The Genesis of The Ecosystem Form of Production Organization in a Modern Economy: Factors and Results

Abstract

The article identifies the factors that determined the position of companies implementing ecosystem strategies at the top of the ratings of the most expensive companies in the world. The influence of information and technological development on the evolution of production organization forms in the industrial and digital eras and the formation of enterprise strategies in these periods have been analyzed. It was found that the reduction in the cost of computing, storing information, transferring, and processing data by economic agents in the internet era led to a decrease in the volume of their transaction costs and also influenced the disintegration of some value chains and links of these chains. In the future, the creation of economic value not only by producers but also by consumers and the transfer of the created value by the latter to other consumers caused a subsequent decrease in the volume of transaction costs, which, in turn, led to the unification of producers and consumers in ecosystems. It is shown that platform ecosystems operate based on the “inverted firm” concept, i.e., a firm that can locate production outside the firm and use external labor due to network effects. This circumstance allows platform-type ecosystems to achieve a low production level and zero marginal costs and, accordingly, to scale the company at a high rate. It was revealed that the leadership in the costs of platform ecosystems is the main factor in their displacement from the market of enterprises of the traditional form of management.