Digital ecosystem

A digital ecosystem is a distributed, adaptive, open socio-technical system with properties of self-organisation, scalability and sustainability inspired from natural ecosystems. Digital ecosystem models are informed by knowledge of natural ecosystems, especially for aspects related to competition and collaboration among diverse entities. The term is used in the computer industry, the entertainment industry, and the World Economic Forum.

The metaphor of Digital Business Ecosystem was proposed to describe a self-organizing business community that relied on Information Technology (IT) to achieve the objectives set for the European Union at Lisbon Council l, also known as Lisbon Strategy: higher growth, more and more qualified jobs and greater social inclusion.

The original model took into account the specifics of the European market, mostly based on networks of SMEs and local innovation systems.

A first wave of research on Digital Business Ecosystems was funded by the European Commission within the European Sixth Framework Program (FP6), including a flagship large-scale Integrated Project (EU) (IP) called Digital Business Ecosystems (DBE), and a Network of Excellence called Open Philosophies for Associative Autopoietic Digital Ecosystems (OPAALS). All projects of this initial wave focused on new models and technologies for fostering a Digital Business Ecosystem in Europe. The topic was later retained as a strategic objective within the European Commission's CIP and the Regions for Economic Change work programs. Today, the vision of Digital Business Ecosystems has become mature, and is widely used in the scientific literature to describe business-oriented socio-technical systems regardless of their location and structure.

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