Research Hotspots and Trends of Business Ecosystem: Visual Analysis

based on Citespace

Jiarong He and Jiaying Chen

College of Business and Tourism, Sichuan Agricultural University, Dujiangyan City, Chengdu, Sichuan, China

Keywords: Business Ecosystem, Citespace, Research Status, Research Hotspot, Development Trend.

Abstract: This paper takes the literature related to business ecosystem collected in CNKI database from 2000 to 2021

as the research object, uses CiteSpace software to carry out visual analysis from the aspects of document

number, author, research institution, keywords, clustering and co citation, and identifies the research status,

hot spots and evolution trend of this research field in the form of drawing knowledge spectrum. It is found

that the research topics mainly focus on 10 aspects: business ecosystem, innovation ecosystem, enterprise

ecosystem, ecosystem, knowledge ecosystem, information ecosystem, coevolution, value ecosystem, business

model and ecological engineering; The latest research trends are mainly reflected in the fields of platform

ecosystem, corporate social responsibility, digital transformation, digital economy and so on.

1. INTRODUCTION

With the development of economic globalization and

the leap of science and technology, the market

industrial environment has become more and more

open and complex. Under the background of this era,

the strategy of seeking development from the

perspective of enterprises in the past has not adapted

to the development of the times. Under this

background, the theory of business ecosystem came

into being. American scholar James. F Moore(1993)

published the article "New Competitive Ecology" in

Harvard Business Management Review (Porter

1998), and put forward the concept of "business

ecosystem" for the first time. Business ecosystem is

defined as "economic association based on the

interaction between organizations and

individuals"(Moore 1996). The theory focuses on the

enterprises in the system to share resources and

achievements, and finally achieve comprehensive

win-win. The business ecosystem includes

consumers, major producers, competitors and other

risk bearers. Each subject member pursues different,

but actively gathers to form a complex relationship in

order to deal with the risks and transaction costs of

the external environment.

Later, more and more scholars carried out

research on the business ecosystem and received

more and more attention. The research was carried

out from multiple aspects and multiple perspectives,

but the research on the theory was still relatively

scattered, mainly qualitative analysis, and did not

form a more systematic and complete content.

Therefore, with the help of CiteSpace visualization

software, this paper visually analyzes the collected

data, and combined with the retrieved literature,

analyzes the research status, research hotspots and

development frontier in this field, so as to further

understand the overall picture of this research field

and provide reference experience for the theoretical

research and practical development of this field.

2 RESEARCH METHODS AND

DATA SOURCES

2.1 Research Methods

Bibliometric analysis is a scientific and technological

text mining tool for quantitative analysis of

documents published in specific fields (ZHI 2012, JI

2012, LI 2009, DING 2009, FENG 2009, et al).

Through a wide range of indicators and methods, it

can find the distributed architecture characteristics

and patterns of basic science and technology, and can

also evaluate the development trend and future

research in specific fields. CiteSpace visualization

software provides scientific knowledge map with

He, J. and Chen, J.

Research Hotspots and Trends of Business Ecosystem: Visual Analysis based on Citespace.

DOI: 10.5220/0011355900003440

In Proceedings of the International Conference on Big Data Economy and Digital Management (BDEDM 2022), pages 879-882

ISBN: 978-989-758-593-7

879

diversified functions such as citation space mining on

the basis of scientometrics and information

visualization. Using CiteSpace software, this paper

analyzes the keywords, authors, institutions,

clustering and sudden detection of 808 documents

retrieved from China HowNet database from 2000 to

2021, and then reveals the research status, hot spots

and development trend of this field.

2.2 Data Sources

The data of this paper comes from the China HowNet

database. The retrieval subject is "business

ecosystem" or includes enterprise ecosystem. The

retrieval time range is 2000-2021. The source types

are core journals and CSSCI journal papers. The data

download date is November 14, 2021. A total of 823

Chinese documents were retrieved. In order to ensure

the accuracy of the analysis results, The literatures

with low correlation were eliminated, and 808 sample

literatures were finally determined.

3 OVERVIEW OF BUSINESS

ECOSYSTEM RESEARCH

3.1 Time Distribution

In order to reveal the current research status in this

field and predict the future development status, this

paper makes an annual statistical analysis on the

number of relevant papers, and obtains the time

distribution of the literature based on the literature of

nearly 20 years retrieved from the China HowNet

database, as shown in Figure 1. It can be seen from

Figure 1 that from 2000 to 2005, there were few

published documents and relevant research was tepid.

This field did not receive too much attention from

researchers. The reason is that the acceptance and

dissemination of new theories need a process. There

was a sudden change in the number of documents

issued in 2006, and the growth trend continued until

2009. Then it experienced a decline for three

consecutive years, but on the whole, it maintained a

steady upward trend. In recent years, the research in

the field of business ecosystem has attracted more

and more attention from the academic community,

with a large number of documents. At the same time,

according to the prediction data of China HowNet,

there will be 68 documents in this field in 2021. As

can be seen from the trend of documents issued over

the years in Figure 1, the research heat in this field

has gradually maintained a stable state, which is one

of the important contents for relevant scholars to

study enterprise strategic management.

