By bringing together elements of a radical new approach to the firm based on a biological metaphor of the ecosystem, this unique book extends the limits of existing theories traditionally used to investigate business networks. The book illustrates that like a biological system, a business ecosystem is a non-homogeneous community of entities made up of a large number of interconnected participants with different interests; they depend on each other for their mutual effectiveness and survival, and so are bound together in a collective whole. By applying this new paradigm - labelled the 'digital business ecosystem' - the book goes on to show: methods used by companies to compete and cooperate within their market and technological environment how modern businesses shape this environment through their deliberate actions and investment the ways in which new digital technologies feed into the environment and influence how firms and groups of firms compete and cooperate. Combining scientific depth with a rigorous and multidisciplinary approach, the contributors to this unique work take significant steps in opening up the debate on the digital business ecosystem concept. As such, this book will prove a fascinating resource for academics with an interest in technology and innovation management, economics of innovation, and economics of technological change.

Innovation is occurring at a rapid pace in digital work and demands increasing attention from academic scholars. In line with this demand, this book aims to provide an overview of recent advances in studies of innovation and technology in the digital space. The book addresses the cultural elements influencing the diffusion and adoption of digital technologies, the pervasive role of social media, the organizational challenges of digital transformations, and finally specific emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and distributed ledger technology. The plurality of views offered makes this book particularly relevant to practitioners, academics, and policymakers, and provides an up-to-date view of the latest developments in Information Systems. It gathers a selection of the best papers (double-blind peer-reviewed) presented at the annual conference of the Italian AIS Chapter in October 2020 in Pescara, Italy.

Over the past decade or so, systems integration has become a key factor in the operations, strategy and competitive advantage of major corporations in a wide variety of sectors (e.g. computing, automotive, telecommunications, military systems and aerospace). Systems integration is a strategic task that pervades business management not only at the technical level but also at the management and strategic levels. This book shows how and why this new kind of systems integration has evolved into an emerging model of industrial organization whereby firms, and groups of firms, join together different types of knowledge, skill and activity, as well as hardware, software, and human resources to produce new products for the marketplace. This book is the first to systematically explore systems integration from a business and innovation perspective. Contributors delve deeply into the nature, dimensions and dynamics of the new systems integration, deploying research and analytical techniques from a wide variety of disciplines including, the theory of the firm, the history of technology, industrial organization, regional studies, strategic management, and innovation studies. This wealth of research capability provides deep insights into the new model of systems integration and supports this with an abundance of empirical evidence. The book is organized in three main parts. The first part focuses on the history of systems integration. Contributors trace the early history of systems integration using different industrial examples. The second part presents theoretical and analytical aspects of systems integration. Contributions concentrate on the regulatory and cognitive features of systems integration, the relationships between systems integration and regional competitive advantage, and the way in which systems integration supports the competitive advantage of firms. The third part takes industry and firm-level approaches. Contributions focus on different sectors and highlight the specificity of systems integration in various industrial domains, stressing its importance for systems integration in the case of complex capital goods, such as aircraft and telecommunications equipment, as well as consumer goods, such as personal computers and automobiles.

In the last twenty years, systems integration has become a key factor in the operations, strategy, and competitive advantage of major corporations in a wide variety of sectors. 'Systems Integration' refers to an emerging model of industrial organization whereby firms and groups of firms combine different types of knowledge, skills, and activities, as well as hardware, software, and human resources to produce new products for the marketplace. The transition towards the systems integration model has fundamental implications for the capabilities of firms. This is the first book to systematically explore systems integration from a business and innovation perspective, based on contributions from leading international scholars.