Abstract
While ecosystem theories and concepts have a relatively long history with both entrepreneurial ecosystems (Acs et al., 2017) and digital ecosystems (Li et al., 2012; Weill & Woerner, 2015), the digital entrepreneurship ecosystem and a platform-based economy concepts have emerged only recently (Elia et al., 2020; Nambisan, 2017; Sahut et al., 2019). Moreover, measurements are lagging behind conceptual developments. Some argue that all ecosystems are exclusive, as each has its unique component structure, strengths, and weaknesses. Consequently, case studies are more appropriate than simple or composite indicators to describe the ecosystem phenomenon (Isenberg, 2010; Spigel, 2017). While we agree that the specifics of each ecosystem can be viewed up close, when looking from a certain distance, one can recognize the common structures and features (Szerb et al., 2019). Accurate measurements are vital for three reasons. First, solid policy recommendations should be based on appropriate measures. Second, one can recognize the relative development of a particular unit by comparing it to other units’ rankings and index scores. And third, an ecosystem’s strengths and weaknesses can be identified from a benchmarking perspective.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
For other entrepreneurship ecosystem measures, see the Global Entrepreneurship Index, its regional counterpart the regional Entrepreneurship and Development Index, Kauffmann’s entrepreneurship ecosystem, and the Startup Genome’s Global Startup Ecosystem model-based measures. Digital measures can be divided into maturity/readiness, transformation, and complex indices. The best-known composite digital index is the European Union’s Digital Economy and Transformation Index (DESI). Others are the Mastercard and the Fletcher School at Tufts University’s Digital Evolution Index, and the Economic Intelligence Unit’s Inclusive Internet Index.
References
Acs, Z. J., Stam, E., Audretsch, D. B., & O’Connor, A. (2017). The lineages of the entrepreneurial ecosystem approach. Small Business Economics, 49(1), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-017-9864-8
Alkire, L., Pohlmann, J., & Barnett, W. (2019). Triggers and motivators of privacy protection behavior on Facebook. Journal of Services Marketing, 33(1), 57–72.
Alt, R., Beck, R., & Smits, M. T. (2018). Fin tech and the transformation of the financial industry. Electronic Markets, 28(3), 235–243.
Amit, R., & Zott, C. (2012). Creating value through business model innovation. MIT Sloan Management Review, 53, 41–49.
Andrews, D., Criscuolo, C., & Gal, P. N. (2015). Frontier firms, technology diffusion and public policy. OECD Future of Productivity Background Paper. OECD Future of Productivity Background Paper.
Autio, E., Szerb, L., Komlosi, E., & Tiszberger, M. (2018). The European index of digital entrepreneurship systems (JRC technical reports, 153). Publications Office of the European Union.
Autio, E., Szerb, L., Komlosi, E., & Tiszberger, M. (2019). EIDES 2019—The European index of digital entrepreneurship systems (No. JRC117495). Joint Research Centre.
Baierl, R., Behrens, J., & Brem, A. (2019). Digital entrepreneurship. Springer.
Baron, R. J. (2019). Digital literacy. In R. Hobbs & P. Mihailidis (Eds.), The international encyclopedia of media literacy (Vol. 2, pp. 343–349). Wiley Blackwell.
Batabyal, A. A., & Nijkamp, P. (2016). Digital technologies, knowledge spillovers, innovation policies, and economic growth in a creative region. Economics of Innovation and New Technology, 25(5), 470–484.
Becker, J., Knackstedt, R., & Pöppelbuß, J. (2009). Developing maturity models for IT management. Business & Information Systems Engineering, 1(3), 213–222.
Bélanger, F., & Crossler, R. E. (2011). Privacy in the digital age: A review of information privacy research in information systems. MIS Quarterly, 35(4), 1017–1042.
Berners-Lee, T. (2009). The next web. What’s next in tech session: TED conference, Long Beach, CA. https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_berners_lee_on_the_next_web
Bock, W., Wilms, M., Soos, P., & Roeber, B. (2014). Reforming Europe’s telecoms regulation to enable the digital single market. Communications and Strategies, 93, 17–34.
Buckingham, D. (2006). Defining digital literacy. Digital Kompetanse, 1(4), 263–276.
Chaudhry, P. E., Chaudhry, S. S., Stumpf, S. A., & Sudler, H. (2011). Piracy in cyber space: Consumer complicity, pirates and enterprise enforcement. Enterprise Information Systems, 5(2), 255–271.
