Ecosystem Emergence as a Strategic Transformation of Activity Systems: Towards a Process Model

The emergence of new collaborative forms of value creation, such as business ecosystems, requires incumbent firms to transform entire business sectors as well as their internal activities. This paper uses an in-depth case study of an automotive supplier to provide further insights about how an incumbent can become an ecosystem leader. Our findings show that the focal firm shaped ecosystem emergence (i) by leveraging client dynamics to establish activities around a new value proposition, and (ii) by adjusting its internal activity system gradually to support the emerging ecosystem and to resolve misfits. (iii) The external and internal changes were influenced by dynamics that were uncontrolled by each individual ecosystem member. Our findings establish a multilevel process model, using an activity system perspective.