From virtual enterprises to digital business ecosystems: A survey on the modeling and simulation methods

Authored by Emil Scarlat

Date Published: 2007

Sponsors: No sponsors listed

Platforms: NetLogo

Model Documentation: Other Narrative

Model Code URLs: Model code not found

Abstract

The modern business environment is an interlocking network of large number of groups of people interacting with computer systems, and which themselves interact with a variety of physical and ecological systems to maintain them under conditions of good control. The enormous complexity and vast quantity of information involved make modeling and simulation approaches necessary and yet the existing formalisms available for these activities are not sufficient to reflect their full characteristics. During the last ten years, two paradigms arose from considering business as a complex system in interaction with other systems from its complex environment. These paradigms refer to the virtual organizations and digital business ecosystems. In this paper we first discuss the current state-of-the-art of the use of modeling and simulation main techniques and methods on these two kinds of systems. A virtual enterprise is composed of a number of semi-independent autonomous entities (agents) representing different individuals, departments and firms each of which having a range of problem-solving capabilities and resources of their disposal. Sometimes these entities co-exist and compete to each one another in a ubiquitous virtual marketplace. Each entity attempts to attract potential customers for its products and services, with the goal of selling them in a way that maximizes their individual profit. Sometimes, however, one or more of these may realizes that there are potential benefits from pooling resources either with a competitor (to form a coalition) or with an entity with complementary capabilities (to offer a new type of product or service who is demand on the market). When this potential or market opportunity is recognized, the relevant entities go through a process of trying to form a new entity, named virtual enterprise, to exploit the perceived niche. Then we present the digital business ecosystem as a relatively new concept in the field of business research in which the firms are interpreted to be the equivalents of organisms of biological ecosystems. A business ecosystem is defined to consist of organizations that can be both business firms and public sector organizations. The environment of a DBE consists of things like inflation, interest levels, weather conditions, pollution and other business ecosystems, with which the components of the business ecosystem may interact with but are not active members of that entity. The interaction between a DBE and its environment is a source of unpredictable dynamics. These two kinds of complex systems have some fundamental properties that make modeling and simulation of them somehow similar. Instead of defining a new set of models for each of them, the paper present a method of build models on two different perspectives: a structural perspective defining elements and relationships of a virtual enterprise and a process perspective defining functions and roles for the evolution and renewal of a business ecosystem as an answer to changing customer demands or market conditions. This suggests that virtual enterprises and digital business ecosystems can be systematically linked, being two forms of the same entity: the networked virtual company.

Tags

agent-based models for virtual organizations business ecosystems digital business ecosystems virtual enterprise