedagogical structure and flow, where each chapter fea-
tures abstract, learning objectives, definitions, logical partition with sub-headings, 
theory presentations, cases, boxes, and concluding set of Q&A. With this lay-out, 
the book is immediately appealing for parsing and selection of chapters that seem 
more interesting. The order between chapters is also clear, one building upon each 
other, starting with the technologies, and moving step by step into more and more 
sophisticated topics. Toward the end, there are chapters with quite advanced math-
ematical modelling, together with some specific application areas such as big data 
and network neutrality. The final chapter provides an overview of digital regula-
tion, as a final integrating chapter that brings to bear many of the economic analy-
sis tools presented earlier.
While organizing and summarizing theories of relevance for the topic, the book 
also has some important intellectual contributions and perspectives. Among oth-
ers, the book emphasizes the integration of Porter’s strategy framework with the 
value network perspective which serves to integrate both traditional strategy analy-
sis with new theories relating to value creation in digital networks. Moreover, the 
integration of the multi-sided platform theories with the value network theory and 
network effects is an important way forward to operationalize the multi-sided plat-
form theory further. The authors have developed a set of excellent illustrations to 
further illustrate the importance of the various relations between multi-sided plat-
forms with other theories and constructs. The book also provides a helpful histori-
cal context by referring the readers to origins and authors of important concepts, 
such as ecosystems and path dependencies, and by so doing providing teasers for 
further reading.
In summary, the book provides an integrated overview of a field of increasing 
importance and has done so in a very pedagogical fashion. The book should be a 
welcome contribution for courses in strategy, business, and digital economics. The 
book is suitable for both undergraduate and graduate level engineering students, 
taking advantage of the advanced mathematical modelling.

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VII
I give this book my heartfelt recommendation and invite the reader to enjoy this 
tour of digital economics, in the company of two experts and enthusiastic guides!