Author(s)

M. Petrou, S. Gautam & K. N. Giannoutakis

Abstract

A digital business ecosystem (DBE) is a closed or semi-closed system of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which will come together in cyberspace in the same way that companies gather in a business park in the physical world. These companies will interact with each other through buyer–seller relationships. The purpose of this work is to develop a methodology that will allow one to study the ecosystem under various conditions and we present here a model for the mutual interactions between companies in a DBE and a methodology that can allow one to study the dynamics of a digital business ecosystem. Furthermore we present a quantitative model for studying the dynamics of such a system, inspired by human physiology and attempting to capture many aspects of the way companies interact with each other, including the quantitative modelling of trust and mistrust. 1 Introduction A digital business ecosystem (DBE) is a closed or semi-closed system of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which will come together in cyberspace in the same way that companies gather in a business park in the physical world. These companies will interact with each other through buyer–seller relationships. The purpose of this work is to develop methodology that will allow one to study the ecosystem under various conditions. In particular, we would like to answer the following question: \“Under the assumption that the ecosystem is closed, and static, ie no external influences, which of the companies in it are most likely to prosper and survive, and which are most likely to be suppressed?”. This is a situation of competitive co-existence, where each unit receives excitatory and inhibitory signals from all other units in the system. Such systems exist in biology, and their states are known to oscillate between extremes, rather than to converge to a single

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