Conceptual and Business Models for Customer-Centric Business Ecosystems

Information technology and the Internet favour the development of business networks, in which business partners cooperate to produce composite products and services that meet the customer needs. Customer participation in these networks, even though necessary, is usually neglected or submissive to the needs of the business enterprises. Based on the metaphor of 'business ecosystems', this paper argues for the need to introduce customers as active members of business networks and proposes a conceptual and a business model of customer-centric business ecosystems. The business model is based on a technological platform, which enables the development, the dynamic configuration and the coordination of the customer-centric business ecosystem. The operations of the platform follow the paradigm of service oriented architectures and they can be implemented with the use of Web services. The paper discusses also the strategic aspects of the development of customer-centric business ecosystems.