Nigel Walton

‘Four-Closure’: How Amazon, Apple, Facebook & Google are driving business model innovation

This paper explores the rapid growth of four internet-based corporations and critiques the extent to which the Internet has developed from being simply a powerful tool and enabler of industry innovation to achieving status as a fully-fledged technology-based business ecosystem. The need to develop new management theories, tools and techniques to compete with the “Gang of Four” (Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook) are also discussed in some depth as well as providing a critique of traditional models/strategic approaches and more recent theories. This is considered to be an important area of research because as a new class of Internet company emerges incumbent firms in traditional industries will need to know how to prepare for the new challenges facing them.

Ecosystems Thinking and Modern Platform-Based Ecosystem Theory

The emergence of business ecosystems and platforms represents a very recent development that is having a significant impact upon traditional industries and product/service markets. The speed at which this new form of business model innovation has gained momentum has been largely the result of new technologies in the ICT sector such as the Internet (Web 1.0 and Web 2.0), the increasing digitisation (and dematerialisation) of products, the rapid diffusion of mobile communications, big data and cloud computing. This trend is set to continue with the roll out of the Internet-of-Things (IOT) and the increasing connectedness that will result from this.

The Internet as a Technology-Based Ecosystem

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The Development of the Hydrothermal Vent (HTV) Ecosystem Model

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A Systems View of Strategy – Complexity, Chaos Theory and Poised Strategy

Chapter 5 explores the extent to which the Internet can be considered to be an ecosystem in its own right. It seeks to develop an alternative and more suitable ICT ecosystem taxonomy for analysing modern Internet–based companies and identifies a new source of competitive advantage, namely: data, information, knowledge and innovation.

The Relevance of the Rational, Classical Approach to Strategy in the ICT Sector – The Strategy Content Approach

Chapter 3 analyses some alternative approaches to strategic thinking based upon complexity and chaos theory and the concept of ‘poised’ strategy. It explains the nature and origins of systems theory and complexity theory and how poised strategies and business model innovation play an important role in modern business ecosystems. The extent to which this relatively new paradigm is appropriate for the analysis of the modern ICT sector is also considered and how it contrasts with the classical Newtonian approach that was analysed in Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of the book. The chapter, therefore, considers what complexity theory can offer that conventional rational models cannot.

The Relevance of the Rational, Classical Approach to Strategy in the ICT Sector – The Strategy Process

Chapter 2 explores the second trend in strategic thinking to emerge since the 1980s, the Strategy Content Approach. The chapter analyses a range of strategic tools and approaches in order to determine their relevance to the modern ICT sector. This range of tools and analytical frameworks are commonly used as part of the rational decision making process involving analysis, choice and implementation. The weaknesses of these tools are examined in detail, and alternative approaches are also considered.

New Conglomerates and the Ecosystem Advantage

Chapter 1 of 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 ICT sector. This chapter focuses on the process of strategy and how strategy is formulated and implemented. The extent to which it has inspired the dominant rational approach to strategy is considered. The limitations of the rational model of intended deliberate strategy are analysed before addressing alternative approaches that have emerged over the years’ including various forms of emergent strategy, logical incrementalism, effectuation, creation logic and cognitive ambidexterity.

The Internet as a Small Business E-commerce Ecosystem

China-USA Business Review (ISSN1537-1514), a monthly professional academic journal, covers all sorts of researches on Economics Research, Management Theory and Practice, Experts Forum, Macro or Micro Analysis, Industry Economic, Political Economy, Finance and Financial Management, Strategic Management and Human Resource Management, and other latest findings and achievements from experts and scholars all over the world.

Google & Apple's Gale of Creative Destruction

The purpose of this chapter is to analyse how the ecosystem concept can be applied to small businesses and how the Internet and e-commerce can help SMEs harness the required resources to enhance their competitive performance in the marketplace. The chapter will investigate the wide variety of e-commerce applications that are available to small businesses to help address the issue of limited resources. It will provide an ecosystem map illustrating how each functional area of a small business can utilise Internet e-commerce applications to enhance their resource base. The chapter also explores the opportunities and threats that the e-commerce ecosystem model poses for small, medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This is based upon empirical research consisting of three focus group interviews undertaken with small and medium-sized retail service firms located in the Herefordshire and Worcestershire regions of the United Kingdom in January–February 2014.