BEAM: A framework for business ecosystem analysis and modeling

This paper presents a framework for the modeling and analysis of business model designs involving a network of interconnected business entities. The framework includes an ecosystem-modeling component, a simulation component, and a service-analysis component, and integrates methods from value network modeling, game theory analysis, and multiagent systems. A role-based paradigm is introduced for characterizing ecosystem entities in order to easily allow for the evolution of the ecosystem and duplicated functionality for entities. We show how the framework can be used to provide insight into value distribution among the entities and evaluation of business model performance under different scenarios. The methods are illustrated using a case study of a retail business-to-business service ecosystem. Copyright 2008 by International Business Machines Corporation.