Establishing Business Ecosystems for Smart Living services: A case study on how to improve the robustness of the underlying networked Business Model

Smart Living falls under the broader rubric of Internet of Things (IoT) and is described as a residence with connected technologies that are able to anticipate and respond to occupants’ emotional, rational, social, economic, and physical needs. Because Smart Living services have a networked nature, collaboration between actors in the business environment is essential. However, Smart Living services have hardly ever been realized on a large scale, and the various features are often not integrated. From a strategical viewpoint, this is caused by a lack of alignment between service providers. Consequently, the robustness of the underlying networked Business Model is often limited. This research presents a process framework which serves as a guideline for establishing a Business Ecosystem for Smart Living services. Central to this framework is an approach to analyze interactor relationships in a dynamic model. This model reveals alignment, misalignments and conflicts in actors’ interdependencies and interactions. To resolve the identified misalignments and conflicts, activities can be devised to adapt the underlying networked Business Model with the objective of improving its robustness