Digital Ecosystems supporting SME and local growth Best practices and potential applications

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Digital Ecosystems supporting SME and local
growthBest practices and potential applications
Catania, February, 13th 2004 progetto
Competenze Fondazione CENSIS
Is another way of doing business, preserving
development, local identity and values, possible
?
F. Nachira European Commission DG-INFSO eBusiness
Unit - area SMEs and Digital Ecosystems
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Structure of the presentation

• Local and global challenges evolution of the
  business ecosystem
• European Perspective and the Lisbon Strategy,
  eEurope
• Digital Ecosystem concept
• Implementation
• DBE building a Digital Ecosystem infrastructure
• A network of local Digital Ecosystems
• example of sectorial applications
• A dream for SMEs and local growth ?

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Advantages of SMEs
SMEs are highly focused niche products -
specialized services SMEs very often depend on
large enterprises solution partners - component
providers - service partners SMEs play a role
as innovators their best chance to stay
competitive no large bureaucracies to
overcome SMEs could be strong through
synergies find the right partners - learn how
to network and cooperate
Advantages of Districts based on SMEs
Knowledge and industrial expertise diffused in
the area Fault tolerant structure Strong
cultural identity
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Models of Economic Interaction
Growth Node
Business Ecosystem
District
Source Marjatta Maula 2003
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Vision Flexible European SME-Market
Future
dynamic of network relations in market
Today
STANDARDS
Past
EXTENDED PRODUCTS
t
P.Weiss FZI
Core competence
Average competence
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Role of Internet
The adoption and use of Internet is one of the
major factor of productivity gain Internet
creates new opportunity of business (services,
content ) but his usage allows to increase
the productivity in all sectors in all
kind of business the access to the global
market the access and sharing of knowledge and
skills the development of networked
organisations
Half of productivity gain in US during last 5
years depends on ICT adoption
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ICT support for networked business
To facilitate the emergence of future business
forms designed to exploit the opportunities and
manage the challenges posed by the socio-economic
and technical revolutions of the 21st century.
Future business, more competitive, innovative,
agile and value creating, will require new
technologies, applications and services to enable
them to work as networked knowledge-based
businesses.
? develop ICTs supporting organisational
networking, process integration, and sharing of
resources that enable networked organisations
(private and public) to build faster and more
effective partnerships and alliances ?
re-engineer and integrate business processes,
share efficiently knowledge and experiences and
develop value added products and services for
networked organisations
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Globalization
decline of European SMEs?

• SMEs software users (i.e. non-IT product/service
  providers)
• From a limited environment to a global
  competition, interrelations
• From a well-defined business relationships to
  dynamic fuzzy relationship
• un-known partner gt on-demand access to services
• but affordable applications not available for
  SMEs
• but taylored applications fitting with local
  conditions not available
• limited adoption of IT gt minor increase of
  productivity

SMEs sw providers - From a limited environment
to a global competition, - Rapid evolution of
standards - Sw is part of an environment,
interoperability, sw more and more complex -
Difficult to compete with large global
corporations with dominant positions
Italy - economy based on SMEs Unites States --gt
Europe lt-- emerging countries
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more complexity in organisations
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The European Perspective
ERA European Research Area
Enlargement
Candidate countries were full partners in FP5
FP6, Eureka, COST, national RTD programmes
Lisbon Strategy
towards a single market for research
innovation
EU Largest knowledge-based economy by 2010
Other policies
Single market, single currency, security of
Europeans, sustainable development, ...
Broadband access, e-business, e-government,
security, skills, e-health, ...
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Il piano di azione eEurope 2002

• Marzo 2000 il Consiglio di Lisbona esprime un
  ambizioso obiettivo per il 2010
• Far divenire l'Europa leconomia (basata sulla
  conoscenza) più competitiva e dinamica del mondo
• e richiede " un piano d'azione globale
  eEurope ... coordinamento basato su un'analisi
  comparativa delle iniziative nazionali combinata
  con la recente iniziativa della Commissione
  eEurope e la sua comunicazione intitolata
  "Strategie per l'occupazione nella società
  dell'informazione

