• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.12 no.12
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• pp.83-92
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• 2014

Purpose - A business ecosystem refers to mutually dependent systems interconnected by a loose foundation of various ecosystem members such as customers, suppliers, partners, and other stakeholders. The ecosystem-based strategy attempts to achieve competitive advantage for firms by enriching a business ecosystem or building a sustainable business ecosystem through the collaboration and co-evolution of its members. A sustainable business ecosystem is a source of competitiveness for firms anda manageable resource for gaining a competitive advantage. Customers represent the core membership of the business ecosystem and play a pivotal role in building a sustainable business ecosystem. This study examines the effects of customer participation on economic and social value in the business ecosystem and suggests a course of action for building a sustainable business ecosystem. Research design, data, and methodology - Two business cases of South Korea are selected from two different business types: business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-customer (B2C) firms. Business ecosystems for B2B and B2C firms reflect contrasting characteristics. Data was collected from in-depth interviews with four representatives of four firms. Results - The study suggested seven propositions for the relationships between customer participation and a sustainable business ecosystem through multiple case studies based on in-depth interviews. The results reveal the following four strategic actions for building sustainable business ecosystems based on the suggested propositions: alignment, systemization, socialization, and co-evolution. Alignment refers to achieving a harmonic balance or virtuous circle among the firm's mission, investment, and value creation. Systemization refers to building and implementing management and infrastructure systems rooted in the corporate culture. Socialization of customers in the business ecosystem reinforces the harmony or virtuous cycle. Finally, co-evolution is associated with the relationship between firms and customers as buyer firms in a restricted business ecosystem. Conclusions - This study considers multiple cases for the execution of a sustainable business ecosystem in collaboration with customers and suggests seven propositions and four strategic actions. The results are based on qualitative data from interviews with business associates from two firms in an open business ecosystem and two firms in a restricted business ecosystem, both in South Korea. Our research results regarding two contrasting business ecosystems shed light on business issues and policy making in Asian business environments, which are in the transition stages from a traditional conglomerate-driven to an inclusive growth-driven economy. The business ecosystem itself should be considered a manageable resource for firms' competitive positions in the market. A customer is a member of the business ecosystem and should thus be viewed not only as a purchasing entity and an object of relationship management but also as a co-creator of value. Therefore, firms should collaborate with customers to build sustainable business ecosystems. For this, firms must create social value, which cannot be created by customers alone, within the business ecosystem. Then, customers participate in a business ecosystem and build it to be favorable to them. Implications for academics and practitioners were suggested.

• 한국경영정보학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.343-348
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• 2007

In a customer-driven economy, single-business level analysis may not be sufficient. A large number of loosely interconnected participants who depend on one another for their mutual effectiveness and survival make up a business ecosystem. A business ecosystem is a holistic view of vital flows and relationships that sustain business activity. Businesses need to understand their physical condition in a business ecosystem to evaluate their capabilities. This paper defines the healthiness of business ecosystems in order to understand their competitiveness. It can give business an actionable guide. Healthy ecosystem means a business environment that has had four capabilities to survive. IT plays a leading part in healthy business ecosystem. It looks into business strategies and the role of IT in business ecosystems.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.299-319
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• 2016

This study first introduces platform services and their business models. On the basis of the concepts of business ecosystem, we present a framework for distinguishing types of the platform service business models. Two key characteristics of business ecosystems-ecosystem configuration and value production process-are employed as fundamental dimensions for constructing typology. In particular, we also present the notion of value ecosystem, where not a single platform provider but a federation of platforms constitutes a virtual platform and completes a service system. The value ecosystem represents two distinct types of platform service business models : meta-platform ecosystem and platform coalition ecosystem. They show different governance structure in the platform federation and service flows across the ecosystem. We present detailed analyses of these two value ecosystems focusing on relevant cases of e-payment FinTech : Apple Pay as an example of meta-platform and Kakao Pay for platform coalition. Our conceptual typology contributes to platforms' proper strategy formulation and presents policy implications to, for example, platform neutrality.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.187-201
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• 2014

As the complexity of business environment increases rapidly the use advanced information technology start to affect not only the business processes of individual companies but also the fundamental nature of business and industrial ecosystem. The changes observed at the level of business and industrial ecosystem encompasses a broad range of transformation. This unit of analysis is not sufficiently dealt with by existing information system research. This research attempted to analyze the changes in business ecosystem caused by digital transformation using Social Network Analysis. We studied structural change of the Korea film industry ecosystem chronologically divided by critical events. The film industry is chosen because it is an industry very sensitive to the changes in technology and has gone through massive transformation during the last three decade by way of using modern information technology.

• 한국경영정보학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.06a
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• pp.171-176
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• 2008

As business environment becomes dynamic, complicated, and networked, viability is important not only for the firm itself but also for its partners. It is needed a broader view to understand and to improve competitiveness of an organization, which is defined as the business ecosystem view. In this research Korean financial market is to be defined as a business ecosystem. The Korean financial market consists of Bank of Korea as the keystone, a number of major financial institutions as flagship entities, and other members in the ecosystem. Since dynamic interactions among members of the ecosystem are done through IT, the financial ecosystem's competitiveness is based on IT competence. In this paper, it is suggested a new view of business ecosystem on the Korean financial market structure and the role of IT to enhance the healthiness of financial ecosystem.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.41-54
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• 2011

