Business Ecosystem and Trust

Trust Building as a Key Success Factor for Ecosystem Creation

Abstract

Ecosystem studies cover environmental, social and business issues. Business ecosystem research has branched out into IT, platform, marketing, and innovation related fields. These fields are deeply related to environmental and social ecosystem studies and are not distinct from each other. From a practitionerʼs viewpoint, while IT platforms facilitate ecosystem infrastructure construction and the proliferation of digital devices accelerate interactions among ecosystem members, they can also create problems of trust. From an academic viewpoint, empirical model building when incorporating the concept of double-contingency and familiarity has proved to be problematic. Based upon a comprehensive review of the current theory, this study proposes that: new forms of whole systems (ecosystems) can be efficiently and effectively created by strengthening the mutual trust between members and thereby resolving the risk and uncertainty due to double contingency.