Chesbrough, H. (2006). Open business models: How to thrive in the new innovation landscape. Harvard Business School Press.
Christin, D., Reinhardt, A., Kanhere, S. S., & Hollick, M. (2011). A survey on privacy in mobile participatory sensing applications. Journal of Systems and Software, 84(11), 1928–1946.
Cruz-Jesus, F., Oliveira, T., Bacao, F., & Irani, Z. (2017). Assessing the pattern between economic and digital development of countries. Information Systems Frontiers, 19(4), 835–854.
Dede, C. (2010). Technological supports for acquiring 21st century skills. International Encyclopedia of Education, 3, 158–166.
Elia, G., Margherita, A., & Passiante, G. (2020). Digital entrepreneurship ecosystem: How digital technologies and collective intelligence are reshaping the entrepreneurial process. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 150, 119791.
Evans, D. S. (2013). Economics of vertical restraints for multi-sided platforms. University of Chicago Institute for Law & Economics Olin Research Paper, 626.
Evans, D. S., & Schmalensee, R. (2016). Matchmakers: The new economics of multi-sided platforms. Harvard Business Review Press.
Farrell, J., & Klemperer, P. (2007). Coordination and lock-in: Competition with switching costs and network effects. Handbook of Industrial Organization, 3, 1967–2072.
Fong, M. W. (2009). Digital divide: The case of developing countries. Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology, 6(2), 471–478.
Friemel, T. N. (2016). The digital divide has grown old: Determinants of a digital divide among seniors. New Media & Society, 18(2), 313–331.
Gawer, A. (2014). Bridging differing perspectives on technological platforms: Toward an integrative framework. Research Policy, 43(7), 1239–1249.
Ghobadi, S., & Ghobadi, Z. (2015). How access gaps interact and shape digital divide: A cognitive investigation. Behaviour & Information Technology, 34(4), 330–340.
Goldfarb, A., & Tucker, C. (2019). Digital economics. Journal of Economic Literature, 57(1), 3–43.
Gomber, P., Kauffman, R. J., Parker, C., & Weber, B. W. (2018). On the FinTech revolution: Interpreting the forces of innovation, disruption, and transformation in financial services. Journal of Management Information Systems, 35(1), 220–265.
Gomber, P., Koch, J. A., & Siering, M. (2017). Digital finance and FinTech: Current research and future research directions. Journal of Business Economics, 87(5), 537–580.
Goodfellow, R. (2011). Literacy, literacies and the digital in higher education. Teaching in Higher Education, 16(1), 131–144. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2011.54412
Hagiu, A. (2014). Strategic decisions for multisided platforms. MIT Sloan Management Review, 55(2), 71–80.
Hajli, N., & Lin, X. (2016). Exploring the security of information sharing on social networking sites: The role of perceived control of information. Journal of Business Ethics, 133(1), 111–123.
Hargittai, E. (2002). Second-level digital divide: Differences in people’s online skills. First Monday, 7(4), 1–19.
Herhalt, J. (2011). Cyber crime: A growing challenge for governments. KPMG International: Issues Monitor-Government on Cyber Crime, 8, 1–24.
Hindman, M. (2018). The internet trap: How the digital economy builds monopolies and undermines democracy. Princeton University Press.
Howard, P. N. (2010). The digital origins of dictatorship and democracy: Information technology and political Islam. Oxford University Press.
Hull, C. E. K., Hung, Y. T. C., Hair, N., Perotti, V., & DeMartino, R. (2007). Taking advantage of digital opportunities: A typology of digital entrepreneurship. International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations, 4(3), 290–303.
Hyrynsalmi, S., Suominen, A., & Mäntymäki, M. (2016). The influence of developer multi-homing on competition between software ecosystems. Journal of Systems and Software, 111, 119–127.
Isaak, J., & Hanna, M. J. (2018). User data privacy: Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, and privacy protection. Computer, 51(8), 56–59.
Isenberg, D. J. (2010). How to start an entrepreneurial revolution. Harvard Business Review, 88(6), 40–50.
Johnson, M. (2016). Cyber crime, security and digital intelligence. Routledge.
