Table 2 Three types of roles in business ecosystems
Ecosystem role | Definition | Refs. |
|---|---|---|
Keystone specie | Is simply a species that governs the most important ecosystem health through specific behaviours or features that have effects that propagate through the entire system, often without being a significant portion of the ecosystem itself. Removal of biological keystones can have dramatic cascading effects through the entire ecosystem | Levien (2004) |
Dominator | Integrates vertically or horizontally to own and manage a large part of its network directly and seizes a greater part of the value | Iansiti and Levien (2004) |
Niche players | Develop specialized capabilities to add value to a business ecosystem. Niche species individually do not have broad-reaching impacts on other species in the ecosystem, but collectively they constitute the bulk of the ecosystem both in terms of total mass as well as a variety | Levien (2004) |