A central theme in recent IT (information technology) industry is a mobile ecosystem. While a concept of business ecosystem, which is an economic community of firms and individuals producing and consuming goods and services, has been around for about 20 years now, the recent spotlight is mainly caused by the enormous success of iPhone. Many hand-set makers or platform developers want to mimic Apple's iPhone ecosystem from which both application developers and hand-set users can benefit. In this study, a representation model of the business ecosystem is proposed for supporting systematic design and analysis of ecosystems. Whereas previous studies also proposed some representation models, they emphasized only on the value chain between participating players. The proposed model, which is named relation-based ecosystem model, represents an ecosystem with the requirement relationships between product and service components and the roles of players, as well as their value chain. Such comprehensive representation explicitly reveals the strategic difference between ecosystems. This advantage was illustrated by comparing a Korean traditional mobile ecosystem and an emerging smart-phone ecosystem represented by the proposed model.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.131-154
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• 2018

While strong investments on startup and venture ecosystem prosper worldwide, growing interest on nurturing startup ecosystem in Korea is also on its way. However, korean entrepreneurial ecosystem currently results few successful business models with those continuous development of itself compared to the one in China, which is breeding more than 50% of unicorns internationally. Accordingly, this study examined how people in the venture ecosystem, especially in IT industry feel about themselves and startup itself and compared startup ecosystem in Seoul, Korea to the one in Chengdu, China considering each of economic, social and administrational environment. The study tried to provide an implication about the future orientation of Korea's starup and venture ecosystem to policy makers and the ones inside the environment to make a better one. Therefore, the study choose Seoul, Korea and Chengdu, China as geological specimens of startup ecosystem and conduct qualitative study by interviewing selected ones who work in startup incubator, accelerator specified to IT industry and started their own business in IT industry funded by startup reward program. The study categorize the result in social, economic, and administrative parts and screens whether the interviewees from both Korea and China have similar opinions toward each of questions and can be translated to have tendency or not in each part of study. According to the study, the national recognition of startup should be moved from means of maintenance such as restaurants, franchise business to IT startup especially based on software business for the sustainable flourish in Korean venture ecosystem. Investors including accelerator, Angel investors and VCs should be less risk-aversion and therefore prefer stake purchase to solely giving subsidies. The role of governors should be limited to be a middleman of the network, connecting each people in need inside the ecosystem and their reward program should focus on nurturing the growing ones, not just multiplying the numbers of startups to expand the size of entrepreneurial ecosystem. Since this study indicated that entire revision of startup ecosystem should be applied to make a better one, it could be used to design future entrepreneurial infrastructure and the ways of activating startup ecosystem elsewhere in Korea.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.75-104
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• 2016

Purpose The business ecosystem perspective offers a new lens in which to view customers. Customers as the member of business ecosystems influence firms by participating in both the firm level activities and the business ecosystem level activities. For example, customers participate in the business ecosystems by forming interest groups, allowing their voice to be heard the within business ecosystems. Customers can also, turn public opinion around and foster the business ecosystems favorable to firms. On the other hand, as an extreme case of customer participation, customers can engage in community activities to boycott the purchase of products or services from certain firms or business ecosystems. Design/methodology/approach This study views content creation and feedback activities as customer participation in the firm level. On the other hand, word-of-mouth (WOM) and boycott activities are considered as customer participation in the business ecosystem level. This study presents a research model regarding the relationships among customer socialization, customer participation, and psychological ownership. The proposed model is validated through an empirical analysis on online platform business ecosystems. Findings When the two business ecosystems are compared, different results were drawn. In the Facebook ecosystem, boycott and psychological ownership did not have a significant relationship. However, in the Kakao ecosystem, the two had a significant positive relationship. The mediating effect of the business ecosystem type sheds a light on the mission, purpose, vision, and other values associated with the theory of the business on the customer-firm relationship. Further implications for theory and practice were discussed in this study.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.132-142
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• 2015

A facility is built by participating of various parties who are connecting each other by network of contract. Domestic construction industry has been suffering with high cost and low efficiency due to lack of cooperative relationship among companies who participated in the project. The government has tried to resolve this problem by diverse policy support, but practical result has not been realized in the level of satisfaction. This paper defined construction business ecosystem in the aspect of business ecosystem as a network among construction companies based on diverse production system, and diagnosed cooperative business ecosystem in construction industry. For construction business ecosystem to be more cooperative business ecosystem, the result of diagnosis shows that the type of cooperation based capacity and value sharing should be developed and interdependence among companies and cooperative relationship should be durable and reasonable price for construction should be guaranteed for the participant to have a profit from the project.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.786-819
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• 2014

Emphasizing the importance of R&D as a source of open innovation, Korean government is developing various programs focused on technology commercialization and is expanding investment on it. In spite of those efforts, technology commercialization is not vitalized yet due to the lack of demand for technology transfer, R&D planning scheme without considering market, immaturity of technology market, and so on. This study aims to suggest the business ecosystem model so that technology commercialization could be facilitated based on business ecosystem perspective. We set the framework for modeling a business ecosystem through reviewing the previous works, and draw several problems to be solved regarding public R&D commercialization in Korea from the perspective of ecosystem. Considering those, this research proposes the business ecosystem model for public R&D commercialization as a reference model for describing, discussing, and developing the technology commercialization strategy. The proposed model consists of 4 domains as follows: R&D, technology market, information distribution channels, and customers. The business ecosystem model shows that technology commercialization could be facilitated to create the market value through close relationship and organic cooperation among its members that form the ecosystem. Public research institutes as a keystone player could control the fate of the ecosystem. In this regard, this paper suggests roles of public research institutes for evolving the business ecosystem.