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Il piano di azione eEurope 2002

• Giugno2000 presentato al Consiglio di Feira il
  piano d'azione eEurope 2002
• Un quadro di azioni coordinate fra Stati Membri e
  UE basato su obiettivi comuni
• Efficiente monitoraggio dei progressi raggiunti a
  livello nazionale tramite benchmarking e
  indicatori

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eEurope 2002 - Approccio lungo 3 assi

• Misure legali coordinate per la creazione di un
  adeguato quadro giuridico
• favorevole allo sviluppo di servizi internet
• Rifocalizzare i programmi esistenti per fornire
  sostegno alle nuove infrastrutture e ai nuovi
  servizi in tutta l'Europa
• anche tramite la coordinazione e lutilizzo dei
  fondi comunitari e nazionali
• Analisi comparativa (benchmarking) coordinata
  combinata con chiari obiettivi da raggiungere
• raccolta dati statistici, definizione di
  indicatori,

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Il piano di azione eEurope 2005

• Marzo 2002 il Consiglio di Barcellona richiede
  un piano di azione basato diffusione della
  disponibilità e dell'uso delle reti a banda larga
  in tutta l'Unione entro il 2005 e lo sviluppo del
  protocollo Internet Ipv6 . la sicurezza delle
  reti e dell'informazione, eGovernment,
  eLearning, eHealth ed eBusiness
• con l'obiettivo di stimolare lofferta di
  servizi, le applicazioni e con contenuti sicuri
  su uninfrastruttura a banda larga

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eEurope 2005

• The victius circle has to be broken
• weak network infrastructure
• unavailability of on-line services
• It is based on two parallel actions which
  reinforce each other developing a virtuous circle
• The first group services, applications and
  digital content
• has the goal to develop modern on-line services
  (of e-government, e-learning, e-health)
• and of services for favouring a dynamic
  e-business environment
• The second group is composed of catalysts aiming
  at creating
• affordable broadband
• infrastructure for information security

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Business Ecosystems
local conditions
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Digital Ecosystemstechnical infrastructure
supportingBusiness Ecosystems
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How to deal with the complexity?

• No easy answer, no short-term solution
• long-term process, but intermediate results

Paradigm shift machine model gt living organism
model building a machine gt nurturing players
and conditions
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Advantages of new paradigms

• How turn weakness in advantages
• Opens your mind abandoning un-necessary
  constrains you discover new opportunities

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Lessons from the living world

• Is built on composition and complex hierarchies
• No central control, no plans defined in advance
• Fault tolerantNo central point of failure,
  just viability concept
• Diversity and autonomy (recursive)
• Just adaptationto the local conditions
• Selection and evolution
• But you need an infrastructure supporting the
  life (composed of living organisms too - rec.
  concept), and a critical mass of individuals and
  biodiversity (bootstrap problem)

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Dynamic composability for evolution

• A digital component is made by components
  which
• are distributed
• should change for allowing evolution
• all elements could switch and change (sw,
  modality of usage, protocols)
• Reusability of existing initiatives (web
  services, GRID services, semantic web) protocols
• gt adaptation to local conditions

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What is a Digital Ecosystem for SMEs Business ?

• THE DIGITAL ECOSYSTEM
• is a pervasive digital environment which
  supports the business ecosystems
• and is populated by digital components which
  evolve
• DIGITAL COMPONENTS
• could be software components, applications,
  services, knowledge, business processes and
  models, training modules, contractual frameworks,
  laws, .... and hopefully
  a mixture of that
• AN USEFUL IDEA, EXPRESSED BY THE LANGUAGE
  (formal or natural), LAUNCHED ON THE NET, WHICH
  CAN BE PROCESSED (by computers and/or humans)

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Advantages for SMEs of the new paradigm

• SMEs (dynamic, adaptable, flexible, rooted at
  local level)
• Advantages of approach
• Reducing treshold for market entrance
• Reducing the relevance of the marketing
• Possibility to provide only a component
• Provision of ethnocentric solutions
• Divide the complexity (1 component)

