Research pick: Business profiling - "A web of clues: can ecosystems be profiled similarly to criminals?"

Writing in the International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations, a team from Finland and the UK has turned to the methods of “criminal profiling” to help them understand the ecosystems of organisations.

The concept of an ecosystem is commonly associated with biological systems, often at the environmental level, a wetland, a rain forest, a river, an ocean, for instance. However, it is possible to model non-biological systems with a similar perspective to gain insights into how the components of a system are interconnected and how they depend on each other. However, there are also methods of profiling that can be used to invert the question and apply an analytical approach usually reserved for profiling criminals to the ecosystems of organisations to gain new insights.

The team writes that “In order for companies to survive, grow and maintain competitive advantage in the future, they must systematically monitor and evaluate their business surroundings.” They add that organisations cannot exist nor thrive alone, they need others around them and to operate as part of the business ecosystem. Researchers have investigated Microsoft’s computing ecosystem and Wal-Mart’s retail ecosystem but, the researchers say, there is little that has been done in the way of visualisation of business ecosystems. They explain that “without visualising the collected data, the ecosystem profile would simply be a file full of data without a perspective into the structure of the whole ecosystem.”

Profiling reveals the connections and the connectivity between “actors” in the ecosystem. “The profiling of ecosystems opens up new possibilities for research, supports managerial decision-making, and as a result enables better understanding and management of ecosystems,” the team writes. The team has carried out “web farming” and visualisation manually on a case study company using a six-step, three-phase process of building an ecosystem profile following one of the conventional ways that criminals are profiled by law-enforcement investigators.

The team hopes to develop a tool for future studies so that the web farming and profiling can be done automatically, freeing up time for observations and analysis.

Ylönen, N., Rissanen, M., Ylä-Kujala, A., Sinkkonen, T., Marttonen-Arola, S., Baglee, D. and Kärri, T. (2021) ‘A web of clues: can ecosystems be profiled similarly to criminals?’, Int. J. Networking and Virtual Organisations, Vol. 24, No. 4, pp.347–373.