Digital Twin–Based Enterprise Ecosystems

An enterprise ecosystem is a network of interacting business entities involved in the delivery of a set of complementary services, through both cooperation and competition. Each entity has a set of objectives and devises a set of strategies and capabilities to meet them. However, modern businesses operate in a highly dynamic and uncertain environment where each entity in the ecosystem affects and is affected by the others, creating a constantly evolving relationship in which they must continually adapt to meet their objectives. In this chapter, we present a digital twin-based architecture for driving these adaptation decisions in a value-integrator-based ecosystem. Digital twins enable risk-free business experimentation “in silico,” helping stakeholders arrive at the right adaptive response through what-if and if-what simulation. We propose the notion of public and private digital twins to help business entities strike the right balance between cooperation and competition. We discuss a software systems architecture that helps operationalize the adaptation decisions in a human-in-control automated manner. We present a case study that illustrates some of these ideas.