Classroom Companion: Business

 
Chapter 4 · Digital Economy Ecosystem

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viders interact with authorities adapting legal frameworks and satisfying societal 
demands. To understand this complex environment, it is necessary to investigate 
how the different elements of the digital ecosystem interact with one another.
A digital service usually depends on other digital services to provide value to 
consumers. Existing digital services are also the basis for the development of new 
digital services. For example, the business of Amazon depends on digital payment 
services to offer e-commerce, and Spotify depends on access to digitized music to 
provide streaming services to consumers. These services may, in turn, depend on 
various functionalities offered by several ICT providers and other providers of 
hardware and software support functions. Together, these dependencies make up 
the digital economy ecosystem for the particular business. It may be impossible to 
identify all dependencies merely because of complexity and transient relationships 
that may arise and vanish during the production of the good. The complexity of 
the ecosystem is exemplified in 
.
Fig. 
4.3
where a digital Service A depends on two 
other digital services (B and C) as well as two technologies (cloud storage and wire-
less access). Furthermore, Service E depends on Service A, while Service D and 
Service A depend on each other. 
.
Figure 
4.3
 also suggests a simple method by 
which the ecosystem can be modeled to analyze the impact each dependency has 
on the primary business. This analysis may also uncover critical dependencies, 
unexpected vulnerabilities, structural weaknesses, and other problems.
Service E
Service A
Service D
Service B
Service C
Cloud storage
Wireless
access 
A
B
A
B
A depends on B 
A and B depend on each other