Fitness of business models for digital collaborative platforms in clusters: A case study

Abstract

This paper investigates the role of business models for exploiting digital options within digital clusters (that are clusters where collaboration is IT-dependent). To this aim, this research focuses on digital platforms, a specific IT artifact supporting an inter-organizational system (IOS), which finds a typical application domain in clusters of enterprises. Thus, the paper first discusses the theoretical background and presents a literature review that has been used to set up a framework for analyzing the factors influencing the exploitation of digital platforms at cluster level. The framework is developed through a Design Science Research (DSR) methodology whose empirical ground will be represented by a cluster of more than a hundred of manufacturing small-medium enterprises. An exploratory case study is then discussed in this paper, meant to represent the early stages of application of the DSR method.