Is Ecosystem Health a Useful Metaphor? Towards a Research Agenda for Ecosystem Health Research

The term ecosystem has been widely adopted outside its original domain in biology, for example in business and engineering studies. Ecosystem health is a derivative metaphor used to describe the success of the ecosystem. In this paper, we describe the key shortcomings of ecosystem health research. We put forward two key postulates of ecosystem health. Based on these postulates we present a research agenda for ecosystem health.

[1]  Slinger Jansen,et al.  Defining Software Ecosystems: A Survey of Software Platforms and Business Network Governance , 2013, IWSECO@ICSOB.

[2]  J. F. Moore,et al.  Predators and prey: a new ecology of competition. , 1993, Harvard business review.

[3]  Timo Knuutila,et al.  Young mobile users: Radical and individual - Not , 2014, Telematics Informatics.

[4]  Slinger Jansen,et al.  Defining software ecosystems: a survey of software platforms and business network governance , 2012 .

[5]  Matti Mäntymäki,et al.  Multi-homing and Software Firm Performance - Towards a Research Agenda , 2017, I3E.

[6]  Jukka Ruohonen,et al.  Healthy until Otherwise Proven: Some Proposals for Renewing Research of Software Ecosystem Health , 2018, 2018 IEEE/ACM 1st International Workshop on Software Health (SoHeal).

[7]  Uwe Zdun,et al.  How do software ecosystems evolve? a quantitative assessment of the r ecosystem. , 2016, SPLC.

[8]  Matti Mäntymäki,et al.  The Role of Developer Multi-homing and Keystone Developers in Mobile Ecosystem Competition , 2015 .

[9]  Marko Seppänen,et al.  Sources of value in application ecosystems , 2014, J. Syst. Softw..

[10]  David Wood,et al.  Evolving an Open Ecosystem: The Rise and Fall of the Symbian Platform , 2014 .

[11]  Marko Seppänen,et al.  Wealthy, Healthy and/or Happy - What does 'Ecosystem Health' Stand for? , 2015, ICSOB.

[12]  Slinger Jansen,et al.  A sense of community: A research agenda for software ecosystems , 2009, 2009 31st International Conference on Software Engineering - Companion Volume.

[13]  Marco Iansiti,et al.  The Keystone Advantage: What the New Dynamics of Business Ecosystems Mean for Strategy, Innovation, and Sustainability , 2004 .

[14]  E. den Hartigh,et al.  The Health Measurement of a Business Ecosystem , 2006 .

[15]  Matti Mäntymäki,et al.  In Search for the Core of the Business Ecosystem Concept: A Conceptual Comparison of Business Ecosystem, Industry, Cluster, and Inter Organizational Network , 2017, IWSECO.

[16]  Slinger Jansen,et al.  Understanding Governance Mechanisms and Health in Software Ecosystems: A Systematic Literature Review , 2017, ICEIS.

[17]  F. Phillips,et al.  Innovation ecosystems: A critical examination , 2016 .

[18]  E. Odum The strategy of ecosystem development. , 1969, Science.

[19]  A. Suominen,et al.  Yet another ecosystem literature review: 10+1 Research communities , 2017, 2017 IEEE European Technology and Engineering Management Summit (E-TEMS).

[20]  Amel Ben Hadj Salem Mhamdia Performance measurement practices in software ecosystem , 2013 .

[21]  John D. McGregor,et al.  How Has the Health of Software Ecosystems Been Evaluated?: A Systematic Review , 2017, SBES'17.

[22]  Matti Mäntymäki,et al.  The influence of developer multi-homing on competition between software ecosystems , 2016, J. Syst. Softw..

[23]  Rajendra K. Srivastava,et al.  The Integrated Networks Model: Explaining Resource Allocations in Network Markets , 2003 .

[24]  James F. Moore The Death of Competition: Leadership and Strategy in the Age of Business Ecosystems , 1996 .

[25]  Sami Hyrynsalmi,et al.  How Do Software Ecosystems Co-Evolve? - A View from OpenStack and Beyond , 2017, ICSOB.

[26]  Slinger Jansen,et al.  Measuring the health of open source software ecosystems: Beyond the scope of project health , 2014, Inf. Softw. Technol..

[27]  Per Runeson,et al.  Evaluating the Governance Model of Hardware-Dependent Software Ecosystems - A Case Study of the Axis Ecosystem , 2014, ICSOB.

[28]  Jens Knodel,et al.  Towards a Typification of Software Ecosystems , 2015, ICSOB.

[29]  Klaus Marius Hansen,et al.  Software ecosystems - A systematic literature review , 2013, J. Syst. Softw..

[30]  Rahul C. Basole Visualization of interfirm relations in a converging mobile ecosystem , 2008, 2008 7th International Conference on Mobile Business.

[31]  Stephen L. Vargo,et al.  It's all B2B…and beyond: Toward a systems perspective of the market , 2011 .

[32]  E. Vuori,et al.  Business Ecosystem as the New Approach to Complex Adaptive Business Environments , 2008 .