Figure 1: Documents issued by business ecosystem from

2000 to 2021.

3.2 Author Distribution

In the CiteSpace software, the node selects the author,

the threshold top n = 50, the time slice is set to 1 year,

and runs the business ecosystem researcher

cooperation network generated by the software. By

analyzing the researcher cooperation network, we can

see which researchers have made great contributions

and whether there is a cooperative relationship among

researchers.

There are 529 nodes, 210 connections and the

overall network density is 0.0015. The size of the

node indicates the number of documents published.

Zhang Yunsheng is the scholar with the largest

number of documents, followed by Gu Ligang, Miao

Zehua, Li Yuqiong, Hu bin, Wang Xingyuan, Li

Yong'an, Kong De'an, Zhang Yi and Liu Gang. The

different colors and thickness of the connecting lines

reflect the year of cooperation and the tightness of the

cooperation relationship. According to the analysis of

the overall network density, most scholars do not

have close cooperation and mainly focus on

independent research. For example, Miao Zehua has

independently published 10 documents, which

reflects that there is still a certain development space

for mutual resource sharing.

In the CiteSpace software, the node selects the

organization, the threshold is top n = 50, the time slice

is set to 1 year, and the business ecosystem

organization cooperation network map generated by

the software is run. By analyzing the map of

institutional cooperation network, we can see whether

there are active institutions in this field and whether

there are cooperative relations among institutions.

There are 445 cooperation nodes among

institutions in the field of business ecosystem

BDEDM 2022 - The International Conference on Big Data Economy and Digital Management

880

research, but they are not connected with each other,

and the overall density of the network is 0. Among

them, the school of Business Administration of

Hunan University has the largest number of

documents, followed by the school of economics and

management of Beijing University of technology, the

school of management of Jilin University, the school

of management of Shandong University, the Business

School of Shijiazhuang School of economics, the

Business School of Central South University, the

Business School of Hehai University, the school of

management of China Ocean University, the

Business School of Renmin University of China

School of economics and management, Harbin

Engineering University. The overall density of the

network is 0, which means that there is a lack of

cooperative relationship among institutions, the

awareness of resource sharing is weak, and most of

them fight alone. From the side, it reflects that

cooperation between different institutions should be

strengthened and a close scientific research

cooperation circle should be gradually formed, which

plays a certain role in theoretical research and

practical development in this field, and can promote

the maturity and perfection of research in this field.

4 RESEARCH HOTSPOTS IN

THE FIELD OF BUSINESS

ECOSYSTEM

Clustering map can intuitively reflect the structural

characteristics between clusters, so as to find the topic

distribution and knowledge structure of knowledge

field (OLAWUMI 2018,

CHAN 2018). Using

CiteSpace software for cluster analysis, there are 28

cluster topics, and the top 8 clusters with the largest

theme scale are selected. According to the size of the

theme scale, they are: business ecosystem, innovation

ecosystem, enterprise ecosystem, ecosystem,

knowledge ecosystem, information ecosystem,

coevolution, value ecosystem, business model and

ecological engineering. Table 1 lists the clustering

topics and the keyword distribution and contour value

of each topic.

Table 1: Keyword clustering and topic distribution in

Business Ecosystem Research.

cluster

ing

label

Contour

value

year

Business

Ecosystem

0.997 2011

Innovation

Ecosystem

0.852 2016

Enterprise

Ecosystem

0.871 2006

#3 Ecosystem 0.979 2009

Knowledge

Ecosystem

0.97 2013

Information

Ecosystem

0.938 2010

#6 Coevolution 0.904 2004

Value

Ecosystem

0.938 2011

5 CONCLUSION

Using the information visualization software

CiteSpace, this paper makes literature data mining

and visual analysis on 808 core journals and CSSCI

journals of business ecosystem from 2000 to 2021

included in China HowNet database. Based on the

analysis of the basic overview, research hotspots,

authors, research institutions and topic clusters of the

samples, the research status, hotspots and

development trends in this research field are

identified. The results show that:and development

trends in this research field are identified. The results

show that:

Through the analysis of the time distribution of

literature and the cooperation network map of authors

and institutions, the research status in this field is

identified. It is found that the research heat in this

field is gradually stable, there is a lack of cooperation

between authors and institutions, and there is still a

certain development space for sharing high-quality

resources.

Through keyword cluster analysis, the research

hotspots of domestic business system mainly focus on

10 topics: business ecosystem, innovation ecosystem,

enterprise ecosystem, ecosystem, knowledge

ecosystem, information ecosystem, coevolution,

value ecosystem, business model and ecological

engineering.

The research frontier continues to evolve over

time. The latest frontier trends are mainly platform

economy, digital transformation and digital economy.

The emerging hot research trends can improve the

existing business ecosystem theory and have guiding

Research Hotspots and Trends of Business Ecosystem: Visual Analysis based on Citespace

881

value for the construction and innovation of modern

enterprise business ecosystem.

By analyzing the knowledge map of domestic

business ecosystem research, we can see that the

research in this field has been gradually improved and

systematized in recent 20 years. Future research

should strengthen cooperation between each other,

form a close scientific research cooperation circle,

further improve the research field and enrich its

theoretical research and practical development.

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