Forecasting competition between disruptive and sustaining technologies in business ecosystems

Contemporary business environment is increasingly built around business ecosystems that combine multiple stakeholders utilizing multiple technologies. Measures assessing technological changes in these systemic contexts are vital as organizations are required to manage their innovation processes in increasingly networked and complex environments. This paper utilizes the market share of technology utilization as a measure of technology-based competition and explores possibilities to forecast technological competition in business ecosystems with analogies. The study analyzes systemic changes in the personal computer game ecosystem, explicitly focusing on technological competition in sub-technologies that are central to the delivery of gaming value to the end-user. The paper subsequently discusses organizational considerations and theoretical implications of the proposed measures and their forecasting performance.