The Internet as a Technology-Based Ecosystem: A New Approach to the Analysis of Business, Markets and Industries

It is the purpose of this publication to explore the extent to which the Internet can be considered to be an ecosystem in its own right and how recent technological developments may have rendered current strategic theory to be either irrelevant or inappropriate.
The book undertakes an analysis of the rational, classical approach to strategy and critically evaluates whether it is relevant as an analytical approach in the modern, digital information and communications tech- nology (ICT) sector. In addition to exploring alternative theories and approaches to the analysis of modern technology firms, the study also produces a new hydrothermal vent (HTV) ecosystem model.
The model provides analogical comparisons between the biological sciences and the ICT sector and draws conclusions regarding the contri- bution that the model makes to new strategic perspectives. The relevance of the classical approach to strategy is heavily criticised and the need to move away from classical science to complexity science is recommended. The complementary nature of the HTV ecosystem model with more modern platform/ecosystem concepts is also highlighted as is the poten- tial for the integration of a broad range of new perspectives including complexity and chaos theory.