Service Discovery in Complex Business Ecosystems

Abstract

An abundance of frameworks and methodologies are concerned with designing services catering to the needs of specific actors. But how might the potential for such service creation be identified in the first place? And what would the dimensions of the value be, which the service enables? These questions are explored in the case of data centre infrastructure management (DCIM). To scrutinize and answer the questions, literature is reviewed, interviews with eight actors within the ecosystem conducted, and the findings applied in defining the service ecosystem of DCIM. The results are a definition of the actors within the ecosystem, the resources they integrate, what enables and constrains this resource integration, and the service exchange and value cocreation resulting from it. In the service system, value cocreation potential is found to be realized by either cocreating existing value in novel ways or cocreating unprecedented value altogether. This is achieved by integrating novel actors, integrating previously unused resources—or rearranging existing ones, or enhancing or disrupting institutions enabling, or constraining the resource integration. The value dimensions are found to be immediacy and time. The former refers to the proximity of any service exchange to the beneficiary and the latter to when value is experienced by any beneficiary. This is important because the essence of cocreated value must be known to replicate, change, or enhance it. Finally, a replicable process is defined, with which value cocreation potential might be identified and used to lead into a service design process.