Co-Creation and Connectivity: The Role of Consumers in Digital Ecosystem Evolution

In this paper, we examine a pivotal phenomenon in contemporary consumer behavior: the evolution of digital ecosystems in which a multitude of consumers co-create value and innovatively interact with each other and firms. We analyze this phenomenon through the empirical investigation of national consumer co-creation networks in 11 European countries as part of a transition to a digital ecosystem in shareable citizenship. The paper contributes to the literature on platform ecosystems and their evolution by explicitly addressing how ecosystems evolve among consuming agents and highlighting the role of a novel form of connectivity (the notion of shareable citizenship) as a resource of consumer co-creation. Integrating insights from the literature on systems competition, ecosystem evolution, and consumer role theory, we develop a theoretical framework to interpret the empirical findings. The paper concludes by discussing practical implications and presenting ideas for future research. With the expansion of digital platforms throughout the economy, consumers are increasingly viewed as actively co-creating value and innovating within ecosystems of interacting agents. As highly networked actors, consumers not only enrich or co-create platforms with their contributions but also collectively co-create the rules and designs that shape the platform ecosystem. This growing role of consumers in the emergence and evolution of digital ecosystems has direct implications for the effective management of such ecosystems, not only by firms but also by consumers and institutions. Consumers interact with firms and other consumers and play a co-creation role, i.e. are involved in one or multiple aspects of value creation involving digital platforms. This research was motivated by the observation of how networks of European consumers emerged in recent years to collectively combat platformization and the excessive power of a few technology firms. Exploring the co-creation roles of consumers in the context of a nascent digital ecosystem led to the discovery of a new type of connectivity: network-level co-creation across a multitude of actors. Insights from this research may not only be of relevance to understand the co-creation of value among consumers but also more generally to understand how digital ecosystems emerge in the broader realm of interactions among government, business, and society.