The Role Of Network Infrastructure Stability In Supporting Scalable Digital Ecosystems: Lessons From Cloud-Integrated Environments
Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: Digital ecosystems, comprising locally nurtured firms, clients, and a supporting network infrastructure, are recognized as enabling growth. However, providing stability and sufficient performance is difficult, especially without control of the infrastructure. In this case, the transmission technology needs to be carefully monitored. This suggests that there is a natural market for community-controlled infrastructures that provide local firms with the tools to support their operations. The architecture of such infrastructures is firm-internal, hierarchical, and in some respects similar to industrial firm networks.Yet, the market for “external” transmission providers is more uncertain, and provider efficiency varies more than in tightly controlled firm networks, requiring more effort to provide good quality. Larger local firms’ efforts might spill over. Local embeddedness of a community network helps but is not enough: local firms need to adopt capabilities to create, protect, and sustain their own public Internet structures. In Southeast Asian countries, businesses don’t seem to use and invest in the Internet effectively. Presumably, this impedes their performance and remains competitive against richer nations.These markets for external vertical integration structures have evolved late and incompletely. Also, this difference in Internet provision could become a matter of political economy. There, other accident-fate explanations, pertaining to local governments, socio-cultural, or geographical conditions, also play a role. Hence, whether community-scaled, self-arranged Internet provision is indeed a viable development path, is uncertain. However, approaching local firms seriously from this perspective could help them acquire not merely the necessary, but the sufficient competitive conditions to get back on track. The existence of such a productive technology is merely affording agents the option to engage in a viable and efficient activity.
Source: Nanotechnology Perceptions
Author: Srinivas Kalyan Yellanki
Language: English
Topic: ICT Impact and Policies
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7216722650