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Advantages for SMEs of the new paradigm

• SMEs (dynamic, adaptable, flexible, rooted at
  local level)
• Advantages of approach
• Reducing treshold for market entrance
• Reducing the relevance of the marketing
• Possibility to provide only a component
• Provision of ethnocentric solutions
• Divide the complexity (1 component)

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History
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DBE - Digital Business Ecosystem FP6
Integrated Project 507953 20 partners from 9 EU
countries Total initial EU funding 10.5
M Duration 3 years, started 1 November 2003
http//www.digital-ecosystem.org
- Project Manager Andrea Nicolai T6 -
a.nicolai_at_t-6.it - Project Coordinator
Jonathan Sage IBM - jonathan.sage_at_be.ibm.com
- Scientific Coordinator Paolo Dini LSE -
P.Dini_at_lse.ac.uk - Technical Coordinator
Miguel Vidal Sun - miguel.vidal_at_sun.com
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DBE ArchitectureThe original requirements

• From Towards a Network of digital business
  ecosystems fostering the local development (EC,
  Discussion paper, 2002)
• the actual slowly changing network of
  organizations will be replaced by more fluid,
  amorphous and often transitory structures based
  in alliances, partnership and collaborations.
• building a community that share business,
  knowledge and infrastructure
• To support this scenario, which envisages the
  aggregation of services and organizations, is
  required a further stage in ITC technology
  adoptions which exploits the dynamic interaction
  (with cooperation and competition) of several
  players in order to produce systemic results in
  terms of innovation and economic development.

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DBE Objective
Overall objective of the project DBE Digital
Business Ecosystems is to provide an open-source
distributed environment which - supports the
spontaneous evolution, adaptation and composition
of services and software components - also embeds
business rules, allowing SMEs that are solution
and e-business service providers to cooperate in
the production of components and applications
adapted to local business needs. This will
allow small software providers in Europe to
leverage new distribution channels providing
niche services in local ecosystems and extending
their market reach through the DBE framework. gt
local ICT services gt ICT adoptions gt local
growth
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DBE Vision
Dynamic digital Services (multiple revenue
models)
DBE
Digital Business Ecosystem Open-source
infrastructure
Commons
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What it does mean ?
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The three-layers impact
SME 1
SME 2
Market
P.Dini LSE
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Strategic goals
The Digital Ecosystem policy has two main
goals 1 - To facilitate ICT adoption on the
part of European SMEs 2 - To support European
SME software producers
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Socio-Economic Context The Business Ecosystem
P.Dini LSE
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DBE pilot regions (February 2004)
Local Ecosystem co-funded by the project
Local Ecosystem associated to the project
Potential future take-up local ecosystems
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eEurope 2005
1. Identify and federate territory of excellence
(knowledge areas) 2. Extend the thematic
network
Exploit the value chain of - research, -
innovation, - market validation, -
adoption Instruments? All! FP6 - innovative
actions - natl actions - regional actions -
structural funds - vc - publ/priv. partnership
Proposal from Italy supported from other MSs to
include a new action directed to SMEs and local
growth Digital Territorial Ecosystems
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DREAM from industrial district to digital
ecosystem

• SMEs software users (non-IT product and service
  providers)
• to have available ethnocentric taylored software
  knowlege infrastructure which make them more
  competitive
• to develop networked business among Europe which
  preserves local identity and culture
• to support sustainable local growth

Sw providers - to rebuild a competence in
building software (based on SMEs and independent
producers) - to foster research and to rebuild
scientific and technological leadership - to
develop new paradigms for producing software and
sharing knowledge - to develop new cooperative
business models
Towards 7FP ?
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Further information .

• DG-INFSO e-Business website
  http//europa.eu.int section to appear soon
• Digital Business Ecosystem project website
  http//www.digital-ecosystem.net to appear soon

http//www.nachira.net/de/ francesco.nachira_at_cec.e
u.int Thank you !