A digital business ecosystem maturity model for personal service firms

TL;DR

This paper presents a maturity model tailored for personal service firms to guide their transition from traditional to digital business ecosystems, based on literature review, interviews, and validation with industry representatives.

Contribution

It introduces a novel, empirically validated maturity model specifically designed for personal service firms to facilitate digital transformation.

Findings

Identified key dimensions and capabilities for digital maturity

Defined evolutionary stages towards digital ecosystems

Validated model with industry representatives

Abstract

Personal services can be found in sectors such as education, retail, hospitality, and craftsmanship. As of today, personal service firms lack the know-how and experience on how to implement processes and practices to effectively build digital business ecosystems. This becomes an obstacle for these kinds of firms to overcome the challenges of todays digital age. Based on the guidelines of Design Science Research (DSR), we address this gap by proposing a maturity model, which offers specific guidance for this sector to be able to achieve the transition from analog to digital. The design of the model is grounded in a systematic literature review, semi-structured interviews, and a validation test involving company representatives from the field of personal services, business ecosystems, and digitalization. Results revealed a series of dimensions, capabilities, and maturity stages indicating an evolutionary path towards digital maturity for personal service firms. Thus, leading them to achieve a digital business ecosystem.