Chair of Software Engineering for Business Information Systems (sebis)

Faculty of Informatics

Technische Universität München

wwwmatthes.in.tum.de

Towards a Visual Language Approach for Modelling Business

EcosystemsAnne Faber, November, 22nd 2017, PoEM DC

Introduction

Problem Description

Research Approach and Preliminary Results

Research Methodology

Outlook

Outline

171122 Faber PoEM DC

© sebis171122 Faber PoEM DC 3

Megatrends Technological Innovation Challenges for

established players

… the mobility ecosystem is changing

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Motivation: Digital Transformation of Urban Mobility

TUM Living Lab Connected Mobility Project (TUM LLCM)

Research project TUM LLCM initiated to support the

digital transformation in the area of smart mobility and

smart city

Joint project of 7 informatics and 1 traffic engineering

chairs of the TU Munich with 19 PhD students and

post docs

Project runtime Aug. 2015 – Dec. 2018

One of the project’s objective – contribute to the

establishment of a mobility ecosystem:

Networking of already established and currently

arising mobility providers, service providers,

developers and users

On a personal, organizational and technical level

171122 Faber PoEM DC

www.tum-llcm.de

Business Ecosystem

Enlarges the classical value-added chain

Within their business ecosystems companies nowadays invent, create and offer products and services

This allows companies to focus on their expertise within the invention, development and selling process, but

also makes them dependent on other entities within the ecosystem

Especially in business areas which are affected by the digital disruption the business ecosystems are

changing at a rapid pace

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Business ecosystem (BE) describes the holistic environment of a company

covering current and potential future business partners, customers, suppliers,

competitors, regulatory institutions, and innovative start-ups. It exhibits a

high dynamic as continuously entities enter and leave the ecosystem.

Introduction

Problem Description

Research Approach and Preliminary Results

Research Methodology

Outlook

Outline

171122 Faber PoEM DC

Problem Description and Research Questions

171122 Faber PoEM DC

Problem Description. Companies - especially larger ones - are lacking a

comprehensive understanding of their business ecosystem, the comprising

entities and existing relations, and the highly dynamic changes.

RQ01What is the current state of the art within enterprises addressing business ecosystem modelling and

where are the main challenges?

RQ02Which tasks and questions arise in the context of understanding and managing a business

ecosystem model?

RQ03How can business ecosystems be modeled considering the various requirements of different

stakeholders?

RQ04Which decision support tools and features of these tools are suitable to support stakeholders in

completing business ecosystem related tasks?

Introduction

Problem Description

Research Approach and Preliminary Results

Research Methodology

Outlook

Outline

171122 Faber PoEM DC

Related Work – Visualizing Business Ecosystems

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[2] Basole, R.C. et al. ”Visual decision support for business ecosystem analysis”, Expert Systems with Applications, 2016

[3] Iyer, B, ,Basole, R.C. ” Visualization to understand ecosystems”, Communications of the ACM, 2016

[1] Basole, R.C. et al. ”Understanding Business Ecosystem Dynamics: A Data-Driven Approach”, ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems, 2015

Business ecosystem analysis views: list, matrix, and network to

evaluate task performance [2]

Nokia and Microsoft bicentric ecosystem to understand the business

ecosystem dynamics [1]

Network graph of vertical differentiation in the IoT

ecosystem [3]

A visual approach [3] to understand ecosystems:

1. Determine industry structure

2. Identify companies and their attributes

3. Finalize semantics for nodes and dependencies

4. Visualize, analyse, and interpret

Related Work – Decision Support System for Business Ecosystems

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[1] Park, H. et al. ” Visual analytics for supply network management: System design and evaluation”, Decision Support Systems, 2016

Park et al [1] presented a visual analytic system to explore interactively supply chain management ecosystem

Visual analytic system architecture

Various visualization layouts: force-directed layout, chord diagram, treemap layout, matrix layout and substrate-based layout

Aim of this Research Project

Limitations of the current research and identified research gap

Provides an ecosystem analysis from outside the business ecosystem, using commercial databases or

socially constructed information

Management of the continuously evolving business ecosystem data and model

171122 Faber PoEM DC

Aim of this Research Project. An enterprise internal process to collaboratively

analyze and manage the business ecosystem considering different stakeholders'

knowledge about and requirements towards the business ecosystem supported by a

visual decision support system.

