Digital platform ecosystem creation: a case study

Digital platforms are digital contexts, where participants exchange services, information, experiences and content. They may become stable ecosystems, which can be considered viable business models in the digital economy, where value can be co-created. Embracing the ecological metaphor, a digital platform can be considered the habitat where an ecosystem rises and expands through interactions among participants. The ecological metaphor has been applied to the field of business research, and platform ecosystems have been considered as a basic unit of analysis for studying digital economy. In investigating digital platform ecosystems, different perspectives of analysis have been adopted by scholars. Therefore, this paper specifically investigates the formation process of a digital platform ecosystem, exploring in a joint fashion technical features, organizational processes and business development strategies implemented, in order to identify different formation phases. We chose the case study methodology to explore the formation of the izi.TRAVEL digital platform ecosystem in depth.