Analysis Of Dynamic And Mechanism Of Co-evolution Of Business Ecosystem Based On Platform Perspective

As a new theory, business ecosystem provides a new theoretical perspective for the study of management. The concept connotation, structure model, and the strategic choice of system members occupy the majority of the business ecosystem theory, but the research on the co-evolution of business ecosystem is very rare. Research on the co-evolution of the business ecosystem is able to make clear the dynamic changes of the system from the perspective of the system, and provide more reference for the development of enterprise strategy from the perspective of low level. Especially in the context of the Internet industry’s rapid development and traditional industry being in urgent need of transformation, and the cooperation between enterprises is more frequent and close, so research on the co-evolution of business ecosystem can provide a more realistic theoretical support to the development and transformation of enterprises from the perspective of system.Research on business ecosystem from the perspective of the platform is the recend trend in this field. However, there is no research on the co-evolution of ecosystem. Therefore, this research is to study the dynamic and mechanism of co-evolution of business ecosystem. According to the platform theory, this study firstly established the structure model of the business ecosystem. According to the relationship between the system members and the platform, the system is divided into core system which is composed by the platform founder, complementers cooperating with platform founder,and competitors competing with platform founder,and peripheral system. On the basis of this structure model, this study proposes that (1) the network effect is the driving force for co-evolution of business ecosystem, The network effect triggers the positive feedback loop between the founder and complementors, that the evolution of platform founder promotes the evolution of complementors, and this also works in reverse. Competitors must keeping evolving in order to break the positive feedback loop, in turn, the evolution of competitors promotes the evolution of platform founder.(2) the evolution mechanism is a strategic choice for the platform founder which is in the absolute leadership position in the ecosystem. Although the complementary and competitors can affect platform founder’s strategic choice, the system’s overall evolution direction, and the member structure of the system is determined by the strategic choice of the platform founder.Then, this paper takes a single case study to verify the proposed theory. According to the requirements of the typical cases and data availability, this study selects the Alibaba ecosystem as the research object, and collects the relevant data through literature, archives and physical evidence, and then analyzes the evolution process of the ecosystem in the perspective of Alibaba.Alibaba’s development process has been accompanied by strategy change, 调 the strategic choices are drived by the platform users and relative competitors. Under the guidance of strategic choice, Alibaba achieve expansion from B2B to C2C to B2C e-commerce business, and also from e-commerce to the payment, technology, marketing, logistics and finance and other related fields, with a number of major organizational and business restructuring. In.each stage, Alibaba’s evolution has determined the evolution of ecosystem, small and medium enterprises, individual merchant,small and medium sites, financial institutions, information technology service providers and logistics enterprises have joined the ecosystem based on Alibaba one after another, number of members have continuesed to grow, and the role of the members have also changed.The case analysis of the Alibaba ecosystem has fully verified the theoretical framework proposed in this paper which are the final conclusions of this research:in the perspective of platform, the dynamic of co-evolution of business ecosystem is the network effect; the mechanism of co-evolution is the strategic choice of the platform founder.