The birth of digital ecosystems is synonymous with a symbiotic relationship so that companies can relate to others in order to achieve greater value for them, more than they could obtain by themselves. There are many examples that we could mention, such as Apple, when launching the Healthkit app where its users share health and activity data, thus helping the world of medicine, hospitals and doctors, to inform about the patient in addition to carrying out studies, development of products, among others.
In this article, we will explain the three most relevant characteristics of digital ecosystems, which are key to understanding the risks and benefits they present:
1.Symbiotic integration: these arise from the fact that digital ecosystems authorize users to connect and interact with each other (an example of this can be a social network), and access through marketplaces, products and services from various providers. In the same sense, facilitating these connections is one of the main activities of the vast majority of ecosystems and that is why its value increases as the number of participants and their level of involvement increase.
2. Access doors: digital ecosystems play an important role as a kind of access door to products and services from other markets. An example of this could be application stores, which establish the conditions for creating and distributing messaging applications, mobile payment services or games. Sometimes they also serve as access doors to web search portals, where users access the media, electronic commerce or travel reservation services.
There is no doubt that digital ecosystems make possible a certain degree of control over other products and services, in addition to spreading into related markets, thus allowing the network to grow around consumers.
3. Big data: thanks to the services offered by companies, they can obtain a large amount of data about their users, which helps to improve the quality of services (for example, by personalizing their commercial proposals), thus developing new and better features. With this they manage to increase the participation of users and obtain new ones, collect more data and have a continuous improvement of their value offer, in addition to strengthening their position within the market.