Skip to main content

Table 5 The measures of robustness, productivity, and niche creation proposed by Iansiti and Levien (2002)

From: Ecosystem-driven business opportunity identification method and web-based tool with a case study of the electric vehicle home charging energy ecosystem in Denmark

Dimension

Measure

Description

Robustness

Survival rates

Ecosystem participants enjoy high survival rates, either over time, or relative to other, comparable ecosystems

Persistence of ecosystem structure

Changes in the relationships among ecosystem members are contained; overall the structure of the ecosystem is unaffected by external shocks. Most connections between firms or between technologies remain

Predictability

Change in ecosystem structure is not only contained, it is predictably localized. The locus of change to ecosystem structure will differ for different shocks, but a predictable “core” will generally remain unaffected

Limited obsolescence

There is no dramatic abandonment of “obsolete” capacity in response to a perturbation. Most of the installed base or investment in technology or components finds continued use after dramatic changes in the ecosystems environment

Continuity of use experience and use cases

The experience of consumers of an ecosystem’s products will gradually evolve in response to the introduction of new technologies rather than being radically transformed. Existing capabilities and tools will be leveraged to perform new operations enabled by new technologies

Productivity

Total factor productivity

Leveraging techniques used in traditional economic productivity analysis, ecosystems may be compared by the productivity of their participants in converting factors of production into useful work

Productivity improvement over time

Do the members of the ecosystem and those who use its products show increases in productivity measures over time? Are they able to produce the same products or complete the same tasks at progressively lower cost?

Delivery of innovations

Does the ecosystem effectively deliver new technologies, processes, or ideas to its members? Does it lower the costs of employing these novelties, as compared with adopting them directly, and propagate access to them widely throughout the ecosystem in ways that improve the classical productivity of ecosystem members?

Niche creation

Variety

The number of new options, technological building blocks, categories, products, and/ or businesses being created within the ecosystem in a given period of time

Value creation

The overall value of new options created