An Approach for Digital Transformation of Industry Ecosystems

Abstract

Currently, industry actors are aware of the risk of being disrupted by missing out digitalization of their business. Nevertheless, there is no existing generic process concept to support digital transformation of industries which includes a guidance tool and a model to specify an industry ecosystem. This research paper establishes such a process concept to systematically and transparently define industry ecosystems and support the process of digital transformation of industries with focus on the awareness phase.During the design research approach, a digital industry transformation process concept was created. Since its focus is on the awareness phase of a digital industry transformation, it consists of detailed approaches for the overview of the occurring challenges and benefits within digital industry ecosystem transformations, the industry ecosystem model, and the guidance tool for digital industry transformation. All the artefacts are based on a thorough literature review. The evaluation process included expert interviews from the field of digital transformation and Swiss industries. The developed model consists of three layers, an actor-relation layer, a data-relation layer, and a cloud-based data-relation layer. Since the model is a systematic overview of an industry ecosystem, a coherent definition for the term industry ecosystem has been developed, as the current literature was missing out on it....