ARCHIVE PROJECTS
Methodology

The Project devoted to methodologies and modelling of business ecosystems has covered a time period of about 18 months coming to completion at the end of 2009.

The project objective, transversally with regard to the others developed within the Future Centre, has been the study and definition of a methodology guide lining the vertical projects involved in the study of business ecosystems on which each project was focussed.

The need for such a tool arises from the awareness that the business realities in the ICT world are more and more connected to market from an ecosystems' standpoint, leading to totally new business models, the dynamics of which are no longer based on the conventional client-supplier relationship logic.
Markets have adopted new organizational logics that cannot be appropriately analysed through conventional methodologies, which were conceived in a more linear context of the value chain.

From this view point the study substantially shows novel characteristics.

The methodology being developed, called BENAM (Business Ecosystem Network Analysis Model) is aimed at providing guidelines and criteria for the analysis of a business ecosystem. In fact, it is a practical means to approach the study of an Business ecosystem, in order to understand its structure, behavioural models, characteristics and evolving scenarios.

The methodology consists of a series of steps, helping the user along the analysis development.

• It starts from the identification of the ecosystem area, spotting its boundaries and basic elements. Thus, the so-called connections matrix is obtained in which there are concisely represented the different categories of actors forming the ecosystem and the kind of relationships existing among such categories.



• In the subsequent phase, the study envisages the retrieval and organization of relevant information, required to qualify each element of the ecosystem, and the relations within the connections matrix.



• Then, one comes to the phase of the Ecosystem Analysis, e.i. the methodology hearth, which consists of two further steps:



• the Ecosystem value analysis, which provides an as-is image of the ecosystem from the standpoint of structure, economy and distribution of value within. The result is a system of indicators, capable of supplying a most complete view of the ecosystem in all its significant dimensions: profitability, physical structure, attractiveness, assets & technologies;
  
• the Control point analysis, which makes reference to the methodology developed by M.I.T. and has been adapted to the ecosystem environment. On the basis of this transposition one can define the control points of an ecosystem, the management centres capable of controlling the activities within the ecosystem and the factors responsible of the main dynamics of the value exchanged within the network.
  

Once the control points have been indentified, the next step will be their re-organization in a structure that is able to express its logic sequence and dependence relations: the so-called control-point constellation.

• At the end a Scenario Analysis is carried out, focussed on possible evolving scenarios of the ecosystem considered. The fundamental objective is to recognise the possible main directions of future development.

Obviously there exit in literature a large number of theoretical approaches to this subject. For this investigation we have singled out the most suitable one, based on the analysis and processing of trends and uncertainties (Garvin d, Levesque L. 2005).

The result of this final step has been the identification of four possible evolving scenario and their characterising variables.

The practical use of this methodology, applied in particular for the first time to the project of digital photography, has been the subject of a stimulating graduation dissertation.