Introduction

Problem Description

Research Approach and Preliminary Results

Research Methodology

Outlook

Outline

171122 Faber PoEM DC

Modelling Environment - SocioCortex

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Spread-

sheet 2.0

Content

Source 1

Content

Source 2

Content

Source 3

Identity

Management

1

Identity

Management

2

… …

LDAP, Open ID, OAuth, …

Social Integration

Semantic Integration

Content Integration

Collaborative Activities

• Modelling

• Coordination

• Negotiation

• Reasoning

• Assessment

File System, SharePoint, SQL, OData, Exchange, Alfabet, …

DarwinLexalyzeEcosystem

Explorer

Integrated

Modelling

Environment …

SocioCortex

Social Graph

Activity Graph

Content Graph

Modelling Environment - SocioCortex

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Following a Visual Modelling Approach

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Spread-

sheet 2.0

Content

Source 1

Content

Source 2

Content

Source 3

Identity

Management

1

Identity

Management

2

… …

SocioCortex

Social Graph

Activity Graph

Content Graph

LDAP, Open ID, OAuth, …

Social Integration

Semantic Integration

Content Integration

Collaborative Activities

• Modelling

• Coordination

• Negotiation

• Reasoning

• Assessment

File System, SharePoint, SQL, OData, Exchange, Alfabet, …

DarwinLexalyzeEcosystem

Explorer

Integrated

Modelling

Environment …Generic

Client

Visual Modelling Approach including various data sources to provide stakeholder tailored

visualizations

Initial Information Model and Prototypical Implementation

Initial starting point based on the connected mobility ecosystem

Basic changes in the model (e.g., change an attribute name) don’t require a recompiling of the system

Providing a prototypical implementation of a decision support system – the Business Ecosystem Explorer

BEEx

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Initial information business ecosystem model

Prototype - Business Ecosystem Explorer (BEEx)

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Prototype - Business Ecosystem Explorer (BEEx)

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Searchable list of all entities and detailed information of

the ecosystem entitiesChord diagram layout

Prototype - Business Ecosystem Explorer (BEEx)

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Overview of available visualizations

Connection Modeling Environment and Client

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List of Categories and Types in BEEx and conversion to Tree Map Layout

Introduction

Problem Description

Research Approach and Preliminary Results

Research Methodology

Outlook

Outline

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Research Methodology

Research objective to develop information

system artifacts:

business ecosystem model and

the design and prototypical

implementation of a web-based tool

Following

Hevner’s et al. [1] design science

research approach to ensure

developed artifacts are integrated in

the appropriate environment and

knowledge base and

Sein’s et al. [2] action design research

approach as the artifacts will emerge

through the interaction of design and

use

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[1] Hevner, A.R., March, S.T., Park, J., Ram, S.: Design Science in Information Systems Research. MIS Quarterly 28(1), 75{105 (2004)

[2] Sein, M.K., Henfridsson, O., Purao, S., Rossi, M., Lindgren, R.I.: Action design research. MIS Quarterly 30(3), 611{642 (2011)

Information Systems Research Framework [1] adapted to the present research project

Introduction

Problem Description

Research Approach and Preliminary Results

Research Methodology

Outlook

Outline

171122 Faber PoEM DC

Discussion and Next Steps

Open discussion points of the presented research project

Linkage to Enterprise Modelling community

Very broad research problem

Next steps

Intensify the literature review

Extend the initial information model and iteratively refine the web-based prototype by incorporating

feedback from German-based industry partners

Design and conduct experiments to measure the efficiency of the Visual Approach to modelling and

analysis tasks in the context of Business Ecosystems

Automatic information extraction from newsfeed using natural language processing and machine learning

171122 Faber PoEM DC

Technische Universität München

Faculty of Informatics

Chair of Software Engineering for Business

Information Systems

Boltzmannstraße 3

85748 Garching bei München

Tel +49.89.289.

Fax +49.89.289.17136

wwwmatthes.in.tum.de

Anne Faber, M.Sc.

17104

anne.faber@in.tum.de

Thank you for your

attention!

Questions?