Abstract

Since the 1990s Professor Kevin Ashton of MIT firstly proposed Internet of Things（IoT）concept，and in the year of 1999 the MIT’s Auto-ID Center（Auto-ID）clarified IoT definition as “everything with network interconnection”，then the conception has been widespread concern in academia area and industry practice. Internet of Things（IoT）is widely used in network integration，information industry and promote the evolution of a new round of the Internet revolution. In China，IoT is being widely used in many industries and in intelligent transportation，smart logistics，smart home and other forms of applications，changing the traditional economic and business models，and changing the way of people’s daily basic necessities of life.

IoT will be a lot of things around us to connect and interact with it，which means that things are not connected to a specific industry or supply chain systems，but with the IoT technology to match the connected stakeholder groups，and eventually cause a result of a plurality of participants and their associated interactive composition ratio of the supply chain in terms of a more complex network systems. Therefore，we will adopt a new perspective—“Business Ecosystem” to study the formation of complex systems based networking technology.

In this dissertation，we choose the IoT era as the background to explore the links between technology and enterprise networking ecosystem，whereby analyze multiple dimensions of business ecosystem. Context of this dissertation is the impact of IoT era to the traditional economic and business models，the object of dissertation is based on the networking technology of the emerging Internet companies and traditional manufacturing transformation of the Internet business. This dissertation tries to answer the research question is：what are the characteristics，structure and operating mechanisms of business ecosystem under the background of IoT？Specifically，the research question is divided into four sub-questions：① what are the characteristic elements of business ecosystem？② what are the type of membership structure and strategy of the business ecosystem？③ what are the dynamic evolution and operation mechanism of business ecosystem？④ what is the relationship between technological innovation and the presence of external environment in the business ecosystem？Therefore，we apply the mixed research methods of qualitative and quantitative（bibliometric，case studies，grounded theory building，sampling statistics）on these research issues.

The first chapter introduces the research background，on this basis，the research problems，the basic technical route and the research methods. The second chapter utilizes the bibliometrics software to analyze the bibliometrics and visualization knowledge map of the literature which is on the topic of “business ecosystem” in the Web of Science（WoS）database. Then，the research results of business ecosystem at the present stage are detailed by combing the literature.

The third chapter utilizes grounded theory building research method to explore the characteristic elements of the business ecosystem. Through four case companies（Didi travel，Tencent，BesTV，Haier）data collection and processing，using Nvivo software to solve the original data are encoded around the “Internet+ rental” ecosystem（Didi travel），“the Internet+ communication” ecosystem（Tencent），“Internet+ TV” ecosystem（BesTV），“Internet+ appliances” ecosystem（Haier U+）to explore and identify the characteristic elements of business ecosystem，building a “characteristic & feature” theoretical model.

The fourth chapter utilizes multiple cases study method to explore the strategic structure of the business ecosystem. Through the mobile computing industry in four typical cases enterprises’（Android，Tencent，China Mobile and Xiaomi Technology）data collection and processing，and with the use of logical and differential replication method of data analysis，this study analyzes the strategic structure of the business ecosystem，building a “strategic architecture” model.

The fifth chapter utilizes single longitudinal case study to explore the dynamic evolution of the business ecosystem. Through the transformation of the Internet Haier 30-year history of the five strategic changes and the establishment of seven platforms，and then collect data to explore the life cycle of business ecosystem of dynamic evolution motivation，building dynamic evolution model and the mechanism of platform’s driving force in the process of evolution.

The sixth Chapter utilizes the statistical research method of large sample to explore the technology innovative of the business ecosystem. This study chooses the China A-shares stock companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges during 2008-2014（non-financial listed companies）as samples to explore the relation between environmental uncertainty and technological innovation in business ecosystem，as well as the adjustment effect of enterprise scale，profitability and enterprise nature. And the findings show that the relation between technology innovation and environmental uncertainty is U-shaped relationship.

The seventh chapter is the research conclusion and future prospect，which aims to integrate the previous discussion，identify its theoretical contribution and management enlightenment，and summarize the existing limitations and direction of future research.