Jovanovic, B. (1982). Selection and the evolution of industry. Econometrica, 50(3), 649–670. https://doi.org/10.2307/1912606
Jovanovic, B. (2001). New technology and the small firm. Small Business Economics, 16(1), 53–56. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1011132809150
Kane, G. C., Palmer, D., Nguyen-Phillips, A., Kiron, D., & Buckley, N. (2017). Achieving digital maturity. MIT Sloan Management Review, 59(1), 1–32.
Kiiski, S., & Pohjola, M. (2002). Cross-country diffusion of the internet. Information Economics and Policy, 14(2), 297–310.
Kirzner, I. M. (2015). Competition and entrepreneurship. University of Chicago Press.
Klang, M., & Murray, A. (Eds.). (2005). Human rights in the digital age. Psychology Press.
Kokolakis, S. (2017). Privacy attitudes and privacy behaviour: A review of current research on the privacy paradox phenomenon. Computers & Security, 64, 122–134.
Kummer, M., & Schulte, P. (2019). When private information settles the bill: Money and privacy in Google’s market for smartphone applications. Management Science, 65(8), 3470–3494.
Kundi, G. M., & Akhtar, R. (2014). Digital revolution, cyber-crimes and cyber legislation: A challenge to governments in developing countries. Journal of Information Engineering and Applications, 4(4), 61–71.
Lafuente, E., Acs, Z. J., Sanders, M., & Szerb, L. (2020). The global technology frontier: Productivity growth and the relevance of Kirznerian and Schumpeterian entrepreneurship. Small Business Economics, 55, 153–178.
Lampson, B. W. (2004). Computer security in the real world. Computer, 37(6), 37–46.
Lee, C. S. (2001). An analytical framework for evaluating e-commerce business models and strategies. Internet Research, 11(4), 349–359.
Li, W., Badr, Y., & Biennier, F. (2012). Digital ecosystems: Challenges and prospects. In proceedings of the international conference on management of emergent digital EcoSystems (pp. 117–122). MEDES’12. https://doi.org/10.1145/2457276.2457297.
Lund, J., & Ebbesson, E. (2019). Understanding digital innovation from a layered architectural perspective. Technology Innovation Management Review, 9(2), 51–63.
Lyytinen, K., Yoo, Y., & Boland, R. J., Jr. (2016). Digital product innovation within four classes of innovation networks. Information Systems Journal, 26(1), 47–75.
McIntyre, D. P., & Srinivasan, A. (2017). Networks, platforms, and strategy: Emerging views and next steps. Strategic Management Journal, 38(1), 141–160.
Milner, H. V. (2006). The digital divide: The role of political institutions in technology diffusion. Comparative Political Studies, 39(2), 176–199.
Moore, M., & Tambini, D. (Eds.). (2018). Digital dominance: The power of Google, Amazon, Facebook, and apple. Oxford University Press.
Morgan, S. (2018). Fake news, disinformation, manipulation and online tactics to undermine democracy. Journal of Cyber Policy, 3(1), 39–43.
Murawski, M., & Bick, M. (2017). Digital competences of the workforce: A research topic? Business Process Management Journal, 23(3), 721–734.
Nambisan, S. (2017). Digital entrepreneurship: Toward a digital technology perspective of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 41(6), 1029–1055. https://doi.org/10.1111/etap.12254
Njenga, J. K. (2018). Digital literacy: The quest of an inclusive definition. Reading & Writing, 9(1), 1–7.
Nuechterlein, J. E., & Weiser, P. J. (2007). Digital crossroads: American telecommunications policy in the internet age. MIT Press Books.
Parker, G., & Van Alstyne, M. (2014). Platform strategy. In M. Augier & D. Teece (Eds.), Palgrave encyclopedia of strategic management. Palgrave MacMillan.
Pasquier, T., Singh, J., Powles, J., Eyers, D., Seltzer, M., & Bacon, J. (2018). Data provenance to audit compliance with privacy policy in the internet of things. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 22(2), 333–344.
Persily, N. (2017). The 2016 US election: Can democracy survive the internet? Journal of Democracy, 28(2), 63–76.
Peters, M. A., & Roberts, P. (2015). Virtues of openness: Education, science, and scholarship in the digital age. Routledge.
Poore, M. (2015). Using social media in the classroom: A best practice guide. Sage.
Prensky, M. (2009). H. sapiens digital: From digital immigrants and digital natives to digital wisdom. Innovate: Journal of online. Education, 5(3), 1–9.
