Digital Ecosystems: Enabling Collaboration in a Fragmented World

TL;DR

This paper introduces a multi-layer framework for polycentric digital ecosystems, emphasizing AI, blockchain, federated data, and immersive tech to foster resilient cross-border collaboration amid fragmentation.

Contribution

It extends platform theory by conceptualizing distributed, adaptive digital ecosystems across multiple layers, highlighting AI-enabled infrastructures for global digital integration.

Findings

Framework of nested socio-technical systems across multiple layers

Identification of four key technology clusters enabling integration

Demonstration of AI infrastructures orchestrating digital ecosystems

Abstract

As geopolitical, organizational, and technological fragmentation deepens, resilient digital collaboration becomes imperative. This paper develops a spectrum framework of polycentric digital ecosystems-nested socio-technical systems spanning personal, organizational, inter-organizational, and global layers. Integration across these layers is enabled by four technology clusters: AI and automation, blockchain trust, federated data spaces, and immersive technologies. By redefining digital ecosystems as distributed, adaptive networks of loosely coupled actors, this study outlines new pathways for crossborder coordination and innovation. The framework extends platform theory by introducing a multi-layer conceptualization of polycentric digital ecosystems and demonstrates how AI-enabled infrastructures can be orchestrated to achieve digital integration in a fragmented, multipolar world.