Innovation in Digital Ecosystems: Challenges and Questions for Competition Policy — ASCOLA 2020 Conference

We will present with Thierry Warin our working paper on innovation in digital ecosystems in the 15th ASCOLA conference (25–27 June).

Digital ecosystems development is characterized by a paradox in terms of innovation. At no time in history has the pace of innovation been so fast and never before have third-party firms been able to benefit so much for their own innovations from their integration into a keystone player’s ecosystem. However, such a keystone player may be encouraged to implement non-cooperative strategies to capture the innovations developed by its own complementors. Such strategies may be detrimental to trading partners, innovation and consumers. This article aims to analyse these two possible effects of the development of digital ecosystems on innovation and to infer recommendations in terms of competition policy to counteract the detrimental effects that may result from potential unbalanced co-opetitive situations.