Robinson, L., Cotten, S., Ono, H., Quan-Haase, A., Mesch, G., Chen, W., Schulz, J., Hale, T., & Stern, M. (2015). Digital inequalities and why they matter. Information, Communication & Society, 18(5), 569–582. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2015.1012532
Roca, C. J., García, J., & de la Vega, J. (2009). The importance of perceived trust, security and privacy in online trading systems. Information Management & Computer Security, 17(2), 96–113.
Rose, J. (2017). Brexit, trump, and post-truth politics. Public Integrity: American Society for Public Administration, 19(6), 555–558. https://doi.org/10.1080/10999922.2017.1285540
Rosenzweig, P., Bucci, S. P., & Inserra, D. (2017). Next steps for US cybersecurity in the trump administration: Active cyber defense. Background, 3188, 11.
Sahut, J.-M., Iandoli, L., & Teulon, F. (2019). The age of digital entrepreneurship. Small Business Economics., 56, 1159–1169. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-019-00260-8
Schumpeter, J. A. (1934). The theory of economic development: An inquiry into profits. Capital, credit, interest and the business cycle (2nd ed.). Harvard University Press.
Shapiro, C., & Varian, H. (1999). Information rules. Harvard Business School Press.
Smith, H. J., Dinev, T., & Xu, H. (2011). Information privacy research: An interdisciplinary review. MIS Quarterly, 35(4), 989–1016.
Song, A. K. (2019). The digital entrepreneurial ecosystem: A critique and reconfiguration. Small Business Economics, 53(3), 569–590. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-019-00232-y
Spigel, B. (2017). The relational organization of entrepreneurial ecosystems. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 41(1), 49–72.
Steininger, D. M. (2019). Linking information systems and entrepreneurship: A review and agenda for IT-associated and digital entrepreneurship research. Information Systems Journal, 29(2), 363–407.
Sussan, F., & Acs, Z. J. (2017). The digital entrepreneurial ecosystem. Small Business Economics, 49(1), 55–73. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-017-9867-5
Szerb, L., Lafuente, E., Horváth, K., & Páger, B. (2019). The relevance of quantity and quality entrepreneurship for regional performance: The moderating role of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Regional Studies, 53(9), 1308–1320.
Tura, N., Kutvonen, A., & Ritala, P. (2018). Platform design framework: Conceptualisation and application. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 30(8), 881–894.
Van Dijk, J. A. (2017). Digital divide: Impact of access. The International Encyclopedia of Media Effects (pp. 1–11). Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118783764.wbieme0043
Voogt, J., & Roblin, N. P. (2012). A comparative analysis of international frameworks for 21st century competences: Implications for national curriculum policies. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 44(3), 299–321.
Weeks, B. E., & Gil de Zúñiga, H. (2019). What’s next? Six observations for the future of political misinformation research. American Behavioral Scientist, 65(2), 277–289.
Weidmann, N. B., Benitez-Baleato, S., Hunziker, P., Glatz, E., & Dimitropoulos, X. (2016). Digital discrimination: Political bias in internet service provision across ethnic groups. Science, 353(6304), 1151–1155.
Weill, P., & Woerner, S. L. (2015). Thriving in an increasingly digital ecosystem. MIT Sloan Management Review, 56(4), 27.
Wentrup, R., & Ström, P. (2017). Online service providers: A new and unique species of the firm? In M. Taddeo & L. Floridi (Eds.), The responsibilities of online service providers (pp. 157–177). Springer.
West, D. M. (2015). Digital divide: Improving internet access in the developing world through affordable services and diverse content. Brookings Institution.
Weyl, E. G. (2010). A price theory of multi-sided platforms. American Economic Review, 100(4), 1642–1672.
Whitman, M., & Mattord, H. (2012). Principles of information security. Cengage Learning.
Williams, J. (2003). The skills for life survey: A national needs and impact survey of literacy, numeracy and ICT skills (No. 490). The Stationery Office.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Szerb, L., Somogyine Komlosi, E., Acs, Z.J., Lafuente, E., Song, A.K. (2022). From Concept to Measurement: The 12 Pillars and their Measurement. In: The Digital Platform Economy Index 2020. SpringerBriefs in Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89651-5_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89651-5_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-89650-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-89651-5
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceEconomics and Finance (R0)