Orchestrating Value Co-Creation in Business Ecosystems

In increasingly digital enabled business environments, value is generated through information sharing and manipulation among interdependent social and commercial actors operating in business ecosystems. With the aim to collaboratively create and capture value in this structural context, a company needs to be effective and efficient in orchestrating resources rather than acquiring and independently owning them. This implies that a company has to move from a purely subjective (idiocentric) perception on value creation and value capturing towards a more intersubjective (allocentric) one. Leveraging business ecosystems from a service-dominant perspective, this chapter illustrates how successful companies achieve this by applying an allocentric perspective on their business models. By building their business models upon a shared value purpose that is materialized through a service resulting from value co-creation among complementary actors including the beneficiary, it is shown how these companies successfully leverage the opportunities resulting from innovative digital technologies. Thus, this article emphasizes the shift from an idiocentric perspective on business models where value creation is perceived as a result of firm self-centered activities. Towards an allocentric perspective, where value occurs when heterogeneous social and business partners work together toward mutual benefits, the key being the orchestration of resources between these parties.